A touchy subject, so bring your big boy pants

[Noj]

[Soul Stream]

I think part of the problem now is that we have a pretty poorly educated audience on our hands as far as the knowledge of the music (any kind of music) and it's roots. The amount of people in a typical audience of mine that I could sit down and easily talk about the music of Bobby Bland or Bobby Hutcherson would probably amount to next to none. That's what I think I'm missing more than ever these days. Common knowledge you share with an audience.

[JSngry]

Well, otoh, there's probably a lot of "common knowledge" music that people who don't know shit about Bobby Bland or Bobby Hutcherson do know about that you/we/whoever either don't know about, don't care about, and/or some/both of each. So whose fault is that, if anybody's?

The "problem" with playing "historical" music is that you're usually playing it to an audience that either doesn't knwo the history, knows it only in part, and/or looks at it like since it's history, hey, it's already been clearly defined, this is how things "should" be, that's that, and please get it outta the way if it ain't.

About those first two, I think it's a bit much to expect an average music fan to pass some sort of entrance exam in order to be allowed to listen to music for pleasure & about the last, all I can say is that although I don't agree with it, I can't really find too much fault in it either, not if I look at it from that angle. Which is why I don't, but...

The best way to defy "expectations" is to simply defy them from the git-go, just don't go there. Playing repertoire & "styles" of the past is almoist asking to be compared in some form, in degrees ranging from thoughtful to thoughtless, to the predecessors, and what can you say about that? But almost always, the end result is the same - you come up short, either musically, philosophically, or "image"wise. Some/lots of that is pure bullshit, yet some questions don't go away so easily, nor should they, because they're good questions.

I mean, let's face it - the "jazz culture" that produced about 80% of a century's worth of a specific musical/cultural ethos just doesn't exist any more. Surviviors remain and provide us with a window into how things wre, but it ain't the same, it just ain't. I don't think that "preserving the music" & "preserving the message" are necessarily the same thing, and I think that at least some level of audience stereotyping is based in a gut-level recognition that it ain't, even if in most cases, there's no brain action to go along with that gut.

But that's also a big part of the problem right there - people know that the "real deal" once existed at a very real level, and they think they know what it was, more or less, and they know what they think they want to see/hear. Same with a lot of musicians too, in their own way. But it's all a game of fitting into a mold that's already been created by neither the musicians or the players of the present. Again, it's about claiming an identity rather than creating one. Why so many want to do this is beyond me, but it's all the rage these days, so I guess I'm a bit out of step with what's happening now, baby. Oh well.

In a lot of ways, Bird's advice to learn the blues, then learn rhythm changes, then forget all that shit and just PLAY is more relevant today than ever, especially if you think of "blues" and "rhythm changes" as metaphors rather than specifics (HEY!).

Good luck.

[JSngry]

In a lot of ways, Bird's advice to learn the blues, then learn rhythm changes, then forget all that shit and just PLAY is more relevant today than ever, especially if you think of "blues" and "rhythm changes" as metaphors rather than specifics (HEY!).

HEY!!!

In-fucking-DEED.

[DukeCity]

Gee, Javon Jackson or Eric Alexander, which boring competent paragon of totally irrelevant (to me) proficiency is the more "authentic"? Wow, that one's pretty much a toss up....

Holy Crap! That's a classic, right there!

[Soul Stream]

Jim, I think you're getting into the "is jazz relevant today" thing more than "Hey, that white dude sucks" thing I'm thinking of. Maybe my point wasn't made really. And let's not confine it to jazz, blues, r&b, rap, soul, funk...you get the idea. What people consider as black music. Let's face it...music ain't "we are the world" these days. Lots of stuff trying to say it is...but it ain't...not in the world I live in. Charley Pride got served his share of shit for playing white music too. M&M is the exception to the rule. Stan Getz may be too. Fact is sometimes you're a white man in a black man's world, or a black man in a white man's world (musically and then some I guess). Jim playing Dallas I KNOW has felt all this shit and then a ton more.

[Van Basten II]

I never cared about the colour of the skin of my favourite artists, ironically when it gets mentionned it often comes from musicians themselves.

[Chuck Nessa]

Probably 95% of the folks playing "jazz" today are people who "tried on a suit" and said "hey, this looks good on me".

It was different at one time.

[Dan Gould]

Probably 95% of the folks playing "jazz" today are people who "tried on a suit" and said "hey, this looks good on me".

It was different at one time.

Can you state this a little less obliquely so I understand what you are saying?

[Chuck Nessa]

Probably 95% of the folks playing "jazz" today are people who "tried on a suit" and said "hey, this looks good on me".

It was different at one time.

Can you state this a little less obliquely so I understand what you are saying?

That's about as direct as I can be.

[Noj]

I don't know about dizzy, but Clem sure makes me laugh my azz off.

[Shawn]

I remember a reverse version of this back in the 80's when quite a few rock bands appeared on the horizon with members that were black.

