Can Jazz Be Saved? A Humbly Offered Solution.
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Over the course of a couple of years, my musical taste radically changed from rock, to progressive rock, to fusion, to straight-ahead jazz and bebop. During those mid-teenage years, I also went from playing electric bass, to fretless, to upright. I ended up privately studying with a couple of great teachers and was admitted to York University’s jazz program when I was eighteen.
Jazz for me was the greatest, most creative music ever invented. In fact, it wasn’t just invented, it was reinvented every time a standard was called out and improvisation began.I became so obsessed with jazz that it was musical heresy to listen to anything else. I sold, or traded all of my rock, progressive rock and fusion albums for jazz recordings. This all abruptly ended when I got married and had to support a family. It was obvious that I couldn’t feed my new family off the business of playing jazz.Since then, I’ve had plenty of time to open my ears again to other forms of music. It’s also given me some time to consider the problems and opportunities of what still remains my favourite form of music. In a Wall Street Journal article, titled “Can Jazz Be Saved?” Terry Teachout says:“In 1987, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring jazz to be “a rare and valuable national treasure.” Nowadays the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis is taught in public schools, heard on TV commercials and performed at prestigious venues such as New York’s Lincoln Center, which even runs its own nightclub, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. Here’s the catch: Nobody’s listening.”
He goes on to pull data from the National Endowment for the Arts’ latest Survey, which presents a picture far less than hopeful on the survival of jazz.
- In 2002, the year of the last survey, 10.8% of adult Americans attended at least one jazz performance. In 2008, that figure fell to 7.8%.
- Not only is the audience for jazz shrinking, but it’s growing older, fast. The median age of adults in America who attended a live jazz performance in 2008 was 46. In 1982 it was 29.
- Older people are also much less likely to attend jazz performances today than they were a few years ago. The percentage of Americans between the ages of 45 and 54 who attended a live jazz performance in 2008 was 9.8%. In 2002, it was 13.9%. That s a 30% drop in attendance.
- Even among college-educated adults, the audience for live jazz has shrunk significantly, to 14.9% in 2008 from 19.4% in 1982.
He then finds direct correlation between the median age of the jazz audience with classical music (49 in 2008 vs. 40 in 1982), opera (48 in 2008 vs. 43 in 1982), nonmusical plays (47 in 2008 vs. 39 in 1982) and ballet (46 in 2008 vs. 37 in 1982) - concluding that the average American sees jazz as a form of high art.
Hey, I’d agree with that. At least I would have, back in the woodshed days when all I did was practice, or perform 12 hours a day. I was a jazz snob. And jazz snobs aren’t just limited to jazz musicians. There’s the aging audience too. Often, and quite understandably accused of being the jazz police. They’re the ones who are always ready with an acid stare or, if that doesn’t work, a bellicose hush, if you dare to even pass wind during a performance. Jazz wasn’t always like that. Take a look at some of the old Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, or Count Basie film clips. Read some of the biographies. These were party bands. There were the juke joints, after hour jams and the notorious speak easy clubs. There the bands and musicians provided hip, crowd-pleasing entertainment that was anything but stodgy. Then there were the writers of the standards: Rodgers and Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and the rest. These guys could write words as well as music. Listen to ‘Strange Fruit’ by Billie Holliday. Few songs since have come close to the deep emotions and cultural insight of that song. That in a nutshell is both the problem and the opportunity.Jazz needs new standards, both in writing and performance. If music is about anything, it’s about songs and audience engagement. Jazz has to be in the now to gain back an audience. Any musical art form that considers itself as the sole, core reason for its own existence, rather than placing the audience at the core, is doomed to fail. Any art form that only caters to an aging demographic made up of snobs and fellow musicians, will fail. And anything that depends on government grants, university support and trust fund endowments to survive, is already dead. To connect, jazz needs an injection of emotion. It needs to be new and important to a broader audience. It needs to take itself less seriously and have more fun. It needs to be simplified – a cascade of clichéd notes and mathematical cycles doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t connect. But most importantly, it needs songwriters. Not jazz writers. It needs lyrics that are relevant to today. Insights based on current cultural cues. It needs to get hip with the times and become at least vibrant, if not the leading light like it once was. And, yes, it needs to look to and draw from the past, but without being permanently stuck there. The world doesn’t need another version of ‘All Of Me,’ or ‘How High The Moon.’ It needs new songs. Still, the question remains, even with change, can jazz make a comeback? As the 1921 New York Times article clearly shows – it’s not like as if we haven’t been here before.
