Pharoah Sanders, giant of spirit-driven jazz, dies at 81
NPR Online NewsJUL 2022
This is a huge loss for the music community. Jones's work as a composer, arranger, producer, conductor, and scorer spanned decades and marked the apex of jazz, funk, and soul music in the twentieth century. He will be remembered as a pioneer and his spirit will live on through the thousands of records he worked on, which continue to be widely loved and listened to in the US and across the rest of the world.
The loss of Jones is undoubtedly a tragedy for the music industry, and although his widely popular productions remain loved, his death comes as the jazz scene he so electrified with his virtuosic prowess continues to dwindle. International surveys suggest jazz and blues persist as the least listened to genres worldwide, while the effects of the COVID pandemic and broader economic landscape continue to weaken fragile musical ecosystem, especially at the grassroots. These genres need a great like Jones now more than ever to reinvigorate and repopularize them with a new generation.
There's a 50% chance that in 2050, 0.218 percent of the US workforce will be musicians or writers, according to the Metaculus prediction community.