Living Colour, King's X, Fishbone, 24-7 Spyz, etc.

I couldn't believe all of the conversations I heard about people being "shocked" that these guys could really "rock". (for some reason Hendrix and Thin Lizzy never came up in these discussions). Like it's some genetic thing that you have to be white to be a convincing rock band. Of course that is just as much utter crap as saying you can't play funk if you're white. I think these bands had to work even harder to gain respect since it wasn't just the music that was important, but proving the perception wrong. I've seen all of those bands live over the years (hell, I've probably seen King's X 15 times) and I NEVER focus on the color of their skin.

[trane_fanatic]

In a similar vein...

From today's edition of The San Francisco Chronicle:

BLACKS IN JAZZ DECRY EXCLUSION

Few booked for Berkeley festival, none on Yoshi's anniversary CD

Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, June 1, 2007

Jazz saxophonist Howard Wiley rehearses in San Leandro. C... Yoshi's jazz club owners Yoshie Akiba (second from left) ... Susan Muscarella says she books acts for the Berkeley Jaz... "Live at Yoshi's" 10th anniversary CD: 1. Turn Around - M...

When Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland released its much-anticipated 10-year anniversary CD last month, local jazz aficionados were outraged that no African American musicians were included.

The tension grew days later when the Bay Area's jazz community learned that the Berkeley Downtown Jazz Festival had invited only six African American musicians to perform at the five-day event in July.

Together, the two revelations upset musicians, club owners and fans, some of whom say racism is at play in the local jazz scene. Anna DeLeon, owner of Anna's Jazz Island in Berkeley, complained to organizers when she learned who was scheduled to play at her club during the festival.

"There were 17 musicians in four bands, and none were black," said DeLeon. "It is hard for me to imagine how this could happen, how they could not notice."

Word spread quickly as people voiced outrage via e-mail over a problem many said had been simmering for a long time. Jazz professionals met to plan a response. Club owners and musicians went on Doug Edwards' "Music of the World" show on KPFA-FM on May 19. A week later, Susan Muscarella, who books the jazz festival and runs Berkeley's Jazzschool, appeared on the same show to respond.

Muscarella says the situation is being overblown. She said she hasn't finished booking the festival but has so far confirmed four African American acts, and it was coincidence that none would perform at Anna's. Last year, 30 percent of festival performers were black, she said.

"These allegations are outrageous," Muscarella said. "Diversity has always been at the top of my list. I hold African American heritage in high esteem. But I do choose quality and not ethnicity alone."

Many artists said that holding black heritage in high esteem is not the point. Inviting six African American artists to a major jazz event that includes dozens of performers and excluding black artists from a selection of 10 performances at the East Bay's most prominent jazz venue is simply unacceptable, they said.

"It is like going to a Chinese restaurant and there are no Chinese people," said Howard Wiley, a local saxophonist. "It is very disheartening and sad, especially from Yoshi's, which calls itself the premiere jazz venue of the Bay Area.

"I mean, we are dealing with jazz and blues, not Hungarian folk music or the invention of computer programs."

Jazz grew out of the African American experience, and many historians call it the most significant contribution from the United States to the music world.

Well-known jazz artists, festival organizers and academics say the two incidents show how African Americans are being squeezed out of the art form more broadly.

"This is stemming from a much larger dynamic with regard to jazz and what is becoming a legitimized and institutionalized lack of inclusion of African Americans," said Glen Pearson, a music instructor at the College of Alameda and a full-time musician. "Jazz was once looked at as inferior music from an inferior culture, and now it has become embraced socially and academically, so there has been some revisionism."

Pearson said some music critics believe the African American roots of jazz and its black contributors are sometimes featured too heavily in education and portrayals of jazz, such as in Ken Burns' television documentary series. There were complaints that the PBS series, "Jazz," focused too much on African Americans, Pearson said.

"I am comfortable saying that every significant white contributor to jazz studied from someone of African American descent," Pearson said. "So for a world-class jazz venue to not include an African American performer in a 10-year tribute is just so sideways."

Over the years, countless prominent African Americans have performed at Yoshi's, including Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, Howard Wiley, Abbey Lincoln, Mulgrew Miller, Terence Blanchard, Marcus Shelby, McCoy Tyner, Shirley Horn and Elvin Jones.

Peter Williams, Yoshi's artistic director, said the exclusion was an oversight and that the club does not have the right to record all the performers that appear there.

"We apologize to anyone who feels slighted by the omission of African American artists on this project, as that was never our intention," he wrote in an e-mail to concerned supporters. "This compilation CD was meant to celebrate a milestone for us in the Bay Area and not necessarily meant to be a representation of all the artists and music styles ever played at our club."

DeLeon said she and others angry about the CD do not suspect that Yoshi's conspired to leave out African Americans; they are upset it happened without anyone noticing.

