Enthusiasms (32) ~ Farmers By Nature

I have let this theme go for too long and will try to post periodically about music that has caught my fancy. I was in Washington DC last week and made a stop at the Melody Record Shop. Among the cds (how retro!) I found is this wonderful trio collaboration by Gerald Cleaver, William Parker & Craig Taborn. This apparently is the second release on AUM Fidelity by the trio, which calls itself Farmers by Nature. I've been playing it more or less constantly since we returned home. The title of the cd "out of this world's distortions" continues on the title cut as ... "grow aspens and other beautiful things." Just so. The phrase not only is true of the broader world, it succinctly captures the beautiful music made by this trio too.
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P.S.: I will note too that the cover photograph to this release is pretty amazing.

The Rochester International Jazz Festival & the Illusion of Post-Racial Music

The tenth edition of the Rochester International Jazz Festival (RIJF) is about to open. Many see this as a time to celebrate success. I think it also affords the opportunity for some much needed, critical reflection.

When I read down the RIJF schedule I see lots of what we might call World Music, R&B, Pop, Blues, or Americana. I love Elvis Costello and K.D. Lang. However, I suspect we can, charitably, agree that they hardly are jazz performers. In many instances of course, labels may make no difference; an exception is when a genre – and here I have jazz in mind - is ripe for the endangered list. That said, let’s set aside the overly expansive - dare we say indiscriminate - conception of what counts as “jazz” at the RIJF. My primary worry lies elsewhere.

Consider history. One can exaggerate the extent to which jazz revolves around improvisation. But it undoubtedly is a music defined by creativity and inventiveness. Overwhelmingly, African Americans are responsible for the major innovations in jazz. Musically the pattern is crystal clear – think of the brilliance of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman. It is only somewhat less clear when we consider “practical’ considerations like organizational forms, from the early New Orleans funeral marches to the Basie Band to Mingus’s Jazz Workshop to the AACM. Obviously, there are lots and lots of excellent jazz musicians who are not African American. And one can easily name non-African Americans who have made substantial contributions to jazz on artistic and practical dimensions. Think, for instance, of Bill Evans and John Hammond respectively. It is nonetheless fair to say that those contributions pale in comparison (pun intended) to the defining innovations of those I listed above.

With that in mind, there are three things to notice about the line-up at RIJF. The first is that the preponderance of performers are white. The “stars” trailing down the left side of the RIJF web page this year are Elvis Costello, Natalie Cole, Chris Botti, K.D. Lang, the Fab Faux, and Bela Fleck. All but Cole are white. That pattern holds once we look beyond the headliners. And it holds too over the past decade. It is, in other words, deep and persistent.

The second thing to notice is that the average age of the few African-American jazz musicians on the program is what we might gently call “advanced.” This year Marcus Strickland is the exception that proves the rule. But what about the myriad other African American musicians in their thirties, forties, and fifties who are renewing and redefining the jazz tradition? They are too numerous to name and are conspicuous by their absence. Of course, age often brings accomplishment and it is wonderful to see Cedar Walton on the program this year. But even if we restrict ourselves to the august, the RIJF organizers seemingly have a narrow view of accomplishment. Where are the other “elders” – from, say, Muhal Richard Abrams through Archie Shepp to Randy Weston - of the music? If these august figures have appeared at RIJF in past years, I missed it.

Finally, you will notice that many of the African American performers who do make it onto the RIJF program fall most plausibly into a non-jazz genre. In recent years, as I recall, we have had Taj Mahal, Booker T, and the Neville Brothers. This year it is Lucky Peterson. Wonderful musicians all. But none is obviously jazz musicians in any meaningful sense. And surely they are not aiming to challenge or transform listeners in the way Abrams or Shepp or Weston continues to do.

As it stands the RIJF schedule does not vaguely reflect jazz history and, as a result, it risks reinforcing and compounding what I think is a massive misinterpretation of the music – that it is not a living, developing enterprise. In that sense, the RIJF patronizes it’s audience, refusing to push any musical boundaries or challenge listeners in any significant way.

When I recently listened to the RIJF producers being interviewed on our local npr station (WXXI ~ 31 May 2011) it became clear that virtually every aspect of festival planning – down to the time it takes, for example, to walk from venue to venue - is carefully considered and calculated and calibrated. This leads me to ask the obvious question: in their programming have the organizers chosen to downplay the historic and ongoing contributions African Americans to jazz? Is this a conscious decision or merely thoughtlessness?

