I recently stumbled across Jerry Jazz Musician, a site with an odd name and a clunky design but outstanding writing on "jazz and American civilization." They just published a brilliant interview with jazz critic and scholar Gary Giddins on "the beginnings
of jazz in the city of New Orleans, its prominent figures, and what needs
to be done to properly market jazz in a city that has contributed so much
toward shaping the soul of America."
It's a long piece, the bulk of which is devoted to the history of jazz in New Orleans. Giddins is knowledgeable and opinionated, and the interview has inspired me to check out some of his books. (I recognized him as a talking head from Ken Burns' Jazz, but haven't read anything by him.) But it's not just a series of reflections about the past; Giddins concludes with some pointed comments about jazz's role in contemporary culture, and our collective failure to support it as a living, breathing art form. Talking shortly after Hurricane Katrina in October 2005, he's somber about the prospects of one of America's greatest contributions to the world, and I think it's worth quoting at length:
Jerry Jazz Musician: In 1987, Congress passed Resolution 57, which designated jazz as a "rare and valuable national American treasure," "to which," the U.S. Senate added, "we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated." In light of all the other governmental needs at this time, do you have faith that any resources will be devoted to ensuring the success of this resolution?
Gary Giddins: That jazz will be preserved in New Orleans? No faith whatsoever. Maybe someone will be able to divert some funds toward opening a small club or producing a concert, but beyond that, nothing will happen. What they have to do is look to Nashville or Cleveland's rock and roll museum or EMP in Seattle as templates. They have to build a real honest-to-god auditorium with broadcasting facilities so music performed there is heard on national radio, and a museum with a library and archive and hall of fame. That way, jazz and New Orleans will become a magnet for people all over the South and, by extension, the country, to come and spend their vacations in New Orleans, "The City of Jazz." Jeez, we have two rock and roll museums, but we don't have one for jazz? The only jazz museum I am aware of now is in Kansas City, and while it is nice, it is a tiny place with no national impact. Because it is in the black area of town, the Chamber of Commerce didn't bother putting it on its tourist route so even Midwesterners don't know it exists. Not to have an equivalent of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or the Experience Music Project [is] just fucking painful.
...I don't understand why the Experience Music Project is so rockcentric. I mean, why do we keep drawing this artificial line in the sand? When I was there they were doing a terrific blues and r&b thing and half the people presented in the display were jazz figures, though I suspect that visitors to the museum didn't necessarily know that. These were musicians like Joe Turner and boogie woogie players who straddled both jazz and r&b. Rock and roll and jazz have a lot in common. I mean, every time Eric Clapton improvises a blues chorus, what the hell is he doing? You can hear it as a different approach -- not jazz per se -- but that's a question of style. He is still improvising twelve-bar choruses on the same harmonies and structure as Louis and Bird and Miles and Sonny and on and on. It's not really an idiomatic issue.
Jerry Jazz Musician:
And it is not a racial issue because most of the big figures of r&b and rock and roll were either black or influenced by black musicians. Gary Giddins: It is not at all racial, just ignorant. That is all it is. Jazz scares the shit out of people. In the 1960s, it was possible to listen to records and read books and feel that you understood the history of jazz because there were only forty years of it on records. Now there is twice as much and it is ten times more intricate. People have a hard enough time trying to figure out Miles and Monk and Ornette -- [Jelly Roll] Morton is like the other side of the moon --and when they do examine an earlier period they pick up a couple of figures to learn about, a little Armstrong, a little Ellington. But they will never hear Red Allen or Chu Berry or even Roy Eldridge, because we no longer have a jazz culture. We are more likely to learn about jazz in school, which turns a pleasurable, exciting pursuit into homework. It's one thing to put on "Struttin' With Some Barbecue" and wonder, "Hey, who is the clarinetist?" You look at the CD and see it's a guy named Johnny Dodds. It's another thing to listen to it in fear of a quiz for which you have to memorize the names of the players. I'm not saying anything can be done about this; what doesn't end up in the classroom is often thrown out altogether. But when jazz becomes an obligation instead of pure pleasure, it's lost its magic. The most pleasurable of cities, New Orleans, ought to be resurrected as a gateway to jazz.
Listening to jazz is one of my greatest pleasures in life, and I think it's an indescribable loss for our culture that it's fading from public prominence. My wife recently learned that one of her co-workers is related to Dizzy Gillespie and had known a number of jazz musicians growing up, and she was thrilled to talk about it with him. Sadly, he was surprised she was even interested, because in his experience few people our age--I'm 38, she's 37--even care about jazz. Sigh.
One final note: The poster above of Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars is from the Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection, which has a nice page on the Museum's website (although the links to their audio clips and old radio broadcasts are broken) and is located physically at the Old Mint, 400 Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans. I've visited the jazz collection as well as the Museum's Mardi Gras exhibit at the Presbytere in Jackson Square, and I highly recommend them both, but unfortunately they're still closed because of Hurricane Katrina. As the unnamed Jerry Jazz Musician interviewer notes at the beginning of the Giddins piece, "We have heard so much about the losses associated with Hurricane Katrina in terms of dollars and human lives--justifiably so--but what seems to have been forgotten is the cultural devastation it caused." Sadly true.
tags: jazz new orleans gary giddins jerry jazz musician katrina louisiana state museum
