The accusation of racism is an interesting take. There were strong links and crossovers between jazz and classical music until serialism happened. They didn't d

The accusation of racism is an interesting take. There were strong links and crossovers between jazz and classical music until serialism happened. They didn't develop independently. It wasn't all that unusual for black jazz players and composers to be as classically trained as white musicians. But serialism was too far for most people. And still is. Failed composer/critic Adorno, who adored serial music and is a Big Name on the scene, absolutely loathed jazz and popular music. It's not really atonal. It's antitonal. Truly atonal music wouldn't care about standard pitches or notation at all, because they're still based on the harmonic series. It's antitonal because it pretends that's not true, while also trying its best to avoid the usual paths through harmonic space. As for the quality - there's an opera called Wozzeck which is performed fairly regularly. The rest is mostly museum music - relegated to special academic festivals. Not mainstream at all. It's actually very structured, and if you know what's happening you can hear the patterns and components going by. But as music it has a very limited emotional range. And intellectually, most of it is pure crossword puzzling for the sake of it.