A touchy subject, so bring your big boy pants

[Soul Stream]

For someone like myself who's only played 'black' music their whole career. The older I get, the more I realize a white guy playing black music is just not going to get over to some (maybe a majority) of people. You're just not seen as being authentic these days unless the music you're playing is race-appropriate. It's not 'real' enough. I'm sure there has always been a lot of this. But in the last 5 years, I think it's really gotten worse with the 25 and under crowd. I've heard/read these terms so much over the years that it's getting a bit old...

lame white boy blues band

lame white boy funk band

lame white boy R&B band

lame white boy jazz band

I say this knowing there are just as many lame ass black bands in the same catagories. However, I see white audiences giving those guys a pass many times, because they percieve them as 'authentic.' I'm sure there a lots of folks here on the board who might secretly, or not so secretly hold the same views. So let's be honest among us...who here is a "if it's not black, it's whack" kind of music fan.

[jazzbo]

Not me Mike.

BUT. . . I do know exactly what you mean and can echo your observation about the last five to ten years.

[Soul Stream]

Thanks for the input Lon. I also wanted to say that as a musician, I've never felt more accepted and appreciated than in front of all black audiences. It only seems to be the white audience that makes you jump through hoops (if they even give you the chance at all).

[Dan Gould]

While I haven't heard you play, Mike, I know from your background and the time you spent with masters like Big John Patton that there is no doubt that you are totally authentic in your chosen styles. Anyone who looks at the color of your skin instead of listening isn't worth worrying about.

[Dan Gould]

P.S. - I'm glad to hear that its lame ass young whites who think you are inauthentic.

[Soul Stream]

Thanks Dan. I really meant to frame this discussion in a more general way. I personally haven't felt a huge backlash, although I do pick up on it for sure and it seems like you're always going to battle it in one way or another. Especially with music critics. It was brought to my mind more from talking with people at clubs, reading things, ect about other bands or musicians. The way folks talk. The way the thinking is going. It's this swell of sentiment that I've been picking up on in the last few years.... I'm even guilty of it myself to some degree. I mean I HAVE seen a lot of lame ass blues/jazz/funk/ect white boy bands (and an equal amount of black ones too)

[sal]

P.S. - I'm glad to hear that its lame ass young whites who think you are inauthentic.

For me personally, I don't care about skin color....if the music is good, its good.

[Joe G]

You're just not seen as being authentic these days unless the music you're playing is race-appropriate.

I can't think of anything more stupid than that, but thankfully, neither can I think of a single instance of someone expressing this sentiment to me over the last several years. Strange that you are hearing this on a regular enough basis that it strikes you as a trend - especially among younger people.

[Soul Stream]

You're just not seen as being authentic these days unless the music you're playing is race-appropriate.

I can't think of anything more stupid than that, but thankfully, neither can I think of a single instance of someone expressing this sentiment to me over the last several years. Strange that you are hearing this on a regular enough basis that it strikes you as a trend - especially among younger people.

Joe, it's funny in that maybe since I live in a town known for it's Country & Western and it's a stark contrast to me in this way. I don't know how many locals and out of towners who come through and are blown away (rightfully) by some of the western swing and traditional C&W acts and musicians here in town (All white of course). Yet these same people just can't be impressed by white musicians of equal ability that play blues, R&B or jazz in this town. But if some of these same people go to an east side and see a half drunk do the same thing, they really get excited by it, exclaiming how great it all is. Just an observation I've had. There's a blues label in town that caters to Japan and Europe, that for years will only use white musicians as a backup band... for their abilites in the studio. But the leaders on the front cover have to be black. That label owner has told me he'd like to do records on others here in town but can't sell them to his market with white people on the cover. I did a record with him and none of the white musicians involved were allowed to be pictured on the insert of the CD. I didn't care, just a fact of life. But it does go on.

[jazzbo]

It may say something about Texas. . . or just Austin. . .but I have heard these comments here too. And the damning part of THAT is. . . I don't get out that often at all, but I've heard them. . . .

[Aggie87]

That's kind of bothersome, if you consider that Austin is probably the most progressive, open-minded city in Texas.

Edited May 31, 2007 by Aggie87

[BruceH]

Not me Mike.