Passings ~ Billy Bang (1947-2011)

Billy Bang, Brussels, 2005. Photograph © Daniel Theunynck.

Tonight npr reports that the extraordinary jazz violinist Billy Bang has died. This is a terrible loss. I was privileged to hear Bang play numerous times and found him not only an extremely talented but a fundamentally decent man.
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P.S.: Here is the obit from The New York Times.

Interview: Eric Hobsbawm

Yesterday The Guardian carried this interesting interview with Eric Hobsbawm who, in addition to being an influential historian remains a pretty unrepentant Marxist. At the very end he offers this basic diagnosis of our contemporary situation:

"What I'm saying now is that the basic problems of the 21st century would require solutions that neither the pure market, nor pure liberal democracy can adequately deal with. And to that extent, a different combination, a different mix of public and private, of state action and control and freedom would have to be worked out. . . . What you will call that, I don't know. But it may well no longer be capitalism, certainly not in the sense in which we have known it in this country and the United States."

My own thinking about politics and culture (starting with my doctoral thesis) owes a considerable amount to Hobsbawm's historical essays on the "invention of tradition" - a conception of historical events that converges surprisingly with the work of Thomas Schelling. I will add that Hobsbawm also served pseudonymously for many years as the jazz critic for the New Statesman in Great Britain. You can find his reflections on that part of his career here.

Passings ~ Herman Leonard (1923-2010)

Photographer Herman Leonard, perhaps most famous for his iconic images of jazz musicians, has died. You can find notices from the L.A. Times and npr here and here.

Passings ~ Fred Anderson (1929-2010)

Fred Anderson sits on the edge of the stage at the Velvet Lounge
before opening for the evening (February 2006)
~ Photograph © Jeff Robertson/AP.

Fred Anderson has died. You can read obituaries here and here and here and here. Anderson was a musician, entrepreneur, mentor and, by all accounts, a genuinely decent man. His passing is an immense loss to the jazz scene in Chicago especially, but very far beyond as well. I commented on a recent Anderson recording here just about this time last year.
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Thanks for the heads up!

Local Event: Rochester "Jazz" Festival

Today is the start up of the Rochester Jazz Festival and I feel obliged to mention it. I do so, though, with pretty systematic ambivalence. While the city is desperate for anything to liven up the dead streets and deader economy, I have a couple of serious complaints.

First, the organizers' definition of "jazz" is so indiscriminate as to be meaningless. This festival is a tool for attracting suburbanites into the city and making them feel comfortable. So, any music that might actually challenge popular tastes is off the agenda. Bland is the word. I couldn't find a single performance on the schedule that I'd want to drive into town to see. That, in fact, is part of the problem: you cannot remedy the problems of the city simply by getting people like me to drive in from the countryside. The festival model of urban revitalization seems to me to be a mistake, I have posted pretty often on the need to foster spaces of creativity rather than just spaces of performance as the scaffolding of a vital urban culture.

Second, by my casual count the festival reflects a typical pattern. Most of the black performers (who I'd bet are a distinct minority) are playing R&B or something. Most of the nominally jazz performers are white. It is much like checking out the jazz section at Barnes and Noble. Jazz is an overwhelmingly African-American art form (I'm not just counting numbers of performers; virtually every notable innovation in the tradition was produced by African Americans) but you'd surely not know it from the way it is peddled, whether in the stores or at events like this one. I am not just complaining about effacing history. This pattern denies the active careers of a large number of amazingly talented and creative musicians. This pattern cannot be an accident. Ask the organizers what is going on.

Passings ~ HANK JONES (1918-2010)

Jazz pianist Hank Jones has died. You can find the obituary from The New York Times here. Among the music I especially like - and I am hardly a religious soul - is this set of duets Jones did a number of years ago with Bassist Charlie Haden. Here is the title track:

Hank Jones & Charlie Haden, "Steal Away" (1995).

Pittsburgh Jazz Noir ~ W. Eugene Smith

White Rose Bar sign from the fourth-floor window of
821 Sixth Avenue (c. 1957–1964). Photograph ©
W Eugene Smith Archive at the Centre for Creative Photography,
University of Arizona/Heirs of W Eugene Smith.

In the late fifties and early sixties W. Eugene Smith devoted eight years to what has become known as The Jazz Loft Project. What started as a chronicle of Pittsburgh spiraled into a massive photographic and audio undertaking that, until now, seems to have remained something of a mess. Sam Stephenson has recently edited a book from the materials; you can find an accompanying web page here.