{"id":391,"date":"2009-10-09T10:44:51","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T10:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tonymcgregor.wordpress.com\/2009\/10\/09\/one-man%e2%80%99s-take-on-the-jazz-audience-discussion\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T10:22:19","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T10:22:19","slug":"one-man%e2%80%99s-take-on-the-jazz-audience-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/2009\/10\/09\/one-man%e2%80%99s-take-on-the-jazz-audience-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"One Man\u2019s take on the Jazz Audience Discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The contributor of this piece is jazz activist Ron Washington.\u00a0 Besides being a stalwart jazz diehard and tireless observer of the scene, he is proprietor of Ron “Slim” Washington Productions, which provides jazz and other music for festivals, clubs and restaurants.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How Can a \u201cMusic of the Spirit\u201d Die?<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jazz is dead! Here we go again; i.e. the recent Wall Street Journal article by Terry Teachout declaring that no one is listening to jazz and featuring a prominent cartoon of a \u201cblack Jazz musician\u201d being wheeled out on a cart speaks volumes to a continued bourgeois, arrogant Eurocentric lack of understanding of jazz.<\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Treachout\u2019s methodology is the classic case of someone going out to investigate the flowers, but never getting off the horse to \u201csmell the flowers.\u201d Hence the article is so \u201clightweight\u201d I had to keep a paper-weight on it to keep it from elevating and floating away on its own. Put another way, as Amiri Baraka in his latest book \u201cDigging\u201d would say, \u201cThe lack of knowledge about America\u2019s richest contribution to world culture is a reflection as well of the deadly ignorance which stalks this country from the New York City Hall to the halls of Congress to the corporate offices to academic classrooms, like a ubiquitous serial killer\u2026\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Treachout uses a number of useless (without context!) numbers from a National Endowment of the Arts survey to conclude that only those with their head in the sand cannot see a larger picture of \u201clack of mass support for jazz\u201d leading to its demise. There were fewer people attending a jazz concert; the audience is (graying) growing older; older people are less likely to attend jazz performances today than yesterday; and the audience among college educated adults is also shrinking. On the surface, this kind of approach can scare or misinform a great many people into following the ever present \u201cjazz is dead\u201d attacks upon the music. This kind of approach is not the approach of someone who wants to help jazz survive, but one that serves to drive people away from exploring and learning about jazz. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

How about we come at the non arguable \u201cless than healthy\u2019 state of jazz another way? Once again we call on America\u2019s foremost jazz critic for guidance. Why not investigate and raise the question as to the \u201cdomination of US popular culture by an outrageously reactionary commercial culture of mindlessness, mediocrity, violence and pornography means that it is increasingly more difficult for the innovative, serious, genuinely expressive, or authentically popular artist to get the same kind of production and the anti-creative garbage that the corporations thrive on.\u201d <\/em><\/strong>(Digging, Amiri Baraka). I suggest that this is the inquiry that the Wall Street Journal should be making into the subject matter, the health state of jazz. But when you\u2019re part of the problem, it\u2019s difficult. From the standpoint of the WSJ, jazz\u2019s mystery can\/cannot be solved by market forces. \u201cLook here are the numbers!\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

From the great work \u201cBlues People,\u201d to his other book, \u201cBlack Music,\u201d and the latest contribution from the peoples\u2019 critic, \u201cDigging,\u201d there is one thing that stands out. Amiri Baraka insists that the music, from blues to jazz, is a creation and reflection of the struggles of the Afro-American people. The music is an expression of a people\u2019s culture and cannot be separated from such. Jazz, Afro-American in origin, universal in content and expression, is nonetheless tied to a people, expressing their greatest fears and joys, hopes for the future and repository of the past, that it can said, \u201cthe music is the people.\u201d Hence the music can never die, because the people live. Bill Cosby is quoted in Digging as saying, \u201cThere\u2019s a wonderful story I like to tell. It\u2019s the end of the world\u2026gray, blowing, turbulent\u2026 and there is this tombstone that says, \u2018Jazz: It Broke Even!\u2019 The music has its high and lows, but it can never die.\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Art is a reflection of a people\u2019s culture. As Baraka says, \u201cWhether African Song, Work Song, Spiritual, Hollers, Blues, Jazz, Gospel, etc., no matter the genre, the ideas contained in Afro-American art, in the main, oppose slavery and desire freedom.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> (Digging<\/span>). For jazz to die, the entire history and Afro-American people would have to die. This is the content that an interloper like Treachout cannot understand. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But since jazz is what the great trumpet player Ahmed Abdullah calls, \u201cthe music of the spirit,\u201d it can never die. While the WSJ declares jazz dead, refuses to get off the horse and smell the flowers, the music continues to thrive and fight for its life, for its expression. In New Jersey , new small clubs are opening up all over the place, anchored by Cecil\u2019s in West Orange . You have the work of Newark\u2019s own Stan Myers, who has run a successful Tuesday night Jam session at Crossroads for years; \u00a0Papillion, Skipper\u2019s, the Priory, Trumpets, John Lee\u2019s annual concerts in South Orange, and countless other venues all testify to the fact that the \u201cspirit\u201d is alive. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jazz is not popular culture. To compare and demand that Jazz be equated with the lowest common denominator cultural expression, packaged for the most extreme exploitation by monopoly capitalism is to have no understanding of the music. By its very nature it is \u201crebel\u201d music. Treachout complains that it is not the music of the masses, of the youth, as determined by corporate measuring sticks. Well of course. I like hip-hop but I\u2019m not going to any concerts. That\u2019s youth music. Not particularly challenging. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When we say jazz is \u201ca music of the spirit,\u201d sitting in on a jazz program has the possibility of elevating the listener to heights never experienced by a poplar culture event. For many it is a shared communal experience, as witnessed by the common clapping in appreciation of a musical interlude, or the strictly individual experience of the music. Some can appreciate the full recipe of musical virtuosity on display, some may connect deeply in an emotional way with the music, some relate to the democratic display of the skills of the musicians, and some may not have liked the particular performance. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ron Washington, September 10, 2009<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

blacktel4justice@gmail.com<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The contributor of this piece is jazz activist Ron Washington.\u00a0 Besides being a stalwart jazz diehard and tireless observer of the scene, he is proprietor of Ron “Slim” Washington Productions, which provides jazz and other music for festivals, clubs and restaurants. How Can a \u201cMusic of the Spirit\u201d Die? Jazz is dead! Here we go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","amazonpipp_noncename":"","amazon-product-isactive":"","amazon-product-single-asin":"","amazon-product-content-location":"","amazon-product-content-hook-override":"","amazon-product-excerpt-hook-override":"","amazon-product-singular-only":"","amazon-product-amazon-desc":"","amazon-product-show-gallery":"","amazon-product-show-features":"","amazon-product-newwindow":"","amazon-product-show-list-price":"","amazon-product-show-used-price":"","amazon-product-show-saved-amt":"","amazon-product-timestamp":"","amazon-product-new-title":"","amazon-product-use-cartURL":"","amazon_featured_post_meta_key":"","_amazon_featured_alt":"","amazon-product-template":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-jazz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz-sa.com\/mcgregorza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}