Red Sea Jazz Festival

Yesterday I mentioned the controversy surrounding a new 10th anniversary CD from the venerable Oakland jazz club Yoshi’s - a CD that didn’t include any music by black artists. Well, in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, word comes that the club has decided to pull the CD, and is working on putting together a more diverse compilation. They had sold about 500 of the 1000 CDs printed, before they decided to pull them from their website and club store.

As I pointed out in my post yesterday, and as Peter Williams of Yoshi’s explained in The Chronicle tooday, Yoshi’s simply went through the Concord Records archives (a label formerly based in the Bay Area, and still with some Bay Area ties through the Fantasy Studios and archives) and selected tracks by Concord artists who had been recorded live at Yoshi’s. Two additional tracks (Madeleine Peyroux and Robben Ford) were added from broadcast airchecks from San Francisco radio station KFOG.

In the same article Orrin Keepnews chimes in with the following insult to all of the artists on the CD:

“With all due respect to the venerable Marian McPartland, whom I love and have always loved, there’s nobody on that record of major current importance,” said Keepnews. “The club put out an anniversary record that was thoughtless and not very well put together. They limited themselves to material recorded live at the club. You have a half-dozen things here that don’t have the making of a significant or representative record, regardless of what color anybody is.’

Questioning why a “Live at Yoshi’s” CD would only include performances recorded at the club, makes one wonder what sort of relevance Keepnews has in today’s record industry. Of COURSE they limited themselves to material recorded at the club - that was the concept of the album. And it’s nice of Keepnews to insult musicians like Poncho Sanchez (jazz snobs will always look down upon any music that actually encourages people to dance) and Joey DeFrancesco as not being of “major current importance.” (whatever that means - Keepnews must have a direct line to the jazz police).

Bottom line: Yoshi’s should have tried to include recordings from other labels as part of their CD. But they went with Concord, and it just so happened that the artists on Concord who recorded at Yoshi’s weren’t as diverse as Yoshi’s normal lineup. But Yoshi’s lineup IS diverse, always has been, and I’m sure will continue to be.

However, in the jazz world, there are still problems of diversity in many areas. The world of institutionalized jazz education is much less diverse than jazz as a whole. There are several record labels that I can think of (mostly small ones though, as almost all jazz labels are small) that don’t feature any, or maybe only one or two releases by artists of color.

When I’m on the air, I don’t pay attention to the race of the musician in selecting what I play. On occasion I’ll look back at a playlist, and I’ll notice that it was a pretty diverse mix. Other times, I’ll say “wow, in this hour, I didn’t play any music by white musicians,” or “wow, in this hour, I didn’t play any music by black musicians,” or “wow, in this hour I didn’t play any music by Latino musicians.” I think this is what happened with the Yoshi’s CD. I think it was an honest omission, (not a mistake) but an omission, and given Yoshi’s track record in booking diversity, I think they should be given the benefit of the doubt.

California’s premier jazz venue, Yoshi’s at Jack London Square in Oakland, just celebrated its 10th anniversary at its current location, and released a CD to go along with the celebration. The CD has tracks by Poncho Sanchez, Marian McPartland, Joe Pass, Joey DeFrancesco, Robben Ford, and Madeleine Peyroux. Sounds good, right? The problem - no black artists. This has many in the Bay Area jazz community concerned, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (link). Yoshi’s has apologized for the oversight. But then last week another issue came up: the Berkeley Downtown Jazz Festival, which presents music at a number of venues, didn’t have any black artists performing at one of their venues, Anna’s Jazz Island, though a number of black artists are performing at other BDJF venues.

I don’t have time to weigh in too much on the whole issue, other than to make a few comments, first about this particular situation and then the issue at large.

1) I see that most of the artists on the Yoshi’s CD have other commercially available “Live at Yoshi’s” albums available. Peter Williams mentioned the recording rights issue with the Chronicle, and I imagine this played a big role in who wound up on the CD. However, just off the top of my head, Mulgrew Miller, Dee Dee Bridgewater, also have “Live at Yoshi’s” discs. Both are African-American artists.

2) With the exception of Madeleine Peyroux and Robben Ford, all of the other artists on the Yoshi’s 10th anniversary CD are affiliated with Concord Records. It might have been an issue where Concord was easy to negotiate with regarding these tracks, other labels weren’t, and these tracks and artists were chosen accordingly.

3) I don’t think anyone has any justification to question Yoshi’s overall booking policy and artist lineup based on race. I’ve seen many other jazz venues which seem to present only white artists, but not Yoshi’s.

4) I don’t think it so much applies in the BDJF case, as they do have a diverse artist roster, just not at the festival events at Anna’s Jazz Island.

5) I think this is a legitimate issue which jazz presenters and educators need to pay attention to. Maybe this incident will spark some further discussion on this issue in the jazz community, even if the criticism in these cases isn’t entirely justified.

Mark Sandow has an interesting piece on his blog about the aging audience for classical music, and the various reactions people often have, such as denial. It’s a major issue that faces almost all arts organizations to some extent, but really is not even an arts issue any more - overall our population is again. Teachers, government officials, corporate types - just thumb through any national publication and you’ll likely see articles about how some remarkably high percentage of the population of _______ is aging, about to retire, not being replaced by new workers, etc.