BUT. . . I do know exactly what you mean and can echo your observation about the last five to ten years.

Man, that's pretty depressing. I hope you guys are wrong on this.

[7/4]

not an issue with me.

[Peter Johnson]

Anyone who looks at the color of your skin instead of listening isn't worth worrying about.

My sentiments exactly.

[Jazz Kat]

Another thing as stupid as race is like Soul Stream mentioned, is location. If you're from texas, you can't play jazz or whatever. Same thing that was happening with the west coast players in the 60's. (i think) I never had this issue, or at least no one ever told me. I think it is the worst. If people would forget about this nonsense, and just shut up and play, it would be a whole lot more meaningful.

[Sundog]

You're just not seen as being authentic these days unless the music you're playing is race-appropriate.

At least your in good company. It all probably started with Bix & Tram and has been going on ever since. Can't please everybody. Especially the ignorant, racially-minded "fu@K heads" out there walking the earth.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's the Boston area, but I can't remember the last time I ever concerned myself about the race of the players on the stage. Sure, I've thought about the mix of races in a few bands, but I never thought to myself, "Hey, these guys are all white" or vice versa. I just can't fathom what difference it should make. Who cares what skin tone they have? They can either play or they can't play. Only valid criterian in my book.

[brownie]

In a similar vein...

From today's edition of The San Francisco Chronicle:

BLACKS IN JAZZ DECRY EXCLUSION

Few booked for Berkeley festival, none on Yoshi's anniversary CD

Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, June 1, 2007

Jazz saxophonist Howard Wiley rehearses in San Leandro. C... Yoshi's jazz club owners Yoshie Akiba (second from left) ... Susan Muscarella says she books acts for the Berkeley Jaz... "Live at Yoshi's" 10th anniversary CD: 1. Turn Around - M...

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 July.

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 Jazzschool, 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) get 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."

'Live at Yoshi's'

10th anniversary CD:

1 Turn Around

Marian McPartland

2 Doxy -- Joe Pass

3 Cherokee

Joey DeFrancesco

4 Lisa -- Poncho Sanchez

5 This Is Heaven to Me

Madeleine Peyroux

6 Autumn Leaves

Joey DeFrancesco

7 In a Sentimental Mood

Marian McPartland

8 What Is This Thing

Called Love? -- Joe Pass

9 Help the Poor

Robben Ford

0 Guaripumpe

Poncho Sanchez

Source: www.yoshis.com

[AndrewHill]

If I like something, it doesn't matter to me who made it.

[Noj]

If I like something, it doesn't matter to me who made it.

Those to whom it does matter aren't doing enough listening.

[jazzbo]

You're just not seen as being authentic these days unless the music you're playing is race-appropriate.

At least your in good company. It all probably started with Bix & Tram and has been going on ever since. Can't please everybody. Especially the ignorant, racially-minded "fu@K heads" out there walking the earth.

Hell, it even started BEFORE Bix and Tram. . . .

It's different here in the South (Texas likes to think it's the West! but it's more South if you ask me) than up in Kevin's neck of the woods. . . . All I can say is though no one has been bold enough to really address those comments to me, and those I hang with are beyond race indeed, but I have overheard this in offices and in clubs. And I've been able to challenge or query it a few times and I think honestly these remarks are not thought through, they're just an automatic response more often than not. . . .Which really isn't too surprising to me, here in the south.

[Jim R]

In a similar vein...

From today's edition of The San Francisco Chronicle:

BLACKS IN JAZZ DECRY EXCLUSION

Few booked for Berkeley festival, none on Yoshi's anniversary CD

Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, June 1, 2007

Jazz saxophonist Howard Wiley rehearses in San Leandro. C... Yoshi's jazz club owners Yoshie Akiba (second from left) ... Susan Muscarella says she books acts for the Berkeley Jaz... "Live at Yoshi's" 10th anniversary CD: 1. Turn Around - M...

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 July.

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 Jazzschool, 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) get 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."

