Jazz Music

November 10, 2009

… and she’s buy-uy-ing The Engelberg Grand Stair-air-case … to Heav-unnn

“My, that Wyn­ton Marsalis swings his pan­taloons off!”

Yes­ter­day I asked the musi­cal question …

Where do you have to go to find a Con Ed Orches­tra Pit? Or an Agnes Varis Infrared Lis­ten­ing Sys­tem? To what ends of the earth would one have to travel to find The Peter Jay Sharp Arcade, or The Alfred and Gail Engel­berg Grand Stair­case? Any guesses?

Ok, I’ll give you a hint: The same place houses a night­club named for both a founder of bebop and a molar-rotting car­bon­ated beverage.

The answer is, of course, Fred­er­ick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lin­coln Center.

***

You don’t have to be a com­mie pinko like me to see that the rich peo­ple in this coun­try have too damn much money. The rich folk them­selves must know it. I mean, why else would they be so pre­oc­cu­pied with find­ing new ways to dis­pose of it?

Money, cour­tesy of the U.S. Government.

The les­son seems to be that the more money ya got, the harder it is to find things to spend it on. There are peo­ple who can and do pur­chase any mate­r­ial goods they desire, live in bound­less lux­ury, and have absolute free­dom of move­ment, able to travel any­where at any­time as fast as the most technologically-advanced vehi­cles can take them. Yet after all that ardent spend­ing, they still have money left over. Lots of it.

What to do, what to do?

How ’bout buy­ing a sure-fire ticket to heaven? Or, at the very least, a ticket out of hell.

That’s where char­ity comes in. Not the kind of char­ity where a rich per­son sees a social need and strives to ful­fill it – that’s called “phil­an­thropy,” and it’s a won­der­ful thing. I’m talk­ing the kind of “cause” that flat­ters a donor into giv­ing his mil­lions in return for hav­ing his or his company’s name writ­ten in gilded let­ters on a build­ing or con­cert stage or an art gallery. The con­struc­tion of Rose Hall, and by exten­sion, Jazz at Lin­coln Cen­ter, was/is exactly that sort of “cause.”

Like every other major non-profit arts orga­ni­za­tion, J@LC’s exis­tence depends on find­ing peo­ple with too much money and ego, and too lit­tle sense. A page on its Web site telling the his­tory of Rose Hall pro­vides a list of such peo­ple under the rubric, “named spaces:” nooks and cran­nies and techie giz­mos and orches­tra pits and stair­cases to heaven that bear the names of their filthy rich donors – tan­gi­ble proof to them­selves and their high soci­ety and busi­ness bud­dies that,  while they may be utterly inca­pable of cre­at­ing any­thing, at least they can buy cool stuff and put their name on it.

Accord­ing to its archi­tects’ Web site, Rose Hall cost $128 mil­lion to build. For that money you could hire 2,560 jazz musi­cians at 50 grand apiece to per­form jazz and teach in every cor­ner of the country.

Imag­ine that. Upwards of 50 jazz-musicians-in-residence for every state of the union. 2,560 jazz musi­cians play­ing weekly con­certs and teach­ing jazz directly any­one who wants to learn, every day for a year. That’s enough musi­cians to fill three pro­fes­sional big bands and untold num­bers of small groups, liv­ing and work­ing in every state, expos­ing peo­ple (espe­cially kids) to jazz first-hand. Not in the form of a once-a-year school assem­bly or con­cert fea­tur­ing a group of trav­el­ing mer­ce­nar­ies head­quar­tered in New York, mind you. These would be artists liv­ing and work­ing in the com­mu­nity, teach­ing and per­form­ing year-round in local class­rooms and audi­to­ri­ums and gym­na­si­ums. That, with the addi­tional ben­e­fit accru­ing 2,560 jazz musi­cians actu­ally being paid a liv­ing wage for per­haps the first time in their lives.

