EVEN MORE POIGNANT RESPONSES. . .
WATCH OUT!
NEXT THE HISTORY BOOKS AND THE ENTIRE Jazz LEXICON WILL BE CHANGED BY THE POWERS OF INSTITUTIONS AND IT WILL BECOME A MUSEUM REPOSITORY, [DEADENED] WITH INTELLECTUALISM. THE MUSIC HAD ITS ROOTS IN THE HOOD, WITH DANCE A VITAL COMPONENT. THE CONCERT STAGE WAS A BY-PRODUCT. VENUES IN THE HOOD ARE OUTDATED, WHICH [WERE] THE TRAINING GROUND FOR THE UP [AND] COMING MUSICIAN.
MY, MY! HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED. AGAIN. NO CONTROL OVER OUR OWN [CULTURAL] PRODUCT. SAME, SAME O' STUFF. HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF. -- Reggie Willis (reggiewill@ameritech.net)
From: Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq
To: Abdul Malik
Subject: The Exclusion of Black Jazz Artists
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 12:23:47 +0200
From: Ricki Stevenson
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 11:33 AM
Subject: The Exclusion of Black Jazz Artists
Dear Friends,
I recently heard Jazz Sax great Archie Shepp speak in Paris. He teaches at U. Mass, lives there much of the year.... but travels and performs in France and Europe extensively. I was amazed to see French teenagers lined up to hear Archie perform and speak....even an excited five-year-old had a coherent question for him! When asked to compare German Jazz, Japanese and French Jazz he said, "there is only Black American Jazz...all others are weak imitations of the original" At first, I thought that was a strange response, but he went further to explain the history of Jazz and how it is now being "slipped out from under its Black creators." Today, even Ken Burns is better known than the Black men and women who pioneered the Jazz music he chronicled in his series. Archie Shepp is getting some negative heat on his latest two-disk CD "Gemini". He's being criticized for including rapper Chuck D and a beautiful gospel piece he wrote when his mom died. It's obvious Archie is trying to take his music to a wider and younger audience. I urge you to Google Archie Shepp and listen to his new CD and his music philosophy! We must support those who keep the historic roots of Jazz alive! -- Ricki
From: Jodie Christian
To: ebJazz00@aol.com,
melvin6613@aol.com,
reggiewill@ameritech.net
Subject: The Exclusion of Black Jazz Artists
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2007 01:00:37 -0500
Friday, June 1, 2007 -
This article appeared on page A-1
of the
San Francisco Chronicle
The Exclusion of Black Jazz Artists
By Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer
When Yoshi's Jazz Club in Oakland released its much-anticipated 10-year anniversary CD last month, local Jazz aficionados were outraged that no African American musicians were included. The tension grew days later when the Bay Area's Jazz community learned that the Berkeley Downtown Jazz Festival had invited only six African American musicians to perform at the five-day event in August. Together, the two revelations upset musicians, club owners and fans, some of whom say racism is at play in the local Jazz scene.
Anna DeLeon, owner of Anna's Jazz Island in Berkeley, complained to organizers when she learned who was scheduled to play at her club during the festival. There were 17 musicians in four bands and none were black, said DeLeon. "It is hard for me to imagine how this could happen, how they could not notice."
Word spread quickly as people voiced outrage via e-mail over a problem many said had been simmering for a long time. Jazz professionals met to plan a response. Club owners and musicians went on Doug Edwards' Music of the World show on KPFA-FM, on May 19. A week later, Susan Muscarella, who books the Jazz festival and runs Berkeley's Jazz School, appeared on the same show to respond. Muscarella says the situation is being overblown. She said she hasn't finished booking the festival but has so far confirmed four African American acts and it was coincidence that none would perform at Anna's. Last year, 30 percent of festival performers were black, she said. "These allegations are outrageous," Muscarella said. "Diversity has always been at the top of my list. I hold African American heritage in high esteem. But I do choose quality and not ethnicity alone."
Many artists said that "holding black heritage in high esteem is not the point. Inviting six African American artists to a major Jazz event that includes dozens of performers and excluding black artists from a selection of 10 performances at the East Bay's most prominent Jazz venue is simply unacceptable," they said.
"It is like going to a Chinese restaurant and there are no Chinese people," said Howard Wiley, a local saxophonist. "It is very disheartening and sad, especially from Yoshi's, which calls itself the premiere Jazz venue of the Bay Area. I mean, we are dealing with Jazz and blues, not Hungarian folk music or the invention of computer programs. Jazz grew out of the African American experience, and many historians call it the most significant contribution from the United States to the music world."
