Jazz musicians often have classical music upbringing. Rock musicians,

AdityaHongunti

Thanks for the tag.
First of all, this is not a perfect approximation of a GMAT question, and in general, I will always suggest that candidates stick to official sources as much as possible. There are some elements of the phrasing ("upbringing" to describe a musician's background and training; "is still listened widely" is missing a "to") that already make me suspicious and doubtful of the quality of the question. Meanwhile we can also think of plenty of examples of classic rock music from the 1960s and 1970s that are still listened to today ... but I digress.

Even though we are dealing with an imperfect question, I can still support that D is a better answer than E.

To your point, let's negate E. Let's say that rock musicians can't learn classical music and include it in their compositions. OK, are rock musicians the only people who compose rock music? Couldn't they collaborate with other musicians who know how to incorporate classical aspects in their compositions? For E to be an assumption, we would have to separately believe (assume) that the only possible creators of rock music are rock musicians, which I find unlikely.

However, D is clearly what the question author wants us to choose. The question is clearly assuming that the presence of the classical elements is THE REASON that jazz music has such longevity. If it is NOT one of the key reasons for the longevity of jazz, the conclusion has ZERO basis. It is a much stronger answer choice because it hits at the CORE of the argument structure and requires no additional assumptions on our part.

Does this help? Let me know.

Best, Jennifer

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.