“Prof” John Scofield by Robert Drozd

Of course, a $128 mil­lion build­ing is gonna be around for awhile, while my “plan,” such as it is, pro­vides music for only one year. But what a year! It’s not hard to imag­ine the impact of such a pro­gram to be more pro­found and last­ing than the New York-centric J@LC’s efforts. And it doesn’t have to be $128 mil­lion. Just the equiv­a­lent of J@LC’s annual $31 mil­lion a year oper­at­ing bud­get could fund a pro­gram that employs artists and exposes young peo­ple all across the nation to world-class jazz. A John Scofield res­i­dency in rural Nebraska? Vijay Iyer in Ban­gor, Maine? Why not?

If my plan sounds half-assed, that’s because it is. I haven’t come any­where near close to think­ing up a work­able sys­tem, nor will I. I’m a musi­cian and a writer, not a politi­cian or arts admin­is­tra­tor. But I do know that spend­ing $31 mil­lion a year on J@LC, on top of a $128 mil­lion invest­ment in the con­struc­tion of its con­cert hall, has been and will likely con­tinue to be an appalling mis­use of money.

The goal is pur­port­edly the fur­ther­ance of jazz. The actual result has been some­thing else entirely.

Next: Wyn­ton ain’t the prob­lem with J@LC. J@LC ‘s very exis­tence is the problem.

Comments (8)

1. As you envi­sion it, hir­ing jazz musi­cians to live and work in every state, play­ing con­certs and teach­ing, expos­ing peo­ple (espe­cially kids) to jazz first-hand, would: (1) have a pro­found and last­ing impact on local com­mu­ni­ties and (2) pro­vide a liv­ing wage to these musi­cians. Being pri­vately funded, this would not be a pub­lic works project, like FDR’s Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion; it would be char­ity. Yet the mis­sion­ary impulse, how­ever noble its intent, is in prac­tice often dis­as­trous. Look at the pro­found and last­ing impact well-meaning white peo­ple have had in sub-Saharan Africa dur­ing the post-colonial period (i.e., the last 50 years). Their “char­ity” has been dev­as­tat­ing. Before we exile John Scofield to rural Nebraska and Vijay Iyer to Ban­gor, Maine, we need to think about what we’re doing. Jazz no more speaks the lan­guage of folks in those com­mu­ni­ties than do I speak Swahili. After a year, when John Scofield and Vijay Iyer hap­pily return to New York City and resume their real careers, rural Nebraska and Ban­gor, Maine will prob­a­bly have been no bet­ter served than Africa has been by Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies. “It may be,” cau­tioned Thoreau in Walden (1854), “that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to pro­duce that mis­ery which he strives in vain to relieve.”

   Comment by Alan Kurtz — November 10, 2009 @ 4:03 pm

2. (And they say I’M a contrarian!)

   Hey, I told you it was a half-assed plan.

   Actu­ally, if the gov­ern­ment would tax the rich in cor­rect pro­por­tion, there’d be more than enough dough to make such a thing a WPA-like enter­prise. I’d greatly pre­fer THAT.

   Ulti­mately, how­ever, my main beef here is with the very idea of huge non-profits like J@LC – how they exist mostly for the aggran­dize­ment of a very few, and ben­e­fit almost nobody they gen­er­ally pur­port to want to help.

   I def­i­nitely believe that more good comes from direct involve­ment, as opposed to con­triv­ing a huge edi­fice as a des­ti­na­tion for a pilgrimage.

   Your point about jazz not speak­ing to the great unwashed is well taken. I would sub­mit, how­ever, that your par­al­lels with pre-20th cen­tury philoso­phers and do-gooders are not as rel­e­vant today as they might have been even 20 years ago. Mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion has con­tracted the bor­ders of cul­ture to such an extent that 16 year-olds in Birm­ing­ham or Lewis­ton are as likely to dig Jay Z and Alica Keys as their peers in Brooklyn. 

   (Of course, an unfor­tu­nate cor­ro­lary may be that those same young Alaba­mans or Maine-iacs [I was born in Ban­gor, so I’m enti­tled] are as likely to reject Sco or Iyer as their coun­ter­parts in New York. But per­haps not any more so.) 

