THE COMMERCIAL STATE OF JAZZ IN THE NEW MILLENIUM

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

There is a discussion on The Washington DC Network re: returning jazz back to commercially advertising radio stations. The discussion was initiated by my close friend and native Pittsburgher, Mickey Bass, an extraordinarily talented and venerated bassist. After reading the developing thread there I left a short comment but have decided to start another thread on this network that perhaps will move in another direction. Please join in both discussions if you like. It's all good.
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Sometimes we have to look in the mirror and discern what it is we can do to promote our own interests. Expecting third parties to do it is pretty much over in today's world if it, in fact, were ever a good way to do things. The world of the "establishment" is crumbling at light speed before our eyes. If we continue to try to use the establishment models, we will be lost in the shuffle. It has already been pointed out and is easily clear to see that commercial radio stations always existed and depended entirely upon advertising dollars based on the market slice of listeners that paid attention to the station. Jazz has hardly had that kind of patronage since the 40s.

You can always tell the mission of the advertisers by the type of ads that are being run on the commercial stations. The black stations are promoting slavery and ignorance. Not directly from the music so much as from what they sell in between the music. For example, you will learn where the pawnshops are, how to rent furniture, how to get a good bail bondsman, loan shark, etc. on the hip hop/soul stations. Don't take my word for it... listen and hear for yourself. When I talk to my 6th - 12th grade and college students, they report that they listen to nothing else because the other stations don't play "our" music. I remind them what they will never hear in between "their" music on those stations, i.e., the Dow Jones Industrial Average, how to save or invest money, how to get a mortgage, scholarship, health information, learning systems, etc. All they would have to do is turn the dial to get that information but they are so indoctrinated they they won't do it... because the other types of music (classical, pop, adult contemporary and jazz) repel their sensibilities.

In addition to that let's not forget that music has been largely relegated to insignificance in the public schools so the youth are listening to machines and don't even have a clue that human beings can make their own music. The private school students who learn music are learning European classical and Broadway style and don't have a clue what improvisation or live spontaneous jazz is either. If anyone would try to operate a commercial radio station exclusively for jazz, especially the straight-ahead mainstream variety, they would soon go out of business before they attracted a sponsor. The few public stations that have jazz on their playlists have to beg 2-3 times per year to get enough public support to even stay on the air. You cannot solve a problem with the same models that created the problem.

So here we are having a discussion online (where all the fences have come down, and the middle-man has no role to play at all) discussing going back to the days of payola, agents and middleman carpetbaggers who prevented our music from being played, who created the hit parade mentality and who target the 11-12 year old tabula rasa minds with as much crap as they can steal. Does it make sense going back to those models? Wake up people! It's a new world that will never go back to the old world. Years ago the major advertisers (like the largest, Proctor & Gamble), reduced their advertising budgets 60-70% on network radio and television. Super Bowl half-time has trouble getting money from them. Where has their money gone? Right here on the internet.

Advertising money is spent on our attention. A brand means nothing unless someone looks at it for more than a couple seconds. We look at YouTube videos for 51-20 minutes at a time. There are millions of us on MySpace providing all the content and value and attention needed for Rupert Murdoch, et al to make close to $100 million/month in commercial advertising and share none of it with us. Wake up people!!!

We can have our own MySpace for almost nothing. We can have our own radio podcast or videocast for almost nothing and load it up with our own content. It will attract the attention of end users that want to experience our offerings and their are many valuable sequelae that flow from that. The techological revolution is decimating the old models and creating new opportunities for us that are at our fingertips.

