The music may never again be a popular force, but it is still swinging--if you know where to listen.
Put yourself in this jazz musician's shoes for a minute. Your record label just dropped two of its most acclaimed acts from the roster in order to aggressively pursue pop artists. Still, you think you have a sound that's relevant to the moment--and to prove it, you need a stay of execution from what's starting to look inevitable. So you pick up the phone, dial the label president, and beg for release from the adjective that's become pure poison in the marketplace. “If you stop calling me a jazz man," you promise the boss, “I'll sell more." That's exactly what Miles Davis said to Clive Davis at Columbia Records--more than 40 years ago.
This anecdote--first related by the record mogul in his autobiography--also appears in Jazz, a new, close-listening history of the genre by critics Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux. Even though the trumpeter was right--Miles's Bitches Brew, complete with psychedelic cover art pitched at the Summer of Love crowd, would go gold after its release in 1969--you can't help but read Jazz and not realize that the art's economic fortunes have been dicey for decades. Every few years, a new piece of data comes along to kick up the hoary question: is jazz dead? This year has been particularly ominous. In June a National Endowment for the Arts survey found that the number of Americans attending live jazz concerts had declined precipitously and consistently over a 26-year span. That prompted critic Terry Teachout to ask the question “Can Jazz Be Saved?" anew in The Wall Street Journal, which in turn set off a fiery round of objections from musicians in the trenches. Teachout--who, in his essay, sadly neglected to promote today's forward-thinking players--responded by conceding, sure, there's beautiful music being created, but will an audience ever exist again to pay for it?
Fine, then: it might just be the time to accept that Teachout is, on an economic level, right: as a mass-culture force, jazz is dead. Simply look at the contemporary brand most familiar to a lay audience: the Marsalis family. In the early '90s, one brother (Branford) was leading Jay Leno's late-night band, while another (Wynton) was the preeminent trumpeter on Columbia, Miles's old label. By the middle of this decade, both of them had lost those public perches and no one has reached that stature since.
Put yourself in this jazz musician's shoes for a minute. Your record label just dropped two of its most acclaimed acts from the roster in order to aggressively pursue pop artists. Still, you think you have a sound that's relevant to the moment--and to prove it, you need a stay of execution from what's starting to look inevitable. So you pick up the phone, dial the label president, and beg for release from the adjective that's become pure poison in the marketplace. “If you stop calling me a jazz man," you promise the boss, “I'll sell more." That's exactly what Miles Davis said to Clive Davis at Columbia Records--more than 40 years ago.
This anecdote--first related by the record mogul in his autobiography--also appears in Jazz, a new, close-listening history of the genre by critics Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux. Even though the trumpeter was right--Miles's Bitches Brew, complete with psychedelic cover art pitched at the Summer of Love crowd, would go gold after its release in 1969--you can't help but read Jazz and not realize that the art's economic fortunes have been dicey for decades. Every few years, a new piece of data comes along to kick up the hoary question: is jazz dead? This year has been particularly ominous. In June a National Endowment for the Arts survey found that the number of Americans attending live jazz concerts had declined precipitously and consistently over a 26-year span. That prompted critic Terry Teachout to ask the question “Can Jazz Be Saved?" anew in The Wall Street Journal, which in turn set off a fiery round of objections from musicians in the trenches. Teachout--who, in his essay, sadly neglected to promote today's forward-thinking players--responded by conceding, sure, there's beautiful music being created, but will an audience ever exist again to pay for it?
Fine, then: it might just be the time to accept that Teachout is, on an economic level, right: as a mass-culture force, jazz is dead. Simply look at the contemporary brand most familiar to a lay audience: the Marsalis family. In the early '90s, one brother (Branford) was leading Jay Leno's late-night band, while another (Wynton) was the preeminent trumpeter on Columbia, Miles's old label. By the middle of this decade, both of them had lost those public perches and no one has reached that stature since.