Well-known Jazz artists, festival organizers and academics say the two incidents show how African Americans are being squeezed out of the art form more broadly. "This is stemming from a much larger dynamic with regard to Jazz and what is becoming a legitimized and institutionalized lack of inclusion of African Americans," said Glen Pearson, a music instructor at the College of Alameda and a full-time musician. "Jazz was once looked at as inferior music from an inferior culture, and now it has become embraced socially and academically, so there has been some revisionism." Pearson said some music critics believe the African American roots of Jazz and its black contributors are sometimes featured too heavily in education and portrayals of Jazz, such as in Ken Burns' television documentary series.
"There were complaints that the PBS series, 'Jazz', focused too much on African Americans," Pearson said. "I am comfortable saying that every significant white contributor to Jazz studied from someone of African American descent," Pearson said. "So for a world-class Jazz venue to not include an African American performer in a 10-year tribute is just so sideways."
Over the years, countless prominent African Americans have performed at Yoshi's, including Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, Howard Wiley, Abbey Lincoln, Mulgrew Miller, Terence Blanchard, Marcus Shelby, McCoy Tyner, Shirley Horn and Elvin Jones.
Peter Williams, Yoshi's artistic director, said the exclusion was an oversight and that the club does not have the right to record all the performers that appear there. "We apologize to anyone who feels slighted by the omission of African American artists on this project, as that was never our intention," he wrote in an e-mail to concerned supporters. "This compilation CD was meant to celebrate a milestone for us in the Bay Area and not necessarily meant to be a representation of all the artists and music styles ever played at our club."
DeLeon said she and others angry about the CD do not suspect that Yoshi's conspired to leave out African Americans; they are upset it happened without anyone noticing. "The Bay Area is a Jazz Mecca, considered one of the top three or four markets in the country, so for its premiere venue to leave out African American artists is amazing," said Herve Ernest, executive director of SF Noir, an arts and culture organization that highlights African American contributions, and a co-founder of the North Beach Jazz Festival. "From what I have perceived and what I've witnessed, there is a certain whitewashing of Jazz both locally and nationally," Ernest said. "I think it is done from a marketing standpoint and is a response to the largely white audiences that patronize an establishment." Ernest said one of the reasons he founded SF Noir was that he noticed the Jazz festival audiences were 90 percent white, and he wanted to try to appeal to a more diverse crowd and put a stronger focus on black contributions to the art. "It really gets me upset that people like Norah Jones, who is white and East Indian, gets pushed through with heavy marketing, when there are dozens of African American female Jazz vocalists who, in my opinion, are 10 times better," he said. "I'm not sure if the exclusion is intended or an honest overlook, but we created Jazz and we are still playing it, so we should not be overlooked."
Local Jazz artists said they see the discussion as
positive in that it is offering a chance to address an
issue that has been stewing for some time. "A desire to
organize has been lacking," said local Jazz singer
Rhonda Benin, "but now a number of musicians are ready
to take action."
"It's an ongoing problem that was brought to a head by
these two events," said Raymond Nat Turner, an
Oakland-based Jazz poet. "That set in motion a chain
of e-mails and unleashed an energy that had been
dormant for years. People who had not been communicating have started
talking and networking," Turner said.
At a forum at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music
last month, about 35 people discussed how better to
support black-owned venues and artists and recruiting
more African American children into the world of Jazz.
"We are becoming the minority as Europeans and
Caucasians take over," Turner said.
Those who attended the forum plan to meet again Sunday
to develop a long-term strategy. "This is an African American art form and they are
excluding the very people who created it and continue to play it," said Benin.
"It's a travesty." The Equal Justice Society
www.equaljusticesociety.org
is a national advocacy organization strategically advancing social and racial justice through law and public policy, communications
and the arts, and alliance building.
Equal Justice Society, 220 Sansome Street, 14th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104
415-288-8700 Famoudou Don Moye Check out this link:
http://blog.allmusic.com/2008/2/8/highbrows-in-the-land-of-jazz-part-3/
To: Tom Washington
From: Shelley Fisher
Subject: Fwd: The Exclusion of Black Jazz Artists
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 12:12:45 -0700
Sun Percussion
Rhythm and Melody in Motion
WELL, WELL, WELL! THE DEAD HAVE AWAKENED!