The athletes figured it out... now they make millions individually. I remember when they used to follow the jazz musicians around the club circuit. We still hide our magic under a bushel, don't talk about it to our audience even when we have a microphone in our hands, and ignore the non-musician patrons who DO come to the clubs while we hover in the corner talking to each other about our sad state of affairs. I see it every week. Tell me I'm wrong. Turn on the network media and see if you can find a panel of jazz musicians talking about our craft in intricate detail the way the athletes and ex-athletes talk about their sport. I have seen the "immaculate reception" over 1000 times in the past 35 years. Wouldn't it be nice to hear a Sonny Rollins or Art Tatum solo passage that often? It would take a different world to do that. So why don't we wake up and make a different world and quit wasting our time lamenting why the carpetbaggers have abandoned us? They were never our allies in the first place if you want the truth. Can you say Blue Note Records?

"Without vision the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18 If the vision isn't correct, it isn't vision but myopia or perhaps even blindness. When the blind lead the blind, they both fall off the cliff. Can you say Alan Greenspan?

The entire future of intellectual property is in flux (as is everything else in the world) and will probably wind up in a different configuration than we are accustomed to seeing.

I don't know about you, but I don't care anymore about commercially advertising radio than I do black and white television or silent movies. I'm too busy promoting my brand across cyberspace and I suggest it would behoove us all to do likewise to the extend that we can look ahead and not backward.

Please add your opinions to this discussion and see what happens.

Swing on,

Nelson
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LAZY BIRD, ARISE!
Re: Blue Note CDP 7-85177-2
Can be recited or sung to "Lazy Bird" by John Coltrane, Jowcol Music - BMI
Lyrics by Nelson E. Harrison, Timeslice Music/Mayah Publishing - ASCAP

Time for you to wake up,
Lazy bird, there's a sun on the rise…
There's a cause to take up,
Lazy bird, keep your eye on the prize…

(Bridge)
The early bird catches the worms…
The lazy bird fetches the germs…

Wasted time you'll make up,
Lazy bird, if you wing to the skies…

***
You were born to be free,
Lazy bird, time to rise off the fence…
Raise your sights and you'll see
What your claim on the skies represents…

(Bridge)
Don't settle for less than you are…
There is no lid on the jar…

When you're flying carefree
Open skies are your true residence…
Accomplishments… will commence…
When… you… get… up… and… fly.

Author Copyright © 1998 - 2009 by Nelson E. Harrison, ASCAP PAu 2-413-092
All rights Reserved without Prejudice
Article 1 Constitution of the United States and 1-207 U.C.C.

[Khepera]

Nelson, obviously I got your email response, so here I am, virtually in the house...

You & others -- particularly Kevin(I feel ya bro! We are of the some fraternity, out here in the wilderness) -- are hitting on the right notes. Let me start this out by making clear that I am no expert, despite what Nelson may claim to the contrary. LOL!! To use a musical metaphor, Nelson, Kevin & Easely, perhaps what is needed here is some orchestration, some charts to weave these wise riffs into marketable jams...

I was raised on jazz, being a child of the 60's, which may seem even more remarkable when you know I grew up in Detroit. Yusef Lateef and my father were very good friends, and he was sort of like an uncle to me. Playing piano as a child, and having a mother whose bourgeois longings made *classical* european music a requirement was something I endured/survived, much like some did with Catholic school...LOL! Because of my father's influence, I didn't get into *popular* music until I left for prep school at eleven. My scholastic spiral from there led me into rock(along with Motown) as it did many my age. I got into radio when I was in college, and have been in that mix off & on ever since, recently working to resurrect this. I give this background glimpse because I see myself as fairly unique musically among most I know within +/- 15 years of my age. I was more into British Rock & Hendrix than anyone I knew(Black folx), and, sadly, discovered blues thru the back door via rock -- Black & white(War, Led Zepplin, Canned Heat, etc.) Not surprisingly, when fusion/electric jazz emerged, I was all over it, as it was a synthesis of all the best things I liked in music.