But classical music is especially challenged in this area. Jazz is too. Just go to a jazz concert or a festival, and observe the audience. It’s not the most youthful group. Thankfully, the jazz audience isn’t quite as old as the classical audience, and it’s certainly more diverse. A recent study (2006) by the Jazz Alliance International (PDF download) says that 41 percent of the jazz audience is under 39 year old, which quite frankly surprised me. Another 37 percent are between 40 and 55. I had expected the numbers to be much older.

Now let’s think about those numbers and ages for a moment. Those 41 percent of people under 39 years old, did not grow up in a world where jazz was popular music. And most of those in the 40-55 age group didn’t either. These are children of the rock and roll generation. They obviously came to find out about, or enjoy jazz at some point - but when? And how? This is the information I’d like to find out. I often ask people who become members of the station how they found out about the station, and how they got into jazz. Some have stories of growing up listening to mom and dad play records by Dave Brubeck and Shelly Manne, or going to see the CTI All Stars at the Warnors Theatre as teenagers. But most of them seem to have stumbled across the music as adults. And I say “stumbled” because it often seems more like an accident, as opposed to “seeking out” the music. They happen across the radio station, like the music, and get become “jazz fans”. Maybe they had some early exposure to the music at home, but most of them probably (my conjecture here) we’re active jazz fans in their teens or twenties.

If true, this dispels the myth that jazz has no future if it’s not “pop” music. Pop is targeted to a teen audience, and if yesterdays teens of the (1960’s and 70’s) are becoming jazz fans in their 30s or 40s. It also dispels the myth that adults musical tastes are set in stone by the time they reach adulthood.

One of the best voices and most consistently successful GarageBand self-recording artists on the site is Ridd Sorensen (member name rsorensen), also known as satellitetragedy and blinddogsky. (Satellite Tragedy and Blind Dog Sky are his bands’ names). He’s been everything from ‘Head of New Media’ for Weezer to the Senior Director of Atomic Betty (Cartoon Network), and even worked on some Scooby Doo commercials, among dozens of other cool cartoon projects.

I was going to interview Ridd last fall, but he wanted to wait until his SATELLITE TRAGEDY album came out. Not only was it taking up all his time (writing/recording the CD), it made sense to interview him right before I reviewed the CD. I’m not sure which has been more enjoyable, listening to his professionally polished CD or the homemade GarageBand tracks on his MacJams Playlist.

Ridd is an animation artist/illustrator who recently decided it was time to take writing and performing music to the next level. He lives in Vancouver, Canada, is 35 years old, and seems to be in the thick of many fruitful projects at the moment.

Ridd’s music is excellent, full of meaning, well crafted, flawlessly engineered, with lyrics and an audio hipness that is replete with the zeitgeist of the moment. Whether its edgy folk, alternative, power chord punk or hard rock, it is JUST SO DAMN GOOD. Every song is thought through, has a concept, a visual element, a back story, and a personal reason for being. Like an animation character coming to life through music, except is songs are mainly about very real people, very human.

[There are a handful of people who, if Macjams ever became a corporation, should be on the board of directors. Drakonis is one. I am very glad Mark added him to the list of active participants in his interview series. I personally thank Drak for all his help and wise directional inspiration. He has been a marvelous MJ role model over the years.

This is a reprint of an interview by Mark Holbrook for the Macjammers Blog. For comments attached to the original blog, please go here.]

I am extremely pleased to offer you an interview with that mysterious, infamous Dragon that frequents the chat rooms and tramps about MacJams leaving enticing comments and suggestions on the amazing music published there!

Drakonis, (aka Eduard) was on one of the first people I came in contact with after joining MacJams and he should be given the title “MacJams Ambassador”, because he is wonderful at making a new comer feel at home in a strange place… well that is until you realize he’s a dragon and his favorite meal is MacJams newcomer stew… (just kidding… I don’t think he’s ever made MacJams newcomer stew… yet!).

Allow me to present the incredibly talented, witty, friendly, and generally an all around great guy, Drakonis! Please see his artist page for an incredible catalogue of music. Drakonis!

Eddie Fliess… I like to call him a music factory! Every time I log into MacJams it seems there is another wonderful piece posted by EEFliess. Eddie is always on the chat window and always has a friendly hello ready.So lets learn a little about the man behind the music. His artist page can be found at: EEFliess

Tell us as much about yourself as you would like everyone to know. Where you were born, when, how you grew up etc.

I was born in 1968 in Clifton Forge, Virginia. When I was 11 months old, my father was transferred to Ashland, Kentucky with Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, so we lived in a little crossroads town on the Ohio River called South Point. In 1975, my father was transferred to Southfield, Michigan, so off to Michigan we went for 4 years until moving back to South Point in 1979 which was the old homestead of sorts until 2 years after my father died (1997). At that point I had been living in Columbus for about 2 years. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but never really wanted for anything when I was a kid. Started playing guitar when I was 12 (doing the math….tap tap tap calculator keys…1980 right after we moved to South Point the second time).