'Live at Yoshi's'

10th anniversary CD:

1 Turn Around

Marian McPartland

2 Doxy -- Joe Pass

3 Cherokee

Joey DeFrancesco

4 Lisa -- Poncho Sanchez

5 This Is Heaven to Me

Madeleine Peyroux

6 Autumn Leaves

Joey DeFrancesco

7 In a Sentimental Mood

Marian McPartland

8 What Is This Thing

Called Love? -- Joe Pass

9 Help the Poor

Robben Ford

10 Guaripumpe

Poncho Sanchez

Source: www.yoshis.com

Not only are there no blacks on the CD, there are only 6 artists represented in the 10 tracks. Makes you wonder just how limited they've been in terms of who they can and can not record over all those years.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

No time to read. See yer after dinner.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

While I haven't heard you play, Mike, I know from your background and the time you spent with masters like Big John Patton that there is no doubt that you are totally authentic in your chosen styles. Anyone who looks at the color of your skin instead of listening isn't worth worrying about.

That's right. Authenticity is not racial, it's experiential. Sometimes it's hard for white musicians to get that experience. On his AAJ thread, which I know you've read SS, Pat Martino had some interesting experiences and observations to make regarding the period when he was playing with Willis Jackson and Jack McDuff. But for goodness sake, anyone who listens to him, Ronnie Cuber, Gene Ludwig and hundreds of others, knows that that experience is THERE and informing the music, just as it was with Gator, Brother Jack etc etc...

MG

[JSngry]

Jazz as a "musical language" used to convey certain musical ideals is something that anybody can get to as a player.

Jazz as a "musical language" used to convey stories of specific life experiences & the worldviews that arise from those experiences is something that a player has to know first-hand in order to speak effectively and with integrity. It is not in any way race-specific, but given the enormous influence that race still has on how life is lived in this country (in spite of it becoming a significantly more difuse influence than it onece had), the odds are still good that the number of people playing the music who are able to really "get inside" it at this level "from the outside" are less than one might think/hope/whatever. Or not, if you know what I mean...

Has the music reached the point where the first concept of "musical language" has pretty much obliterated the value that once was placed on the second? I think it has, and although I personally prefer the second version, hey, it's not my world.

What else has happened, though, is that a lot (too many?) people across the board have appraoched the music far more in love with the idea than the reality of jazz as cultural "storytelling" (and to make it clear, this concept is in no way racially exclusive) while actually pursuing the music as a "musical style". It's sort of like learning how to speak phonetically, and becoming proficient in the "sound" of the words before (if at all) grasping their deeper/more nuanced/whatever meaning.

But does that really matter? What if you reach a point, as I think jazz has, where audiences "expectations" are based almost entirely on handed down stories and images rather than those gleaned first hand? What about musicians who feel "entitled" to a legacy either because of the race they were born into or because of the notion that "jazz is colorblind"? Is it even worth having this discussion when audiences' & musicians' expectations are both based on a historical view that they largely know next to nothing about at anything more than a received level (and btw - from whom have they received it?)?

Anybody can make "good music". Anybody. Not everybody can "tell a story in the language" and have it sound & feel real because it is real. Everybody can listen with their eyes and not think past what they've been programmed into thinking of as "truth". Not everybody can deal with anything beyond that.

And that applies at least as much to musicians as it does audiences. Probably more. Color doesn't matter, but only once you've realized exactly why it doesn't. And that is something far deeper, complex, and fundamental than a bunch of starry-eyed idealistic statements about how we're all the same inside, or some lame bullshit like that, the kind of hand-holding WeAreTheWorld feel good crap that essentially bypasses reality in search of "truth". Sorry, it don't work that way too much past "the event".

Frankly, I think that there's more lameness in the jazz/blues arena today than ever, and it's lameness that is indeed colorblind. Gee, Javon Jackson or Eric Alexander, which boring competent paragon of totally irrelevant (to me) proficiency is the more "authentic"? Wow, that one's pretty much a toss up....

Plenty of jive white posers, plenty of jive black posers. Musicians and fans. Not nearly enough of anybody doing anything other than claiming identities rather than creating them.

P.S. - BTW & FWIW, I hear the reality of a multi-racial collection of influences turning into a non/uni-racial musical/social reality going on far more readily, naturally, and successfully in the "dance underground" than I do in any other music being made today.