Other than Coltrane, Lateef and nearly every bassist you can imagine, fusion was & is still my favorite music. However, a couple of years ago, I had an amazing wake up call. A white guy living I met thru a AFAM Literature listserve sent me some copied CD's in response to a request in our ongoing dialog. Without telling me, he included a copy of Dizzy's "For Musician's Only" which I had never heard...my dad knew Dizzy, but was not a big fan, if measured by the music he owned & played. Well, the first time I heard Bebop, I almost fell out of my chair. Now my audio system at the time was a chicken shit make shift combo....I say this cuz my real system, which was in storage at the time, would be a Ferrari if it was a car. Happily, it is now out of storage....but back to the music. The first time I heard that tune, I distinctly remember my first thought: "How the hell is it that I never heard this before?!!!" & further, "If someone had played this for me, when I was salivating over jazz rock/fusion, it would have been all over." So here we have a situation where I was immersed in jazz, had major musicians coming to the house, went to school with, like Alice Coltrane's niece, yet like a lot of other jazz of the time, I had to discover it as an adult, 20+ years later.

I think something similar has happened with what is mistakenly referred to as acid jazz, but, for the sake of this, I'll just call it jazz/hip-hop fusion. Some musicians, like Ronny Jordan and Courtney Pine are just straight up blending it. Herein, imho, lies a portion of the answer. Those of you who know are aware that, as Nelson has pointed out, mentorship is crucial in jazz. Few applied this, or shouldered this task with the vision & stewardship of Dizzy, Art Blakey & Mingus. Some may argue for Miles in this regard, but that's a discussion for another time. What I'm getting at here addresses some of Stephen Shannon's points above. How many are aware that Ron Carter *discovered* the group Mandrill? How many remember Donald Byrd working with the BlackByrds, just as Ramsey collaborated with Earth, Wind & Fire? These and countless others were what I would term missed opportunities to provide mentorship, direction, molding, helping to cook their muse down to its essence in the visceral laboratory of studio & live performance. In engaging the full range of the musical palette -- without compromising their personal/musical integrity -- there are few better examples than Herbie Hancock & Carlos Santana(As Carlos said in an interview with Tavis, "It's ALL African music."). Herbie blew up the recalcitrant & arbitrary divisions *purists* wanted to put on emerging variations of jazz. When he achieved gold with VSOP AND the Headhunters at the same time,, the argument was essentially over. Yet it lingered for nearly another generation.

Acid jazz, or jazz/hip-hop fusion is a MAJOR tool in reaching out and tapping into the musical sensibilities of those enamored or rap & neo-soul. The key, imho, is thru the use of spoken word in jazz/hip-hop fusion. On my show last week, I played a track from one of those potpurri bands called Tribaljazz. There is a track on there where Alfre Woodard does some spoken word over the music. The title of the track is "The First Time I Heard Coltrane." The title says it all. When younger folks hear this kind of blend, this kind of message, it's a reminder of what they may have missed. You can listen to a sample & get it for .99 if you follow the link.

Now, that point made, the next is leveraging what Nelson lovingly labels as content. I am an engineering designer by profession, author/scholar by avocation, and the vision I had in the late 90's could have launched a buddy of mine in Houston into the stratosphere, as he began promoting & producing live music venues. It still holds, though, for some reason, folx don't see it. Every jazz venue should have themselves wired for CCTV/digital video & recording, as a prerequisite. Why? Because you then have the capacity to capture your own work, with all the energy/presence of live presentation, and post it in podcasts on your club's website at a subscriptions AND pay-per-view arrangement. Those with subscriptions will get a better deal, as a function of their commitment. However, in a short span of time, you will have a library of *content* which you can not only leverage on your own site, but can sell -- with proper copyright coverage -- to other broadcast & cable outlets, all of which are starving for original *content*. The more this is done, the wider the exposure of the music across the globe. As sites like this one, and blogs we each create begin to network & interlink with one another, constantly feeding back to sources/originators/etc., the market will naturally become more educated. If the NBA, NFL & Major League Baseball feel they have enough content to support a year 'round cable channel with their brand, why not for jazz? Internet radio, internet tv, podcast, blogs -- these are the tools, the quill & pen, the reed & horn & ivories we can orchestrate to *Ellingtonize*, *Coltranelation* & show just how Sunny it is in the galaxy, not the planet, of jazz.