"The Bay Area is a jazz mecca, considered one of the top three or four markets in the country, so for its premiere venue to leave out African American artists is amazing," said Herve Ernest, executive director of SF Noir, an arts and culture organization that highlights African American contributions, and a co-founder of the North Beach Jazz Festival.

"From what I have perceived and what I've witnessed, there is a certain whitewashing of jazz both locally and nationally," Ernest said. "I think it is done from a marketing standpoint and is a response to the largely white audiences that patronize an establishment."

Ernest said one of the reasons he founded SF Noir was that he noticed the jazz festival audiences were 90 percent white, and he wanted to try to appeal to a more diverse crowd and put a stronger focus on black contributions to the art.

"It really gets me upset that people like Norah Jones (who is white and East Indian) get pushed through with heavy marketing when there are dozens of African American female jazz vocalists who, in my opinion, are 10 times better," he said. "I'm not sure if the exclusion is intended or an honest overlook, but we created jazz and we are still playing it, so we should not be overlooked."

Local jazz artists said they see the discussion as positive in that it is offering a chance to address an issue that has been stewing for some time. A desire to organize has been lacking, said local jazz singer Rhonda Benin, but now a number of musicians are ready to take action.

"It's an ongoing problem that was brought to a head by these two events," said Raymond Nat Turner, an Oakland-based jazz poet. "That set in motion a chain of e-mails and unleashed an energy that had been dormant for years.

"People who had not been communicating have started talking and networking," Turner said.

At a forum at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music last month, about 35 people discussed how better to support black-owned venues and artists and recruiting more African American children into the world of jazz.

"We are becoming the minority as Europeans and Caucasians take over," Turner said.

Those who attended the forum plan to meet again Sunday to develop a long-term strategy.

"This is an African American art form, and they are excluding the very people who created it and continue to play it," said Benin. "It's a travesty."

'Live at Yoshi's'

10th anniversary CD:

1 Turn Around

Marian McPartland

2 Doxy -- Joe Pass

3 Cherokee

Joey DeFrancesco

4 Lisa -- Poncho Sanchez

5 This Is Heaven to Me

Madeleine Peyroux

6 Autumn Leaves

Joey DeFrancesco

7 In a Sentimental Mood

Marian McPartland

8 What Is This Thing

Called Love? -- Joe Pass

9 Help the Poor

Robben Ford

0 Guaripumpe

Poncho Sanchez

Source: www.yoshis.com

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...001&sc=1000

Interesting how the title of the headline went from "BLACKS IN JAZZ DECRY EXCLUSION" to "JAZZ FANS DECRY EXCLUSION" in the space of less than a day. Did the folks at the SF Chronicle decide the original was too incendiary?

Edited June 2, 2007 by trane_fanatic

[JSngry]

Warning - Ramble Overdrive Alert in FULL effect.

Jim, I think you're getting into the "is jazz relevant today" thing more than "Hey, that white dude sucks" thing I'm thinking of.

No, I think I'm talking about the visual/racial element. If that ties into the "is jazz relevant today" thing, and I thnk it does, so be it.

Here's my thing - we can all accept "Latin Music", "Celtic Music". "Greek Music", etc. as being ethno-specific in origin, and probably don't have too hard a time with the notion that the performances that speak most diredctly to the soul of the music are those by people who spring from the respective culture. But when ti comes to African-American music, all of a sudden there's this culture of The Great White Hope(s) and white folk all out the ass talking about "color doesn't matter" and shit.

Well ok, that's right. Color doesn't matter. But culture, that combination of shared experiences, collective attitude, smotional/spiritual dialect, all that stuff, hell yeah, that matters, and the way America works is that it's a lot easier to assimilate the culture of your race than it is somebody else's. Things are opening up as bi/multi-racial realtionships, offspring, and extended families more and more become the norm, but this is still very early in the cultural evolution game relative to what's already on the record.

Noq, there's lots of white folks who "study" black culture, there's lots who associate quite a bit inside it, and that's all good, but at the end of the day, if a cop pulls you over, he don't know none of that shit. He just knows "black" or "white", and any white folk that don't feel it that that is a core, fundamental difference right there that extends on out into the greater culture on a 24-7 basis can study and associate all they want to, they ain't gonna get the finer points, and therefore can only bring it so far.

Now as far as black culture goes, the end of segregation changed some things pretty fundamentally. If the core of some parts of the black experience (and not just the unpleasant ones like the cop thing mentioned above) remain largely in place, other parts have become more diffuse as assimilation has occured to varying degrees. No value judements offered on that here, and none really needed, since it's just more human evolution in action. It is what it is, and it's gonna be what it's gonna be.

