I'm not angry, I'm not angry anymore

Last weekend, John Zorn and Cecil Taylor made their debut at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a concert self-consciously promoted as a daring double-bill for the notoriously conservative cultural institution. If I'd had the cash, this is the rare JALC hit I'd actually have liked to have caught, especially since it marks one of Masada's last performances as a band, and I still haven't heard Cecil's new group with Henry Grimes and Pheeroan AkLaff, which everyone says is his strongest trio in decades.

But since I couldn't make it, I read Ben Ratliff's writeup with interest. I think he did a good job of concisely encapsulating the essence of the two groups -- Masada as "logical, comic, athletic" and an "airtight system"; Cecil's music is "all in the movement," the "millions of choices that make a flowing gesture" -- sounds about right to me. It was also no surprise that the Jazz at Lincoln Center audience warmed immediately to Masada's hard-grooving, high-energy post-Ornette klez-jazz (everybody loves the beat), but remained somewhat mystified by Cecil's more abstracted pulse -- to the uninitiated, his music often sounds discontinuous and disconnected, and it can take some time immersed in his sound-world for the shape of things to reveal themselves.

[It's also, sadly, no surprise to learn that the house management at JALC's Rose Theater apparently tried to cut the concert short by bringing up the house lights before Cecil's set was done, presumably to try to save on overtime fees.]

But shortly after the article went live on the Times' site, I got an email from Secret Society co-conspirator James Hirschfeld, reacting angrily to the third paragraph in Ratliff's review, which reads:

But above all, the experimental composers and bandleaders whose work refers to, argues against and engages with different parts of jazz — the putative jazz avant-garde — just don’t need Jazz at Lincoln Center anymore. Their interests and audiences don’t extend there. They’ve built their own festivals, their own record companies. (Mr. Zorn has created his own Lower East Side club, the Stone, with music six nights a week.) The MacArthur Foundation has honored almost all the major figures of the jazz avant-garde with fellowships. Academic presses are pumping out books about their achievements. What’s the big deal, for them, about a gig at the Rose Theater?

On a casual reading, this didn't seem particularly objectionable to me -- I took it as a somewhat veiled way of saying that the financially struggling Jazz at Lincoln Center needs Zorn and Taylor more than they need JALC's seal of approval. Who needs the blessing of The House That Wynton Built when you've got Guggenheims and MacArthurs?

But James begged to differ:

In this paragraph, (in my reading) Ratliff is speaking generally about "the putative jazz avant-garde," not specifically Zorn and Taylor. I think that a comparison between the institution of J@LC to whatever institution exists for jazz avant-garde artists is a bit silly. The operating budget of J@LC is $31 million. And while the MacArthur Foundation has given 8 or 9 avant-garde jazz guys grants over the years (which is hardly "almost all the major figures"), there still just isn't a huge audience or much institutional support for this music, though there are some exceptions (like this concert).

Ratliff seems to say that the avant-garde doesn't need Lincoln Center since we have our clubs and festivals and our record companies and our grants. But there is NOTHING on the scale of Lincoln Center. Can you really compare the Stone to Allen Hall? There is a chance that greater inclusion of this music into the J@LC programming would have an enormous impact on the marketability of this music across the country.

And, over at SpiderMonkey Stories, Taylor Ho Bynum voiced similar objections:

The point isn’t whether the avant-garde needs Jazz at Lincoln Center, the point is what truly creative artists could do with the truckloads of money they pour into that place! In a culture of very limited arts funding, Jazz at Lincoln Center is the elephant in the middle of the room, eating everything in sight, while everyone else fights over the crumbs. Marsalis, Crouch, and crew were very focused in marketing themselves as the only arbiters and purveyors of “real jazz” during their jazz purges of the 80s. I really think this was as much a well-organized business plan as it was an aesthetic crusade. Arts funding in general and in jazz in specific has become a very top-down, institutionally dominated field, and Lincoln Center is the most dominant institution. There is little support for independent artists and grass-roots movements. The festivals and record labels Ratliff mentions were all started out of necessity and run on shoe-string budgets. The Stone is a great place, but comparing a tiny sixty-person capacity room on the lower East Side to a multi-million dollar complex in a corporate mall on Columbus Circle is simply silly. A few MacArthur grants does not make up for the difference. (And hardly “almost all the major figures of the jazz avant-garde” have gotten one, that’s a pretty snarky comment. And I’m sure Marsalis’ annual salary over five years dwarfs even the generosity of a MacArthur Fellowship.)

These are all good points. I honestly do not begrudge Lincoln Center its conservatism. They are supposed to be conservative -- that's their cultural function. And while I'm glad to see Zorn and Taylor finally get their turn onstage at JALC, I also don't see this as embracing the avant-garde so much as embracing reality. Cecil Taylor and John Zorn may have started out as shit-disturbing radicals, but they have been established, respected figures for decades now. Their music may still be vital, provocative, and controversial, but it's been a long time since either of them has been a hardscrabbling up-and-comer.

