The Kids Are Alright

Excellent post, guys! This is my favorite Alice Coltrance album, and the Universal re-release CD that came out in 2002, while printed as a limited edition and now out-of-print, is still available at a lot of music stores and can be downloaded at Amazon or Itunes as MP3s or bought used at a reasonable price. Anyone who is a bit leery of some of the more adventurous avant-garde jazz but is fascinated by music that has a spiritual, psychedelic, peace and love kind of vibe, will not be disappointed in this recording.

I’m a follower of the Downtown New York jazz and Eureopean Free Jazz scenes, and the concerts I go to have a nice variety of young and old, black and white, albeit never a huge audience. But this is an exception in the jazz world. The bulk of what’s left of the jazz audience IS older, whiter, less interested in developments in jazz, preferring the latest “tribute” album and the umpteenth remastering/reissue of some Blue Note album. The mainstream jazz mags are moribund and prefer to follow rather than lead. What needs to happen? Monopoly control of radio needs to be broken to create diversity of programming. Public radio needs to receive adequate financial support from the government , but also mandated to give more (much more) time to jazz, blues, etc (rather than try to emulate Clear Channel commercial readio). Radio is a vital, maybe the vital, medium to disseminate music to th epublic. Finally, more arts grants need to be made to musicians to carry on the art.

Tony, I’ll agree on the grant aspect, but radio? Seriously?

The only people I know who listen to radio nowadays are either too old to know how to work an ipod, too ignorant to want to listen to music other than pop or alt-rock or whatever other corporate mainstream music, or just dont care about music at all and are listening for the sake of having music on.

Radio had a place when music wasn’t instantly accessible for free or nearly free almost instantly from any internet connection, but to myself and the rest of my generation, the idea of listening to what some dj wants to play (and then having to suffer through commercials) is stupid. We’re gonna listen to whatever we want, whenever we want it. We’re gonna have it without any commercials, without any interruptions, we’re gonna fast forward or rewind anything we feel like, we’re going to be in total control. We’re the DJs. Anything less is unacceptable.

(Ha ha, the anti-spam word is “zorn.”)

A couple of quick questions:

1) Why don’t rock clubs book jazz acts as openers/co-headliners?

2) Why don’t rock BANDS take jazz acts on the road with them? Imagine how many new listeners would be brought on board if Sunn O))) was touring with, say, Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa.

As far as I know, there’s no law that says jazz groups have to play jazz clubs, and no law forbidding them from playing rock venues, or on rock-dominated bills. It’s just a matter of getting bookers and booking agents to open their minds a little bit, and pairing them up properly with the right kind of rock acts. I’m sure you could put Fieldwork on the same bill as Arcade Fire or the Decemberists and they’d be a hit.

That approach worked with me (I’m 28): as a teenager listening to rock, I got interested in stuff that was farther and farther out. This led me to avant-garde free improv, and then I found my way back through the jazz canon, from Brotzmann to Basie.

Surprised you didn’t mention a big reason AC has been getting a lot of attention lately. The DJ/producer Flying Lotus is her great-nephew Steven Ellison, and his (excellent) work, some of it sampling “Auntie’s Harp,” has had good press in the States and Europe, most of it mentioning AC.

This is one of the few blogs I read, and I’ve particularly appreciated the Sun Ra, Air, and AC tracks recently. Thanks.

You guys have hit the nail precisely on the head. The young fan base for jazz is there and ripe for the picking. It is only the labels and Balkanization of music that leads to the perception that the future of jazz is in trouble.

As a teen, I became interested in jazz, because of the subtle influence of Coltrane, electric Miles, and Jaco Pastorius on hard rock and metal.

Then as I became more comfortable with the language of jazz, I ventured further and further into the avant-garde.

I feel it is the same with the current generations whether they be primarily fans of hip-hop, electronica, or metal, I would hazard a guess that they have a passing knowledge or interest in jazz. And this interest plants the seeds for future enjoyment of the music.

