Category talk:Jazz composers

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This page is rather redundant, as most jazz musicians have original compositions, and often rise to popularity because of them. -- mako 06:52, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, looking at the page, I agree. But although most jazz musicians are technically composers, the vast majority aren't known as composers. Carla Bley, for example, is recognized as a composer foremost and a pianist second, whereas Wycliffe Gordon writes a ton of original material but is mostly known as a trombonist. There are objective factors to consider, including how the artists market themselves and to what extent their compositions are performed by fellow musicians. If we trim the category tag from some of these pages and add it to others, this could be a relevant and useful category. (Unfortunately, like every Wikipedia Category, it suffers from certain Wikipedians' compulsion to attach as many category tags as they can possibly fathom to every article in sight...)