So yeah, you got some white folks who "inderstand" black music more than some black folks. But if you do really understand it, you gotta understand that a white guy, even one who really does understand it, playing it makes it something else altogether than what it once was. It's either going to expand the ongoing relevancy of the root, or else it's going to distort it, maybe even obliterate it. Maybe even both at different junctures. And as long as America is what it is, total assimilation by anybody into anybody else's world outside of the metaphorical behind closed doors is...impossible?

This is where the visual/race thing plays into the "is jazz relevant" thing. As I said earlier, the culture that produced "jazz as we know it" is pretty much gone, perhaps (or not) coinciding with the opening up of race relations in America. So now it's "everybody's music", yet it still, in no way, is it "everybody's culture". I can see the need for white folk to embrace it so readily as a sign that hey, things are better now, I embrace you as a brother, and I can see the need for black folk to say whoa, wait a minute, you got no right to take it that far that quick, we still got some understandings to come to, so back off. And the younger the generation is, the more that at once the need for reconcilliation comes up against the need to defend the honor of the ancestors (and this goes for white as well as black) in ways that lead to all kinds of wacky shit, like nobody really knowing who's dealing and who isn't because nobody really knows anymore what dealing really is. Or so it seems more and more.

So if all anybody knows anymore is the facts without the truth that comes along with them, how is that relevant to anything other than getting more and more away from the source, and who wants to be a part of that type of "relevancy"? I know I'm speaking very broadly here, but geez, tell me with a straight face that there's no truth in it whatsoever. Put aside all the idiots (and they are many in number and international in place) who want "authenticity" served up to them like a Happy Meal, all prepackaged according to factory spec and propaganda-induced expectations, with a little toy included just to make let you KNOW that you've gotten the real thing, the question still remains - is it really worth it to anybody to devote as much, if not more, energy to "preserving" a culture that no longer really exists when there's such a broad disunderstanding (sic) of what that culture means/meant by the various parties involved in the attempted preservation? Doesn't that just refeed the old problems and allow them to rebirth?

Tell you what - if nobody played, sang, heard, or saw any jazz, blues, whatever for the next 150 years and all of a sudden it was all made available again, who would hear what how? If we could take all the souls of today and imagine what these musics would sound like to them if they didn't know what they were "supposed" to "mean", what would we get? The mind reels at how shit might get played out under those circumstances, if for no other reason than if the music really "transcends" its cultural specificity, then everybody would likely hear it about the same. And I don't think that's gonna happen. Hell, it don't happen now. I bet you a dollar that a lot of both white and black people who today proclaim their love of jazz and blues would recoil in near-psychotic revulsion and/or fear if they heard jazz and blues not knowing what it was supposed to be. And that a lot fo people who today who have little or no use for it would be fascinated by it. So in that fantastic sense, the music itself might be positied to have lost its relevance because its not about the music anymore, it's about what the music's supposed to be (or have been) and nobody's really hearing the music any more nearly as much as they are the "significance", which is something that was really only specifically relevant to a world that no longer exists. So, the music is not relevant to the perception, and the perception is not relevant to the music.

Why not just fucking forget about all that, let it mean to you whatever it means to you, and get on with today's business, realizing that the past is over, that it will never mean the same thing to everybody, but that between what it means to you and what it means to somebody else, there's a present that can be used to build a tomorrow where it's always going to be today. Now that's something worth devoting some time and energy to!

[MoGrubb]

In a similar vein...

From today's edition of The San Francisco Chronicle:

BLACKS IN JAZZ DECRY EXCLUSION

Few booked for Berkeley festival, none on Yoshi's anniversary CD

Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, June 1, 2007

Jazz saxophonist Howard Wiley rehearses in San Leandro. C... Yoshi's jazz club owners Yoshie Akiba (second from left) ... Susan Muscarella says she books acts for the Berkeley Jaz... "Live at Yoshi's" 10th anniversary CD: 1. Turn Around - M...

When Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland released its much-anticipated 10-year anniversary CD last month, local jazz aficionados were outraged that no African American musicians were included.

.........

Not only are there no blacks on the CD, there are only 6 artists represented in the 10 tracks. Makes you wonder just how limited they've been in terms of who they can and can not record over all those years.

Damn, call out the National Guard, Jesse Jackson, et al!! Where's Affirmative Action when you need it?

I'm a little surprised that such a big deal is made out of a coincidence. I seriously doubt that a jazz club, any jazz club, particularly one in Oakland CA would be racist in its intent. They most likely compiled a musical package and the chips fell as they may. Hindsight is 20-20? not in this case. Give me a break.

I don't mean to appear insensitive, but, come on!

