A place for Jazz in modern music

During my first quarter of collage, I had to give an informative speech for well. . . Speech class. Many topic idea's came and went, until finally the idea of Jazz came to mind. Many people, especially my age(19), are very misinformed about jazz. They view it as outdated and old. I scene it on all of their faces when I first started my speech. By the end many ( I can not speak for all of them) were very entertained and interested. Many who do consider jazz outdated are just ignorant to the music style. But if you don't try something how do you know you will not like it? My point precisely.
So how is jazz still relevant to the modern music scene? I feel that this question is best answered by looking at its history. Jazz is responsible for many of the elements that are still found in modern music. Some of these elements include introducing vocals, basic song structure, and the pentatonic scale. Vocals was a huge edition to music, especially pop music. For without vocals what we now know as modern pop music would likely not exist. I know many people who cannot listen to music that does not contain vocals. I think that this is because vocals give you something to catch on to. Its what you hum at work when you are bored. Something else that jazz added to modern music in general was, song structure. Sure jazz musicians improvised around "head" arrangements. But this eventually turned into A-B-A-B-C-B-B structure. ( if your not a musician the A's are verses the B's are the chorus and C is the bridge) Lastly theres the pentatonic scale. which was created by taking the major scale and omitting the second and the sixth notes. So for example an A major scale becomes an a pentatonic by playing A,C,D,E and G instead of A,B,C,D,E,F and G. When I asked my high school music teacher Mr. Murphy (for an interview I used in the speech I mentioned earlier) about jazz he immediately quoted Ken Burns jazz documentary. ( worth checking out by the way) Ken Burns states that he believes that America's three greatest accomplishments are the Constitution, Baseball, and Jazz. I couldn't agree more. ( except I would change the baseball part to football ) Mr. Murphy also made the point that jazz is more then just music, it represents the history of many cultures. Such as call and response from its African and Southern roots. Jazz musicians play off of one another though improvisation. Which is the best part of jazz to me. ( and I think Wynton Marsalis would agree) this keeps the music new and spontaneous.
One last thing I have to mention is guitar solo's. They may have been the "In" thing during the 80's hair metal period. But a true guitar solo has so much more substance then just flash. A real guitar solo adds something to the song that nothing else can add. It makes the song worth listening to. The guitar solo is a result of a jazz guitarist named Charlie Christian. He was the first to start doing guitar solo' s and viewing the guitar as a soloing instrument. So as a guitarist myself i have to forever to pay respect to everything that Charlie gave to music and guitar.
So to conclude, jazz is a music style that has added so much to modern music. It should never be considered outdated or meaningless. Listening to jazz with open ears is like eating lays potato chips you can't eat just one! Jazz continues to influence many modern musicians to this day including myself.
Thanks for reading