There is more, of course to this, but, let's riff this off of one another before we take it to the bridge.


in peace & respect

[Diva JC]

Nelson,
Here's the link to the podcast that you were my guest on February 18, about THE STATE OF JAZZ with other notable jazz aficianado's and musicians.

This show is archived at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/musicwoman/va/2009/02/18/the-state-of-jazz

Hope to do this show with you again, soon.
Love and Music,
Joan Cartwright
www.wijsf.com/radio.com
www.wijsf.com

[Kevin Amos]

Here is something that some of you will be interested in. Now if this is talking about commercial radio in general where do you think this leaves the remaining Jazz stations and public radio?

Kevin

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Signal Fading: Radio 4Q Revs Down 11%
by Erik Sass, Friday, February 20, 2009


Feeling the effects of the sharp economic downturn, radio took another big hit in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. Total ad revenues fell 11%, compared to the same period in 2007, to $4.65 billion.
This contributed to an overall 9% slump for full-year 2008 compared to 2007, to just under $19.5 billion. Worse, these losses are compounding an earlier round of revenue declines in 2007 compared to 2006. The fourth quarter of 2008 was the seventh straight quarter to see radio ad revenues decline.

As in previous quarters, the worst losses in dollar terms came in local advertising, traditionally a mainstay of the radio business. The category tumbled 13% in the fourth quarter, to $3.17 billion. National advertising fell 14% to $735 million. While a smaller part of the business, the national category serves as a bellwether of advertisers' feelings about the medium in general.

Internet advertising provided the sole bright spot on the radio ledger book--but even here the slowing economy made its presence known, with an anemic 1% growth rate in the fourth quarter for the "off-air" category, which includes online.

For the full year, the category grew 7%, leading Jeff Haley, RAB's president and CEO, to assert that off-air revenues will surpass $2 billion in 2009. However, this assertion looks rather optimistic in light of the dramatic slowdown over the course of the year. Off-air grew 15% in the first quarter of 2008, 10% in the second and 5% in the third.

What's more, even if radio revenues did grow as quickly as Haley's forecast, off-air revenues still will be unable to offset the steep losses on the "traditional" broadcast side.

The 11% overall decline between the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008 equaled about $750 million--dwarfing the increase of about $4.4 million in off-air revenues.

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

Kevin,

You have been a pioneer in your field for almost 30 years. The most difficult thing about being a pioneer is being "a voice in the wilderness." People can only do two things with information... process it or reject it. The prophets of old were stoned and rejected only to be quoted for generations to come. Are we to be exempt when even Jesus wasn't? Keep cutting away the brush in your own way and stepping forward. Don't look back lest you get frustrated that the crowd is lagging. Leaders just go their own way because of the gift of vision. Don't look back! If you do look back and the crowd is close behind, then you are slowing down.

[Kevin Amos]

Nelson and others......while this is a great post and it can generate some great discussion I had posted some things last year and also held a music seminar that spoke on some of these same issues and a few more.

Despite my efforts many of you here in Pittsburgh chose not to participate. That is part of the problem right there...the lack of active participation to create solutions. I post things and write articles not for my health but to make a point and to educate.

Why does it take some information from somewhere else to make folks realize that there is a problem?
Historically speaking there has always been a problem with Jazz on the radio. Commercially and otherwise. Part of the solution is promotion and distribution....not payola.

So what happens? Alternatives are created.
The problem is that those who create alternatives such as myself are NOT supported in public. I could care less about my name coming up in a meeting if nothing is being done to help create positive change.If my name comes up in a meeting folks are either trying to duplicate something I created or trying to destroy me. I am more than qualified and the gate keepers know that.

On young people.....there are many talented young folks all over the country who are playing many different genres of music. specifcally Jazz and Blues. Let's not get it twisted.