Edited June 2, 2007 by MoGrubb

[montg]

Jazz is not an ethnic folk music, like say Greek or Celtic music. It would be less than authentic to see Don Ho or whatever singing Celtic folk songs becasue those songs celebrate a particular culture and a particular time/place. A culture and time/place that Don Ho had nothing to do with. But jazz is a deeper, or more universal, art form. Created by African Americans, but it's not parochial....it's a means for human artistic expression. To me, the authenticity of a jazz player is determined by whether he/she is using the idiom to express something true..the idiom is the means to this deeper end. Or, in contrast, playing jazz is simply the end in itself ("I'm a jazz player, man, I have the degree to prove it"). In the latter case, if jazz is a role that someone plays, then yeah, an African American is better suited for the part.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Jazz is not an ethnic folk music, like say Greek or Celtic music. It would be less than authentic to see Don Ho or whatever singing Celtic folk songs becasue those songs celebrate a particular culture and a particular time/place. A culture and time/place that Don Ho had nothing to do with. But jazz is a deeper, or more universal, art form. Created by African Americans, but it's not parochial....it's a means for human artistic expression. To me, the authenticity of a jazz player is determined by whether he/she is using the idiom to express something true..the idiom is the means to this deeper end. Or, in contrast, playing jazz is simply the end in itself ("I'm a jazz player, man, I have the degree to prove it"). In the latter case, if jazz is a role that someone plays, then yeah, an African American is better suited for the part.

I think that's wrong. Any kind of music from any group of society is a means of human artistic expression. Trying to view Jazz, Blues, Soul, R&B, Hip Hop, Gospel, Reggae as something qualitatively different strikes me as being very Americo-centric.

MG

[Larry Kart]

... is it really worth it to anybody to devote as much, if not more, energy to "preserving" a culture that no longer really exists when there's such a broad disunderstanding (sic) of what that culture means/meant by the various parties involved in the attempted preservation?

Tell you what - if nobody played, sang, heard, or saw any jazz, blues, whatever for the next 150 years and all of a sudden it was all made available again, who would hear what how? If we could take all the souls of today and imagine what these musics would sound like to them if they didn't know what they were "supposed" to "mean", what would we get? The mind reels at how shit might get played out under those circumstances, if for no other reason than if the music really "transcends" its cultural specificity, then everybody would likely hear it about the same. And I don't think that's gonna happen. Hell, it don't happen now. I bet you a dollar that a lot of both white and black people who today proclaim their love of jazz and blues would recoil in near-psychotic revulsion and/or fear if they heard jazz and blues not knowing what it was supposed to be. And that a lot fo people who today who have little or no use for it would be fascinated by it. So in that fantastic sense, the music itself might be positied to have lost its relevance because its not about the music anymore, it's about what the music's supposed to be (or have been) and nobody's really hearing the music any more nearly as much as they are the "significance", which is something that was really only specifically relevant to a world that no longer exists. So, the music is not relevant to the perception, and the perception is not relevant to the music.

Why not just fucking forget about all that, let it mean to you whatever it means to you, and get on with today's business, realizing that the past is over, that it will never mean the same thing to everybody, but that between what it means to you and what it means to somebody else, there's a present that can be used to build a tomorrow where it's always going to be today. Now that's something worth devoting some time and energy to!

I think I know what you're saying, but the past is never over -- parts of it linger around on a semi-wayward, semi-selective basis (as memory, habits, myth, what have you) and usually you yourself don't get to select what's lingering and what it means to others (maybe even to you) that it's doing so. Likewise, though you and I and many others here would agree about the insidiousness or even the sheer stupidity of the jazz "Neo-Con" game, and while "get on with today's business" sounds good, and "there's a present that can be used to build a tomorrow where it's always going to be today" sounds even better, those phrases suggest to me that you've missed your calling (financially at least) and could make a small fortune as an ad man or a political speech writer; in particular, "there's a present" etc. sounds like it was handmade for Obama or John Edwards.

Seriously -- I don't think we live anymore in a world where it could ever "always ... be today." See that Borges story, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," that I posted a link to a few days ago:

http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/Borges...is_Tertius.html

Finally, some uncharacteristically less than dogmatic (and I think at least obliquely relevant) words from professional nasty-man Theodor Adorno (circa 1961): "Anyone of my age and experience who is both a musician and who thinks about music finds himself in a difficult quandry. One side of it consists in the attitude 'So far and no farther.' In other words, it consists of clinging to one's youth as if modernity were one's own private monopoly. This means resisting at all costs everything which remains inaccessible to one's own experience or at least one's primary basic reactions. This had once been the attitude of confirmed Wagnerians when confronted by Strauss, and the Straussians adopted it in their turn as a defence against the new music of the Schoenberg persuasion. We are perfectly modern ourselves; who are they to offer us tuition? Sometimes, of course, my narcissism, which asserts itself even though I can see through it, has a hard a task persuading itself that the countless composers of music that can only be understood with the aid of diagrams and whose musical inspiration remnains wholly invisible to me can really be all that much more more musical, intelligent, and progressive than myself." Etc.

Well maybe not that undogmatic, but there's a smidgen of objectivity and humor there. And I intend to tape to the bathroom mirror "Sometimes ... my narcissism, which asserts itself even though I can see through it..."

P.S. That "thumb up" sign is mine.

