Jazz is dead (only as long as we say it is)

Last summer, I went to see Snarky Puppy in Appleton, Wisconsin.  This city is nothing more than a blip on the map, and I didn't expect many people to be there, but when they took to the stage at the local arts college, the room was packed.  What I found interesting was the mix of people, in the back I stood with a lot of intellectuals/ jazz musicians, who watched and listened in earnest.  In the front, there was a tight knot of dancer grooving along, I'm not sure how much they knew about the music, but it didn't matter, they knew how to enjoy it.

I have had a similar experience playing in a gypsy jazz group in Houghton, Michigan.  Houghton is a town of about 2,000 (plus 5,000 college students during the Fall, Winter, and Spring).  We still manage to bring out people to shows, including selling out a 100 seat club during a blizzard warning.  The mix is quite similar, young fans, some knowledgeable, some not.

Overall, things seam like they are going up.  Snarky Puppy had a video go viral last week.  The Twin Cities Jazz Festival brought in about 25,000 fans, most of them young people.  Caravan Palace, a French techno-swing group (who improvise on stage, if you want to argue that's not jazz), did their first US tour, and sold out several shows this summer.  Both Preservation Hall and Trombone Shorty released records to decent sales.

Yet, most "jazz fans" call jazz dead....

True, these are tough times still, in St.Paul, the Artist Quarter, the last true refuge of jazz, will be closing at the end of this year (and I'm sure all you MSP fans are happy to see another article on it).  The big "jazz festivals" now maybe have 2 or 3 jazz headliners and several classic rock acts to keep afloat.  While this is happening though, most "jazz fans" turn their heads away from other happenings.

While the Artist Quarter may be shutting down, several clubs that offer jazz one night a week (Hell's Kitchen, Loring's Pasta Bar, The Black Dog), you can still get jazz 6 nights a week, if not more, just by going to different bars at different nights.  The Twin Cities Jazz Festival, Milwaukee Jazz Festival, and many other smaller jazz festivals have 100% jazz lineups, complete with post jams, tours of local bars, and chances to talk with headliners such as Ethan Iverson.

Another thing that drives me up the wall is when they claim musicians aren't Jazz Musicians.  "Snarky Puppy isn't jazz, they play improvisational rock".  "The Bad Plus is avant garde, not jazz".  "I don't care that Caravan Palace uses improvisation and jazz sounds, they use a computer so its techno".  Its like as soon as a group gets popular, we can't call them jazz anymore.

There is something about the academic jazz fan base that wants jazz to be dead, to sit in its hole and not expand and eventually fade away.  If they want that, well, we certainly can arrange it.

But, I would prefer a different route.

It wasn't until I was at the very end of high school that heard about Snarky Puppy, or learned that the Twin Cities hosted a vibrant jazz community.  We played Ellington and Basie, but whenever we did a song written in the last twenty years, it was some piece of junk we got in a pack of songs.  We played 1 Gordon Goodwin tune, and our teacher didn't even mention he was a thing.

This is where we need to start making changes, we need to start showing High Schoolers (if not younger) that there is plenty of modern jazz available for consumption, if we can't get high school jazz musicians excited about the music, how can we get anyone else interested.  If I had a 3 day a week jazz group of High School or college kids, I would spend one day every 2 weeks (or maybe a month) just showing new music.

Anyway, I'm not in charge, but that's what I would do.

P.S. If you have a video clip of a high school big band playing a Snarky Puppy tune, feel free to pass it along.

Monk's Advice (from a 1960 notebook)

• Just because you're not a drummer, doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.
• Pat your foot + sing the melody in your head when you play. Stop playing all that bullshit/ those weird notes, play the melody!
• Make the drummer sound good.
• Discrimination is important
• You've got to dig it, to dig it, you dig?
• All reet!
• Always know … (Monk →)
• It must always be night, otherwise they woudln't need the lights.
• Let's LIFT THE BANDSTAND!
• (I want to) avoid the hecklers
• Don't play the piano part, I'm playing that, don't listen to me, I'm supposed to be accompanying YOU!
• The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.
• Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imagined.
• What you don't play can be more important than what you do.
• Always leave them wanting more.
• A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
• Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig, and when it comes, he's out of shape and can't make it
• When you're swinging, swing some more!
• What should we wear tonight? SHARP AS POSSIBLE!
• Don't sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.
• Those pieces were written so as to have something to play, and to get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal!
• You've got it! If you don't want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drummer who didn't want to solo)
• Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along and do it.
• A genius is the one most like himself.
• They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along and spoil it.