I have promoted the work of musicians younger than me for over 30 years and used various outlets to let people know about them. Just ask Rev. Tim Smith, Dwayne Dolphin, Cecil Brooks III and numerous others.
I currently teach young people from 4-8th grade and I know the future is not lost if I CONTRIBUTE to their growth. Perhaps some should do some soul searching.

Sorry to sound so hard on this but you have to come hard with no compromise. There is a lot at stake and some of us are constantly working.

Kevin

[Kennard Roosevelt Williams]

I think your point of view is right on the money; so...we know WHO, we know WHAT and we know WHY, so then...HOW, WHEN and WHERE should we start? I'm certain that if all interested PJN members, local artists and musicians would somehow come together and voice their opinions we could easily answer the question of WHERE. Because of this network Nelson, we have the means to answer all the above; and subsequently, a plan of execution would be in order...you know, "think and do." All of our minds working together is the way.

[Kira Gray]

Dear Nelson:
Thanks for laying it out so thought-provokingly. Well said. Cyberspace, of course. We wouldn't even be having this discussion if it weren't for the internet. We wouldn't even know each other to take out that quill pen and write our opinion after we finished powdering our wigs and polishing our shoe buckles.
So it behooves us all to get with it and learn how to put our music into cyberspace the way so many people are these days. As you say, Nelson, one can learn how to do these things by asking someone for help. And strengthening the community of musicians who support each other at the same time. When you have figured it out, teach someone else! The internet is still free at the moment. Let's enjoy it and use it like I am doing right now.
There is a tendency with our modern age philosophy of "work yourself to death" to be tired, stay in and cocoon. GO OUT! GET FRIENDS TO GO OUT! If you aren't playing the music, then go listen to the music. Support the music community.
Two of my favorite listener-sponsored radio stations out here in California went to an all talk format in the past few years giving up wonderful, original music shows, among them jazz. My only regret is that I didn't send them a pile of money in the past so that I could say "I am no longer sending you any money because you are not promoting my interests!" Like I want to be lied to on a full-time basis. So the trend is less music, not more music on the radio. Due to being controlled by financial interests, commercial music is not selling--it's old hamburger being continually repackaged. Jazz is living, breathing music continually being created in the moment.
It is still almost 6 more months before I will be settled in Pittsburgh, my new home. But thanks to cyberspace I feel like I am already becoming part of the Pittsburgh music community. Everyone's rant, rave, idea, generates new ideas. Keep 'em coming. It is time to retire that quill pen forever.

[Clayton "Bigtrigger" Corley]

Well this article is just wonderful and one that I would like to share with all of my listeners. You just spoke the truth and it's a truth that I've heard and discussed with many TRU jazz lovers and musicians

[Rev. Dr. Janson L Kelly Sr.]

Wow my brother this is deep, as I read your article my mind reflected back back to our forefathers and their methods of advertisement,they new then the power of the siprit of air waves. I belive our young people need greater revelation to how this struggle continues and our souls are affected by the end results are we really free? The same is true with Gospel Music. This will preach my brother and needs preached.

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

Thank each of you for your contributions to this discussion so far.

I agree with everything said above. Though we have lost several traditional jazz venues in Pittsburgh in the last year, a few musicians have fired up their cannons and created a couple new ones where the club is packed every week, new people show up every week and regulars rarely miss, young people pull their seats up close to the bandstand because of the juice they get from seeing the musicians truly enjoy creating magic right in front of them. We KNOW this will always work for the simple fact the music has more intrinsic power to move the human spirit than almost anything else. Want proof? I consistently count 30-40 individual Pittsburgh Jazz Network members in these audiences through out the course of the evening. Thank you.