Edited June 2, 2007 by Larry Kart

[JSngry]

Jazz is not an ethnic folk music, like say Greek or Celtic music. It would be less than authentic to see Don Ho or whatever singing Celtic folk songs becasue those songs celebrate a particular culture and a particular time/place. A culture and time/place that Don Ho had nothing to do with. But jazz is a deeper, or more universal, art form. Created by African Americans, but it's not parochial....it's a means for human artistic expression.

Well, yeah, sure. But when was this decided, who decided it, and after all, wasn't the American West a land created for human expression? And what about blues? Not ever/still an ethnic folk music? Westward ho!

To me, the authenticity of a jazz player is determined by whether he/she is using the idiom to express something true..the idiom is the means to this deeper end. Or, in contrast, playing jazz is simply the end in itself ("I'm a jazz player, man, I have the degree to prove it"). In the latter case, if jazz is a role that someone plays, then yeah, an African American is better suited for the part.

Let me put it this way - Warne Marsh was one of the greatest, deepest, jazz musicians that there's been. He defintiely used the idiom as a means to a deeper end. And there have been plenty of other white players thorughout the music that have done the same, although probably not to that degree (I mean, Warne was about as deep as anybody can get). So the issue is not "can white guys play?" Of course they can. But I unambiguously believe that in order to get to the crux of the matter, questions of identity must be confronted with nothing less than full honesty before one "moves on" and thinks/feels/whatever that everything is ok.

The notion that you can play all these funkysoulful cultuirallyspecific in origin licks and hey, it's ok because this is now a UNIVERSAL MUSIC and where it came from just doesn't matter any more can only mean one of two things - 1) that that attitude is wrong, and that those who don't take the time to delve into the non-musical essence of the language are some jive motherfuckers who deserve all the scorn they get, even that which comes from people who are jive motherfuckers themself; or 2) that the music really has become a generic "style" that anybody really can play if they just spend the time developing the appropriate muscle memory skills.

To use Warne as a continuing example, I'd be very surprised if he didn't understand very well what the "black jazz" language was all about, and that he knew that it was not something to play with just because you "liked" it (c.f. Chuck's suit analogy). Similarly, I'd like to think that J.R. Montrose had a grasp of that too. Two totally different outcomes there, Warne was very "white", J.R. "black", but in both cases you got guys getting far beyond the surface of the music instead of just skating on it.

Did/do some black players skate along on the surface? Sure, especially today when the learning playing field has been greatly levelled (and in more ways than one...). But back in the day it was significantly less tolerated in the community than it is today, and that goes, I think, to the issue of ongoing relevancy. If jazz is now something that damn near anybody can learn and "play well" without concern for anything more than a generic "jazz identity", then hell, it might as well be instrumental karaoke for highly motivated quirky people. And that, I think, is largely what it's become. If it's "better" or "worse" because of that is an individual opinion, but anybody who claims that it's "the same" cannot be taken seriously.

It's a helluva lot easier to say that "race doesn't matter", and then mantracize that as an excuse to not deal with it, than it is to deal with it head on and ongoingly, figure a bunch of shit out, and then say that race (or more truthfully/accurately, the hookup between cultural identity and musical voice - there is no one "true black sound", just as there is no one "true white sound") doesn't matter. The people who take the first route are a scourge on humanity, but the people who take the second route are one of humanity's best hopes.

The answers are ultimately very simple - be who you are and act out of love no matter whowhatwherewhenwhyetc. and don't look back (c.f. both Satchell Paige & Lot's wife). And thank god, there are pockets of players of all musics who are getting there (and probably not coincidentally are far less hung up on militant musical/idiomatic segregation than those who aren't...). Getting to those answers and to that place (in America anyway) has been anything but easy, to this point anyway.

Anybody who tells you otherwise is either a fool or a liar.

[JSngry]

Likewise, though you and I and many others here would agree about the insidiousness or even the sheer stupidity of the jazz "Neo-Con" game, and while "get on with today's business" sounds good, and "there's a present that can be used to build a tomorrow where it's always going to be today" sounds even better, those phrases suggest to me that you've missed your calling (financially at least) and could make a small fortune as an ad man or a political speech writer; in particular, "there's a present" etc. sounds like it was handmade for Obama or John Edwards.

Before I decided on Music Education as my college major, I was also toying with both psychology and advertising as areas of study. Now, if I had any sense of opportunism whatsoever, I would combine all three anf become a preacher...

Seriously, yeah, I know it's not that simple. But as a motivator to get shit going where I (we?) think it would be better for it to go, you need ideals, and that strikes me as good a one as any. What you don't need are ideals tha build flase hopes of total fulfillment. Shit's always going to be the proverbial "work in progress", and hey, that's fine with me. What's not fine is when it's all work and no progress, or even worse, all work and all regress. And failure to get it together, let it go, and then move on inevitably leads there. At least that's how I see it.