WELCOME PILGRIMS. YOUR SEARCH HAS ENDED!
DIVA JC
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a NEW model
that makes the existing model obsolete."
-- Buckminster Fuller
RACISM + SEXISM
In 1988, I wrote an article in a local newspaper in Florida, asking "Are We Throwing Our Culture Away?", quoting Wynton Marsalis and several other Jazz aficionados who contended blacks, indeed, simply throw away their culture to those who find it not only interesting and worthwhile, but lucrative.
In Switzerland, alone, there are 200 Jazz festivals, during the summer, not to mention the endless Jazz Festivals held in Italy, Germany, Austria, Holland and France. For decades, Europeans have benefited, economically, from the presentation of Jazz music, by bringing black American musicians in who taught the Europeans how to play the music to the extent that Kenny Clarke revealed that he was "no longer needed" in Paris, where a black musician can hardly get a gig, these days. The Montreux Jazz Festival, in its 41st year, makes the entire annual income for the City of Montreux from this festival! Imagine that!
No, they don't need ya'll anymore. Not only do they play all the flatted 5ths, 13th chords and suspensions, but they write 'em down, jes like dey did all dos wonnerful nigra field songs ya'll sang on de plantation and dey put dem on sheet music and made a bundle of money from sellin' 'em cuz ya'll din know nuthin' 'bout writin' dat stuff down, jes like ole Scott Joplin, who got ripped off for all his music by dat white publisher man.
Well, folks, it's the new millennium and they still don't need ya'll. Or do they?
One thing I hear from too many black musicians who ain't playin' COOL or SMOOTH Jazz to make a livin' (like they do in Atlanta, the "UnJazz Town") is "white players don't have the FEELIN' that black players have."
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
"There is only Black American Jazz...all others are weak imitations of the original." -- ARCHIE SHEPP
Shepp came to prominence as an articulate and passionate critic of the economic exploitation and cultural suppression of the African-American artist. (Source)
DIVA JC asks:
Is the music about notes, chords and riffs or is it about feeling?
Or, is it about the control of the CULTURAL PRODUCTION of people still considered less than a human being in the country where the music was instituted as the rhetoric of humans treated like less than human beings, 2/5ths less, to be exact. If Massa, owned you, then Massa owns your crops, your chirren and your cultural product -- Jazz, Blues, Gospel, R&B, Soul, Hip Hop and all the dance steps that go along with it.
The real question is "How do we regain ownership of our cultural production?"
The answer is "Create our own venues for our performance!"
"America" doesn't have any plans for REPARATIONS to Africans who are descendants of those enslaved by Europeans in the Americas. There is no way that this can be repaired except by those who were in DESPAIR! Only Black Americans can repair the offenses against themselves, as a Race of People brought to these shores to build this wonderful Nation that every other group of people seems to be able to benefit from but Black Americans.
Why is that?
As co-Creators with the Universe, it is each individual's duty to CREATE Her World. As long as Blacks in America are waiting to be hired, employed, promoted, recognized, lifted up, produced, recorded or sponsored by the White [Anglo] Establishment, Blacks will fall short of their God-Given Right to benefit from the fruits of their own labor -- in any shape or form -- be it art, music, electronics, engineering, contracting, writing, cooking, lawn mowing or whatever.
Therefore, CUE JAZZFEST AND MUSIC CONFERENCE has been instituted to present musicians and scholars of African, Chinese and European descent who acknowledge that the origins of the music is found in the African-American community. Stay tuned and check out the site by clicking the link above. SPONSORSHIP IS BEING GATHERED AS WE SPEAK. Put your money where your mouth is!
Can't wait to hear from ya'll on this subject. . .
DIVA JC, Founder, CUE JAZZFEST and
P.S. Last year, I contacted Peter at Yoshi's to see about getting booked there. He said I was not known enough in Cali for him to book me there. Funny, I'm known in 15 countries on 5 continents. Guess I'm just not the right TYPE for his club!
So, I'm off to OWN my own venue. Do you want to be a partner? Contact me at: cuejazz@gmail.com
What does
it take? MONEY$$$$$$$$$$$$$
He or she that hath the GOLD rules! MFS
I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Shepp While his comments are not "politically correct", he has spoken the truth. Black music in all forms has transformed and influence music worldwide, and yet, in these United States, the history has been twisted. I can remember when the Grammy's had a real Jazz category and then one day it changed to Urban Contemporary. Then the number of white nominees increased. Since then, "smooth Jazz" has been anointed "Jazz" and the players are mostly white, or at least not of African descent.