   Hell, my father was intro­duced to jazz as a teenager grow­ing up in the early ‘50s in Waynoka, OK, about as small and remote a place as can be imag­ined. His guide? A vis­it­ing uncle-by-marriage from Louisiana, who essen­tially did for my dad what I describe in my post. If it could hap­pen then, in the heart of Hank Williams and Bob Wills coun­try, there’s no rea­son it can’t hap­pen today, when bound­aries sep­a­rat­ing us are becom­ing dim­mer every day.

   Comment by Chris — November 10, 2009 @ 4:43 pm

3. JLC is of a piece with Gold­man Sachs. I was in Ban­gor in Sep­tem­ber. The olde Bagel Deli owned by Sen­a­tor Cohen’s fam­ily is gone. Attempts were made to yup­pify the place but failed miserably.

   Actu­ally, a com­mon ele­ment of many pub­lic and foun­da­tion grants is to pro­pose for under­served audi­ences which can be defined sev­eral ways, either geographically,demographically, eco­nom­i­cally or culturally.

   A good pro­posal has to address this stuff.But pub­lic fund­ing is and has been wretched since Jesse Helms attacked it in the late 80s. Cor­po­rate fund­ing, par­tic­u­larly among sports fran­chises, is note­wor­thy for also hav­ing require­ments usu­ally for low income urban youth. Same with McDon­alds of all things.

   Now that we are in a neo feu­dal period of max­i­mum oli­garchy, all oli­garchs all the time, it makes sense that we have these huge ridicu­lous spec­ta­cles in some Emer­ald City for rich dick­heads to back pat them­selves. Amer­ica is embar­rass­ing. Europe does it better.

   Comment by Chris Rich — November 10, 2009 @ 8:30 pm

4. Oh and Henry is not the most reli­able bea­con. The world was a bit sim­pler in the 1840s. Hawthorne called him a walk­ing rebuke and Emer­son got sick of his shit. His best stuff is about canoe trips and hikes. His Walden shack wasn’t far from moms house. I used to fish there, mainly caught bass.

   And his loca­tion in the fam­ily plot on Authors Ridge in Con­cord is pretty funny, a lit­tle stone in the cor­ner about the size of a toaster, “Henry”. Emerson’s grave stone is some big pink gran­ite thing like you’d expect for Liberace. 

   Hank’s books didn’t sell well but evil B F Skin­ner liked Walden enough to crank out Walden II. Now there’s a recommendation.

   “I would rather sit on a pump­kin and have it to myself than be crowded on a vel­vet cush­ion.” Life of the party.

   An orig­i­nal nar­cis­sist and per­fect boomer neo­con icon.

   Comment by Chris Rich — November 10, 2009 @ 8:43 pm

5. If it’s true, as you con­tend, that “mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion has con­tracted the bor­ders of cul­ture,” why is it nec­es­sary to dis­patch jazz mis­sion­ar­ies to the hin­ter­lands? Instead of fund­ing a few thou­sand artists in res­i­dence who would come into con­tact with, at most, tens of thou­sands of natives in their jazz-deprived habi­tats, you ought to use mass media and reach mil­lions. As long as you’re giv­ing away rich people’s money any­way, rather than your own, you might as well do it cost-effectively.

   Comment by Alan Kurtz — November 10, 2009 @ 11:07 pm

6. For the same rea­son I don’t only lis­ten to records. Human con­tact has its virtues.

   Comment by Chris — November 11, 2009 @ 2:01 pm

7. The only Thoreau I’ve ever read is The Maine Woods. Couldn’t really dig it at the time, but maybe I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t get very far …

   Comment by Chris — November 11, 2009 @ 3:07 pm

8. Plenty of “cre­ative” think­ing musi­cians out there, who seem to have plenty of ideas on how to spend “rich people’s” money to mag­i­cally cre­ate an audi­ence for their art, yet today, they can’t seem to attract enough of an audi­ence to pay $5 to hear them play at some dive in Brooklyn.

   If only the masses could hear my 20 min­utes of ambigu­ous, pan-harmonic blow­ing, over a 11/8, Pakistani/Macedonian inspired vamp, then they would wake up to what a corporate-controlled, arts-wasteland this coun­try has become.

   Comment by adrian molina — November 12, 2009 @ 2:51 pm

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