A white guy "playing the blues" down to every last "authentic" detail doesn't work for me, and the more techically facile it is, the less it works (probably because of all the conspicuous "work" involved...). A white guy playing music in a blues context that speaks to his unique "whiteness" (to whatever degree it exists) learning from and speaking in/to the unique language of the blues in such a way that it becomes another, valid "dialect", hey, that's good for me, good for music, and good for life. But how often does that happen?

Tell you what (again) - the "dance underground" is waaaay ahead of the rest of the music world as far as this whole thing goes. Whatever/however one feels about the music itself, that shit is the truest example of a freakin' pan-global (sic) "melting pot" that I know of. That more than anything else is what gets me excited about it - the possibilities inherent in the attitude that says be who you are, bring what you got, we don't give a damn if you're black, white, Asian, German, straight, gay, spiritual, hedonist, right-handed, cleft-palleted, whatever, it don't matter. Bring what you got and let's party with it, it - and you - are all good like that. There's got to be a way to bring that deep, fundamental spirit of acceptance/inclusiveness into the "mainstream" and build it into a general lifestyle. If that means turning away from conscious "Art Music" for a little while or longer, so be it. "Art" will inevitably happen in spite of itself. But so will cultural inertia.

Yeah, it's a utopian notion, no doubt. But again, it's something worth moving towards, I think, and since this life on this plane is not infinite in duration, ehy, why not?

Edited June 2, 2007 by JSngry

[Soul Stream]

A white guy playing music in a blues context that speaks to his unique "whiteness" (to whatever degree it exists) learning from and speaking in/to the unique language of the blues in such a way that it becomes another, valid "dialect", hey, that's good for me, good for music, and good for life.

You've just made my point Jim. Not to lump you in with everyone else, but it's that idea that if you're black you and can blues and if you're white you can't. If you had said "old black guy" who came from that era I might agree with you. My problem is take a 20 year old black kid and a 20 year old white kid, both from the suburbs, and with equal right to 'play the blues' and you'll get two different responses from most people as far as who's is authentic. If you're saying neither kid has the right to play the blues, I might agree. Although I do think it's a language that's handed down and it speaks to fundamental human emotions. Someone should play the blues imho. And there ain't gonna be old blacks guys around much longer with real roots to do it.

Hearing Chet Baker play some blues works for me. Warne as you mentioned. All these guys are playing THEIR truth. I'm playing my truth as I was raised in my musical community. A community that had a heavy dose of black and white together.

The question is...are you playing your TRUTH? I know yes, 100% for me. That may be jive to someone just walking in and seeing me play. Those are the folks I'm talking about. People who are judge and jury to MY truth and aren't buying it. That's a hurtful trip.

Edited June 2, 2007 by Soul Stream

[trane_fanatic]

They've pulled the Yoshi's CD.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...NG6QQ69RE31.DTL

Shamed, Yoshi's pulls CD, apologizes

Club hit sour note with lack of black musicians on record

Jesse Hamlin, Steven Winn, Chronicle Staff Writers

Saturday, June 2, 2007

The managers of Yoshi's jazz club said Friday that issuing a 10th anniversary CD with no African American musicians was "a huge mistake" and "a major oversight." In the wake of complaints by some African American musicians and community leaders, the club issued an apology and withdrew the disc.

With "Live at Yoshi's: Anniversary Compilation" off the market, the club plans to create a new recording that more accurately reflects the musicians who play the 340-seat venue at Oakland's Jack London Square, said Joan Rosenberg, marketing director for the club.

Yoshi's had sold about 500 of the 1,000 CDs it began offering on its Web site last month. The disc, the first made by Yoshi's, was not distributed to stores.

"We really messed up on the CD," said Yoshi's owner Kaz Kajimura. "We apologize to anyone who feels slighted by this omission, as that was never our intention."

The musicians on the disc include pianist Marian McPartland, singer Madeleine Peyroux, the late guitarist Joe Pass and Latin percussionist Poncho Sanchez.

Kajimura and Yoshi's artistic director Peter Williams attributed the botched CD to haste and expediency. "This was done on the spur of the moment, and we didn't have a lot of time and research to put into it," said Kajimura. Yoshi's began working on the project in late March to mark the club's 10 years in Oakland in May.

Eight of the 10 tracks, from four different musicians, came from Concord records, one of the world's largest recording labels. The other two came from San Francisco radio station KFOG's archives.

"That was the easiest, quickest thing to do," said Williams. "We assumed Concord would have the most music recorded live at Yoshi's." When the new CD is made, he added, it will include African American musicians recorded live at Yoshi's on such labels as Verve, MaxJazz and Blue Note. That will involve more elaborate negotiations for rights and licensing fees.