If we as black artists don't speak up and/or get up off our collective asses and speak up, the history will continue to be twisted until Coltrane, like Jesus, will be depicted as a white man. One of my nieces came home baffled when her white teacher told her, after she wanted to write a report on the history of Jazz in America as part of an assignment for Black History Month, it had not been historically proven that Jazz is historically black. Needless to say, the teacher has had a change of mind and will be careful to not make such ignorant statements again, at least not as long as my niece is one of her students.
I am not shy about speaking the truth about the origins
of this music. I am not afraid that someone white will be offended
by that truth. Hell, I'M offended that I'm expected to keep quiet
so that white folks remain comfortable.
Joan, I love the description of Atlanta -- The UnJazz Town. LOL! The only time Jazz really
gets any support here in this city is when the Atlanta Jazz Fest is
happening. 40,000 - 100,000 people attend each year, but it has
been proven that these same "Jazz" lovers won't come out and support
the music. Anyone who has attempted to open a Jazz venue, honor the
music and the musicians, and PAY them is usually shut down after a
time. It has even been suggested that it is more honorable to come
out and sit in or play for no money for the "exposure." I have
decided that I would rather walk down Peachtree in my naked splendor
for such "exposure."
Let's keep it real...Peace. Prosperity and Power!
Jace Harnage
Jace Harnage (Photo by Herb Way)
Archie Shepp
Dear DIVA JC:
In reading the various writings to your literary posting about the possible extermination of “Real Jazz”, the musicians who create it, the promotion of other so-called types of Jazz, be it smooth or fusion, or any name you want to associate with it and the “writing out” of the true creators of “the music that black people play” so-called Jazz, is nobody’s fault but our own, meaning, African-Americans.
We have more money, more education than any previous generation of African-Americans have ever had, yet we do less, and we are more fragmented then ever before. We draw lines in the sand between Kappa, Que, Muslim, Mason, Christian, dark and light skin, which results in our not supporting anything that we do.
Just look at our communities across this nation. I’m convinced that a large percent of African-Americans, consciously or subconsciously, wish they where back in slavery, maybe not with all the cruelty that our ancestors endured, but with the false comfort that someone else is taking care of them. If there’s no truth to this statement, explain to me why we our in such dire straits, economically, today. This is on all fronts, not just the Arts, but in our dysfunctional neighborhoods and communities across this nation.
Where are all the great things that we reminisce about that got us to have more than those who came before us?
What accounts for the huge number of African-American young man and women who do not fear incarceration?
The end of the Black Baseball League was the beginning of the end of excelling for African-Americans in this country. The importance of Jackie Robinson going to the white leagues was minuscule compared to the success of black business in this country. This was the cause of the formation of a Black Bourgeois in North America that was opposed to the beliefs and actions of what the masses of African-Americans, a thought process that continues, today, with the mantra “the White man’s, the Asian man’s and the Arab man’s sugar is sweeter and his ice is colder.”
In every society, the artist’s job is to inspire and motivate positive advancement. All people’s history reflects this, and Black musicians need to implement this process by agreed that
- We must promote our own so furiously that everyone will be talking about it.
- We, the creators of Jazz music must stop imitating the imitators, stop playing the European-motivated approaches and continue to create our own approaches, intelligently.
- We must encourage non-musicians or laymen to promote and sponsor our own music.
- We must inspire our community architects, engineers and builders to rebuild where we live.
- We must STOP giving “Them, The man, The Whiteman,” power over us by feeling, if he does not sanction our moves, they are not valid.
- We must create a vibe like George Bush did, when he said, “you’re either with us or against us”.
African-Americans who do not support African-American institutions and businesses should be called out, castigated and branded as traitors. Voluntary slavery or a “good job” with the master is not enough. Going to church and singing is not enough.
Diva JC, keep doing what you are doing. Hopefully, it will become contagious!
Peace
Nardbird
WHY CUE
JAZZ?
Off to OWN my own venue. -- DIVA JC Do you want to be a partner? Contact me at:
cuejazz@gmail.com What does
it take? MONEY$$$$$$$$$$$$$
He or she that hath the GOLD rules!
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