Q6

[andrewgong01]

For the most likey agree questions, I understand the approach is to first check for extreme answers and then see if we can prove the weak answers. However, all of the choices here are rather weak aside from "most"" in Choice "D"

I agree with the correct answer, A, but I am not sure how to rule out "E" and "B"

A) I did not see the irony during the read but it does make sense. Marsalis as P4 clarifies was not 100% rigid and all traditional; he did encourage some innovations ( not as extreme as Choice A of Q5 though). However, logically, if a firm only focuses on the vintages then it is not innovating at all. Hence, between the two choices, if Marslsis still allows for more innovations.

B) Energetically may be a bit too strong . But I think the main reason is that critics against Marsalis focused more so on Marsalis focus on tradition and not Marsalis not promoting new artists.

C) This is a fake comparison trap where a comparison is made for a comparison that was never stated. More importantly,I don't think fellow musicians' views were stated in the passage.

D) Today's young artists' views were not stated in the passage ( i think). Most is also really strong.

E) I am not sure about this one. However, I think the issue is that the passage never said 15 albums were a saturation. 15 albums were cited to show the sudden decline of the artist. And the "vulnerable to criticism" seems a bit of a stretch but at the same time seems like it may match up with the passage. It was because of his focus on tradition that drew fire from critics. However, I guess the issue is wether or not it was the 15 albums that caused the criticisms or was this something that was built up over time.

[ohthatpatrick]

Awesome work! In addition to filtering out more extreme claims on a first pass, you should also remember about "author most likely to agree" stems that if there's an "Author Zone" of the passage, the correct answer usually comes from there.

In this passage, I felt the Author Zone was P4, signified by a concession to the other argument
"Indeed, _____" followed by a pivot into the author's counterpunch: "Still, ________ ."

The ways you got rid of (B) and (E) were both fine!

(B) Did critics ever say "Marsalis has not energetically promoted new artists"? Not as far as we've seen. So what (B) says hardly goes CONTRARY to what critics say. Critics don't care about whether he's promoting new artists. They care about whether he's encouraging jazz artists/listeners to explore new musical takes on jazz or whether he's keeping people locked in the past. (He might promote a bunch of new artists, who play jazz "the classic way", in which case the critics would still be mad)

(E) There's nothing that sounds accusatory in way that "saturating the market" does. And there's nothing in the form of causally connecting "15 cds" and "vulnerable to criticism".

The point of lines 11-14 is just to exemplify that lines 9-10: "The biggest name in jazz faces an uncertain future, as does jazz itself". He was once prolifically releasing records and signed to a label. Now he has no label and hasn't released a record in two years.

This wasn't because of criticism ... this was because of the changing economic priorities / incentives of record labels, as described in 18-23.

Hope this helps.