"If Yoshi's is calling this an oversight, then maybe there needs to be a larger discussion about the dynamic of what jazz is all about," said Glen Pearson, an African American musician and College of Alameda instructor. "Diversity is a word that gets kicked around a lot these days. But how sincerely or honestly is that concept really being applied? Or is it just a politically convenient term to use?"

Williams said race and ethnicity are "things that I just never think about when I'm booking the club. It always comes out that we have a great mix. I'm very comfortable with what we've done."

Kajimura said that more than half of the musicians who play Yoshi's are African American.

Orrin Keepnews, the famed Bay Area-based jazz record producer who put out classic albums by Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and many others on his Riverside label, calls the Yoshi's CD affair "an embarrassingly small deal.''

"With all due respect to the venerable Marian McPartland, whom I love and have always loved, there's nobody on that record of major current importance," said Keepnews. "The club put out an anniversary record that was thoughtless and not very well put together. They limited themselves to material recorded live at the club. You have a half-dozen things here that don't have the making of a significant or representative record, regardless of what color anybody is.''

As for Yoshi's pulling the CD in reaction to the controversy, Keepnews said: "It's become very customary when you make a big public mistake to then withdraw as much as you can. It's been going on at all the networks recently. It's childish. If you're insulted, you haven't removed the insult by removing the product. I don't think Yoshi's necessarily insulted people, but it wasn't a very bright thing to do. But I don't really think it's any kind of fatal mistake.''

Black saxophonist Howard Wiley thinks Yoshi's had no choice but to pull the CD. "I think it's the right step, to turn a negative into a positive. Let's all come to the table now and play some beautiful music together."

The racial mix of musicians in this summer's Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival also came into question this week. Susan Muscarella, who is booking the festival through the sponsor, Berkeley's Jazzschool, was in a diversity committee meeting there Friday afternoon. "We're addressing the issue across the board, in all our education and performing programs," she said, calling charges of racial imbalance "unfair and ungrounded."

Muscarella said the Aug. 22-26 festival is about halfway planned. "My problem now is how to book African American artists when they might think they're only being invited in response to the controversy."

[JSngry]

My problem is take a 20 year old black kid and a 20 year old white kid, both from the suburbs, and with equal right to 'play the blues' and you'll get two different responses from most people as far as who's is authentic. If you're saying neither kid has the right to play the blues, I might agree. Although I do think it's a language that's handed down and it speaks to fundamental human emotions. Someone should play the blues imho. And there ain't gonna be old blacks guys around much longer with real roots to do it.

with equal right to 'play the blues' - yeah, pretty much everybody has the "right" to play the blues these days. So what does that say about what "the blues" have become?

it's a language that's handed down and it speaks to fundamental human emotions. Yes it is. So is damn near almost every musical language.

If you're saying neither kid has the right to play the blues, I might agree. Well nopw, we don't want to deny anybody their rights now, do we? I wouldn't question their rights, but I do have to wonder what their need is, to speak in such a specific musical language. For the black kid, it might be a case of wanting to be like grandpa, because grandpa was such a bad motherfucker. For the white kid, it might be a case of wnating to be like the black kid's grandpa because the black kid's grandpa was such a bad motherfucker. Or maybe the white kid's grandpa was a bad motherfucker. Could be. Either way, neither of them is likely to be particularly "authentic" in a way that has any gripping importance, so anybody who chooses one over the other on grounds that are most likely is only participationg in the illusion that all parties have signed on for. Since that's a game I'm not interested in playing, I'm not about to respect the ground rules, and they can both go ahead and "play the blues" afaic, and I'm probably going to ignore both of them for more or less the same reason.

Someone should play the blues imho. I guess, but at this point, why belabor them? Somebody should always play Bach too, but that doesn't mean I want to hear it being done in every corner bar...

there ain't gonna be old blacks guys around much longer with real roots to do it. Wellsir, the old black guys were once young black guys, and their roots in the music were in the real time world that created the need for the music. We got their records, and at this point, with very few exceptions, "authenticity" that's either conferred or denied on any grounds is just so much ado about not a lot of anything that particularly matters relative to the source.

Now don't get me wrong. I love playing blues, and I love listening to blues. But I'm under no illusion that hardly any of it is "real" in the sense that it used to be. The closest I got to that was playing with Little Joe Blue. That band was mixed, and the black guys were coming from a strong R&B background, and they sure as hell weren't "authentic blues" the same way the Joe himself was. None of us were. And that's grounds for consideration...

[JSngry]

The question is...are you playing your TRUTH? I know yes, 100% for me. That may be jive to someone just walking in and seeing me play. Those are the folks I'm talking about. People who are judge and jury to MY truth and aren't buying it. That's a hurtful trip.

Well screw them. For real.

But to keep it real, you gotta say screw them if they say they like it too.

[Jim Alfredson]

You guys are waaaay over-thinking this.

Do what feels good, be honest with yourself, and make some good music. That's about all there is to it.

There will always be those that dog you, whatever you do in life. So what?