As a related aside, it is my opinion that labels in music do more to hurt the enjoyment of music than anything. I know it is great to be able to find the type of music you want in it’s own section. However, it can blind one to great music in other categories. I remember hating “country” music, and then I heard Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, and recognized the passion and beauty of their music, regardless of the fact that it was country.

The last jazz show I went to was Jason Moran at the Village Vanguard and I’d say that the audience was about 60% Japanese. There were two black people, maybe about 10 white people and Steve Lehman. I’d say the average age was about mid to late-30′s though a surprising number of the Japanese audience members were pretty young. It was unclear whether they were dragged there by their jazz-loving parents or if they were there on their own and the older people were unrelated.

I’d also just like to say that I feel that if something is on the decline you should just let it go. It’s something we’re dealing very much with here in Quebec with the language issue. The government does everything it can to promote the french language and Quebecois culture (there are posters in the Metro promoting a fleur de lis label for french businesses thereby labeling non-french businesses by omission, etc.) but other cultures are always seeping it and eventually the local culture will evolve into something else. It can’t be stopped and neither can jazz’s evolution. There will probably always be people who love jazz but jazz didn’t always exist and it won’t be around forever, at least not as we know it or knew it. I think the best thing someone can do is just keep playing and sharing your love (and frustration, damn Four in One is really hard) of the music with those around you.

One of the biggest problems is not the graying audience but the fact that music that is clearly not jazz is regularly tagged as such – e.g. Amy Winehouse, Norah Jones.

Btw, can anyone tell me what the benefits would be of more people listening to more jazz?

@David, I think one benefit of more people listening to jazz is that it’s easier for musicians we love to make a halfway decent living, record albums with more than a micro-budget, and actually play to audiences in more than three cities. Right now it’s difficult for jazz musicians to tour the U.S. b/c there aren’t venues b/c of a (perceived?) lack of audience. If you’re not the Bad Plus and playing rock venues, you’re s.o.l. And that’s a shame for all music fans.

@PDF – Personally I think you’re suggestion is spot on and that rock bands that are inspired by jazz should take jazz acts on the road with them. It’s past time for the music to break out of the two drink minimum scene and get to the people where it belongs.

Nice post guys, btw.

In the 70s there was a very hip Swiss band called OM (w/ Fredy Studer, Christy Doran, Urs Leimgruber and Bobbi Burri). Check out the album “OM – A Retrospective” on ECM! They called their music Electricjazz-Freemusic. I think they were mostly inspired by Free Jazz and Weather Report …

Whoa, way late on this. But I’d just like to throw my two cents in to say that I’ve always found this tack to be some fallacious bullshit.

I live in DC, and there’s no shortage of ways for anyone — regardless of age, race, gender, creed, cashflow — to interact with the music. The record stores around here are teeming with Basie and Bennett, Coltrane and Miles, Ornette and Braxton; from cut-rate prices to collector’s items on the wall.

You can spend a paltry $30 to sit right overtop a wailing Sonny Rollins in one of the great halls of the Kennedy Center, or catch Happy Apple on the Millennium Stage in the foyer of that venerable institution for free.

Local free players get down before and during noise and electronic improv and drone rock acts at punk clubs like the Velvet Lounge, afrobeat bands play rock clubs with local MC’s and go-go bands.

There are great free shows at the feet of national monuments and museums, and nearly free ones put on by neighborhood Baptist churches.

And on any given night on U Street or 9th or in Adams Morgan, a group of people young and old, black and white and Asian and Latin are killing it on the bandstand while asking for but a pittance from your pocket and for you to treat the barkeep well.

Even the buskers at the metro station will spit out a rendition of Autumn Leaves that’ll leave you breathless as you hurry on to work.

For a city that’s trying to struggle to find a coherent identity amid the gentrification and the shitty baseball and everyone telling us we’re hip again just because the President now happens to be, jazz has almost become something of a rallying cry. Eleanor Holmes Norton said it introducing McCoy Tyner at last year’s Ellington Festival, “DC isn’t a political city. It’s a jazz city.”

Maybe bluster, sure. But it is Duke’s city, after all.