Bill Easley's advice to the Frankenstein-style fledglings who bring their awkward anti-social fumblings to the bandstand is RIGHT ON. The Crawford Grill or the Hurricane Lounge in Pittsburgh would have NEVER tolerated that kind of behavior. As Bill so aptly put it, the jazz audience came into the club to be fed, healed, uplifted and transmigrated to a vibrational level far above the BS they had to tolerate all day. As Art Blakey liked to say, "Jazz washes away the cobwebs of life." He also often said "Jazz is the highest expression possible on a musical instrument." This doesn't come from a book or from sheet music... it comes from a musician who has learned that we are simply channels for a muse that plays us from a higher level if we can only trust, relax and open ourselves to her voice. This is the same muse that enters the audience when they are listening with their hearts, mind and spirit. Those who know will be saying amen. Those who don't know must be initiated and that is the true calling of the artist. The schools will continue to analyze in vain but they are using the wrong tool. I'm one among many who can assure you that the intellect CANNOT go there. This is the knowledge that is passed from master to apprentice in the true jazz tradition and creates the giants of future generations. It never came from the classroom and never will. It must be lived to remain alive and life is 24/7/365. This is what the artist owes the listener and fan as well as the ancestors who created this magical form of expression. I believe firmly that when we as artists realize and celebrate this openly en masse, the people with excess money will pour it on us to try to get what we produce directly from our own life experience and live expressions. This is the greatest form of capitalism... where there is no place for thieves. They have historically taken our golden eggs, cornered the market, created false scarcity by holding back most of it from the people who want it and taken the lion's share of the income, hardly trickling a few drops to the geese. They have used their controlled media to even convince the geese that the golden eggs had no value unless assigned by them on their contrived semantic differential scales of value (can you say hit parade, Grammy, platinum, gold, billboard?) Haven't we had enough? Have we forgotten that we can fly without airplanes? They have controlled their real estate and charged us high tariffs to cross the threshold into the slaughter house. We emerge bloody, raped and pillaged and demoralized by some untalented producer that tells us they might consider giving us a contract to put some of our product into the stream of commerce. We are impressed with their bricks and mortar, their funny-money and their gadgets forgetting that we made more magical, soul stirring music with the naked voice, bare feet or a hand-made instrument than they can make with their fancy machinery.

Have we forgotten that we own the air that the spirit speaks through? Have we not remembered that we can fly on this air just as any bird with wings and lay or deposit our golden eggs on any fertile ears attuned for something of a higher vibration? Now's the Time! Wake up "Lazy Bird."

Ever since the invention of the drum machine, they have attempted to eliminate us because they cannot do what we do. Then they make sure that new generations don't accidentally hear Max Roach, Klook, Art Blakey, or Elvin Jones so they will not realize how pitiful a facsimile the drum machine really is. Then they build the sequencer so anyone (no talent or real effort required) can copy someone's truly creative product and reproduce it under their own name in a "re-mix." Can you say Frankenstein? They target the kids because they have no comparative experience before they are indoctrinated into this musical "matrix." Then they train the youth not to respect anything said to them by an adult or to appreciate anything "old." Most youth under 14yrs of age don't want any part of any music older than 6 months not do they remember any music older than 6 years.

I met some young musicians in the club last night who were about 23 years old. They were transfixed by the music we were playing. They asked me whom I had played with but my answers held no impact. They had never heard of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles, Coltrane, etc. The music they heard, however, produced a very powerful positive reaction and they want to hear more somewhere every week. I, of course, invited them to join us here.

Can you begin to see the power at our fingertips on networks like this one? Stop bragging that you don't know how to use a computer, add a photo, send a text message, or add a friend. Then get someone to teach you how!!!! It's a lot less expensive than paying and third party to do it for you It's as easy as dialing a telephone.

Please don't apologize for ranting and rambling. This is exactly what this blog is for and it will help us to wake each other up.

On my next post I will share my lyric to Coltrane's "Lazy Bird" that says the above in song. Please feel free to use it to send a message out to the jazz community at large. If you don't know the song, look it up. It's on the Blue Trane CD.

Laissez le bon temps roulet! Happy Mardi Gras!