James and Taylor are right that JALC would generate a lot less antipathy if they hadn't appointed themselves the exclusive arbiters of jazz legitimacy. But the problem is far bigger than who gets a JALC gig and who doesn't. The real issue here is that there's no structural support for up-and-coming artists. For starters: jazz has nothing remotely like South by Southwest -- although David Ryshpan asks an excellent question: why can't IAJE be more like SXSW? Taking over the local clubs, showcasing new talent, reaching out to the public and generating buzz outside of the hermetically-sealed walls of the hotel convention halls -- why doesn't this happen?

The record labels are fading away and there's nothing emerging to take their place -- no way to pay for that crucial first studio record other than going massively in debt to predatory lenders, with scant hope of ever breaking even. The only recording grant for US artists (that I'm aware of) is the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording, which is supposed to "provide wider exposure for the music of contemporary American composers," but look at who gets their support -- that's not exactly a who's who of hot young artists (notwithstanding a handful of notable exceptions). And no disrespect intended, but -- Roger Sessions? John Cage? Conlon Nancarrow? Lou Harrison? Harry Partch? Charles Ives??? The Copland Fund people are obviously operating under a definition of "contemporary" somewhat at odds with the one I'm aware of. They also tend to disproportionately reward large organizations whose staff includes full-time professional grant-writers -- like, say, Jazz at Lincoln Center.

While I'm obviously all for the proliferation of independent, artist-owned, do-it-yourself labels and young musicians trying to pull off ambitious projects even in the absence of institutional support, the problem is (as I have said elsewhere) if everyone's just doing their own thing, how does a collective scene emerge from that? How do we get people excited about the vanguard of independent, creative, contemporary jazz as a movement, instead of just gravitating towards the handful of stars who somehow emerge to wider acclaim?

Comments

[James Hirschfeld]

1.

Darcy--excellent points.

I have always thought of our scene in NYC as a bunch of really talented chickens running around with our collective heads cut off. I really like the story of Bang on a Can. They found that they had no audience for their music, so they got together and simply created an audience. Of course, it took many years to do so.

One thing that I currently notice is that much of the music that I check out, I hear about through word-of-mouth. There is no Village Voice write up or a NYTimes listing. Something as simple as a site that listed these concerts would do a lot. In fact, if there were a public google calendar, anyone could just add their concert and a website could simply aggregate the listings.

I don't have a real solution here. I just feel like if I try and make it on my own, I may have some success by the time I die. But if there is a coordinated effort to market this music and flood these grant offices with applications, then we all have a better shot. More questions than answers for sure. We can all play music in our basement for enjoyment, but we're talking about making money here (without sacrificing artistic integrity). More accurately, we are talking about reaching people with our music in a way that will allow us to make music our profession.

(By the way: Ironically, I am writing this from WORK! Ha!)

[Andrew]

2.

Thanks for this...

It might be a good thing if IAJE became more like SXSW... but I actually think I'd prefer to see SXSW open up its purview a little (or a lot) to include new music other than pop. The reason it hasn't gets at what I think is one of the deeper problems here -- audience development. You can have all the institutional support in the world, but if people aren't adequately supporting the music where it counts -- from the ground up, in the concert halls and clubs and record stores -- then you haven't really ensured that the music has some sort of organic longetivity. This is not to say that there isn't currently an audience for "new music," or whatever you want to call it -- just that the scale of that audience, in most cases, is not commensurate with what the artists need to survive. Yet I refuse to believe that the kids who now flock to U2 (et al) are uniformly incapable of enjoying stuff that's a little less "mainstream"...

Of course, I don't really know how to go about audience development... I just like the idea. (I think maybe it has something to do with dogged persistence / insistence, as James suggests when he mentions the Bang on a Can story.)

[john doheny]

3.

Some very good points here. Sitting down here in New Orleans, we're not always fully present to what a huge animal JALC is, although there are plenty of examples locally of the influence of Wynton, the most recent being Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and their 'residency' at Tulane university. My understanding is that they are Artists in Residence at Tulane largely because Wynton wanted it so. So far though, the benifits of the arrangement all seem to be flowing one way (towards NOJO) and they are not at all a presence on campus, spending much of their time on the road.

I'm old enough to remember when getting jazz a seat at the 'serious culture' table was very, very important, and so I can't raise much ire at the current state of institutionalization in the music, both in institutions like JALC and at 'jazz friendly' universities, where conservatory-style training can sometimes turn out musicians with all the cutting edge excitement of their classical counterparts. I do often wonder though, why the cultural avante guard no longer listen to jazz. How come all those indie-rock kids aren't digging Shonny Sharrock and James "Blood" Ulmer? You'd think it would be right up their alley.

[DJA]

4.

James,

What Bang on a Can have done is simply amazing. Some people (like Kyle Gann) are bitter that they absented themselves from the Downtown scene and created their own alternative scene, but obviously they were very successful at changing the public perception of their music, to the point where even indie rock bloggers get really excited about the annual BOAC marathon.

Of course, BOAC were also very quickly able to secure grants and other forms of institutional support that allows them to do all the great stuff that they do. There are individuals and foundations and grants etc out there -- we just have to get better at persuading the powers-that-be that what we are doing is just as worthy (if not more) than the stuff they're funding now. That can be a tough slog.

It would be great if there was an indie jazz version of Oh My Rockness. But would also be great if Oh My Rockness would list our shows! I always submit to them and they never list us, even when we're playing indie rock venues like Union Hall. (Maybe some creative double-bills with complimentary indie rock bands would help. Hmmm... )

[DJA]

5.

Andrew,

You are spot on about SXSW's limited scope. On paper, they may be open to "all genres" (I don't know), but obviously in practice it's another story.

As far as other big indie rock fests go, we submitted to CMJ last year, but didn't make the cut. We're submitting again this year, so we shall see... again, it's technically open to "all genres." Maybe if more of us made a point of submitting to SXSW and CMJ and the like, we'd have more of a chance of storming that barricade.

That said, I do think it's crazy that IAJE brings all these young hardcore jazz fans to town, and then pens them up in the Hilton. Part of what makes SXSW so buzz-worthy is that it takes over the city -- every club is doing a SXSW showcase, and even just walking around you're surrounded by musicians from all over the world.

Imagine if next year, instead of putting everything in the Toronto Fairmont, Sheraton, and Metro Convention Centre, IAJE took over all of T.O.'s clubs and concert calls for four days? (Not just the jazz clubs, either.) They could still have all the industry stuff during the day, but put all the concerts at night, all over the city, going well into the night. Make a virtue of the fact that you're bringing thousands of musicians to town to play, make it more of a festival than a conference.

Instead, IAJE make a virtue of walling themselves off from the host city -- everything is self-contained at the convention site. There's just no good reason for that.

[DJA]

6.

How come all those indie-rock kids aren't digging Shonny Sharrock and James "Blood" Ulmer? You'd think it would be right up their alley.

John,

Because someone has to tell them about it! But as it turns out, Blood Ulmer is playing Bonnaroo this year, which is an encouraging sign. It would also be great if we could have more creative connections between scenes -- like maybe Burnt Sugar opening for TV on the Radio?

[Andrew]

7.

IAJE as currently configured is surely a wasted opportunity, I agree.

I also think you're onto something about the concerted effort to storm the indie rock festivals... and maybe that's one of the objectives around which our "collective scene" can build a little more of a clear identity. We could organize, and turn it into a don't-discriminate-against-new-jazz campaign, and include some sort of petition with our press materials... hmmm...

Maybe that would just seem petulant, I dunno.

We actually played SXSW back in '02. They're like IAJE in at least one respect: no bread to bring the truly indie groups out, so you've got to make it on your own dime.

[DJA]

8.

Andrew,

I'd be curious to hear what your SXSW experience was like -- was there any effort to place you in a slot or showcase with complimentary bands? What kind of audience response did you get? Did you make any valuable contacts?

[Andrew]

9.

It's a nice thing to have on the resume, but SXSW wasn't all that I hoped it would be. That's at least in part because I was too inexperienced as the manager of my own group to have any sort of business plan going in. I wasn't sure how to work the opportunity for maximum effect.

The year we went (at five pieces, we were a kinder, gentler, more traditional precursor to the monstrosity we are now) was around the time that Norah Jones was breaking, and from what I understood there was a particularly strong effort to try and get more jazz presented at the festival that year (I think Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey was there too, though they were clearly in a different league from us). In retrospect, I think we were stymied by two things (in addition to my lack of knowledge about how to exploit the situation):

1. The club we played was not on 6th, the main music drag in Austin, where people generally just stroll around and window-shop the live performances.

2. We were put into the middle of a three-act bill that was certainly complimentary, but because it was all new jazz, it didn't expose us to any audiences that probably wouldn't have found out about us through some other means anyway (either on the radio, the web, or through word of mouth). In other words, it felt like an audience comprised of most of Austin's die-hard new-jazz folks. As in LA, that's a dedicated but small community.

Because of these things (and because of the very different vibe that I witnessed going on at other showcases), it ended up feeling like we were inhabiting some kind of indie-jazz ghetto. We did get a decent turnout, and the people there seemed to enjoy it, but I was angling for something more. We didn't have any labels or managers or industry people come to see us (on the other hand, we did end up getting a lot of music-biz spam in the months afterward). We did get a decent blurb in the Austin Chronicle before the show, but nothing that translated into a lasting impression afterward.

My philosophy since has been that I don't want to go back to SXSW until I feel like we have a bit more leverage -- i.e., enough "buzz" to be able to negotiate a better venue and a shared bill with some rock acts who are better known than we are. The whole point of a group like mine or yours doing the festival, or so I think now, is to really work the crossover potential, while simultaneously chipping away at rock/pop-oriented audiences' perceptions of what jazz is. But to do that you've got to get 'em to the show.

(And of course, if we were to do SXSW again, I'd want to build a tour around it, which I wasn't savvy enough to know how to do the first time.)