recent jazz hot editorial translation

[alocispepraluger102]

LINK

"The health bulletin

There are many indicators of the healty state of jazz: the number of clubs, of record stores, of record sales, of specialized magazines and their history and readers, websites and flow, record productions, artists, the nature of their expression and their lifestyle, the importance of advertising, its exposure in the media, the importance of jazz artists and not only the acknowledged ‘stars’ in the business or those with more than a 60 year old career or an obituary.

Of course there are summer jazz festivals with their artistic content, an annual barometer intended to represent the artistic state of jazz and its public which can be more or less of good quality. All these elements are not only quantitative but mainly

qualitative and one must use these figures very cautiously in order to avoid making them say what they don’t mean.

So a jazz festival with an increase of paying spectators does not necessarily mean it is in good health nor if jazz is in good shape. It happens –as is often the case– that a jazz festival is doped with commerciality to increase its gain. Like any other drug, you need more and more, and that is the best way for jazz to vanish from the horizon. What is the sense of a jazz festival without jazz and an audience of jazz connoisseurs?

This summer in Europe, as for the past few years, even before the economic crisis, festivals, that depend on local authorities, sponsors and now the crisis, suffer from specific restraints that prompt them to modify the nature of their programming or their budget of guest artists, when they are not struggling to survive. This phenonemon varies in every country and impacts the artistic content, the communication, the quality and length of the gathering, with significant consequences as much for the musicians as for all the actors whose work depends on these festivals on a local, national or international scale."

[Big Beat Steve]

This statement here nails it IMO:

"Today the ‘good health’ of a number of big jazz festivals worldwide hides an artistic reality in terms of frequentation that is far from brilliant with the dilution of jazz in its programming (even when what remains is good) and focuses on musicians that do not belong in jazz neither by the spirit nor the form even when they try to convince the contrary. It misleads the public, the current and future programmers, sometimes critics of specialized magazines and the musicians. And it doesn't open the scene of these festivals to the jazz musicians who follow what's going on in the ‘big’ jazz festivals of which many they are excluded."

Have often observed this in the programs of jazz festivals over here in recent years, and this certainly does not attract me to attending these festivals if I have to sit through half or 3 quarters of a program that have only extremely tenuous connections with jazz at best and wade through a herd of partygoers who visibly aren't interested in the jazz content but to whom this seems to be more of a "see and be seen" event.

[king ubu]

Yes indeed. I tend to prefer the few smaller and truly dedicated festivals here in Zurich ... but even there you might end up listening to some uninspired rapper backed by some local fellows who think they're doing something really inventive ... the one big festival in Zurich taking place soon has gone that in-people festival route several years back and asks crazy prices for concerts. I only go there if there's anyone playing whom I badly want to see (Dr. Lonnie Smith in 2007 was the last one ... he was - dig that! - playing a free concert, two full sets, two and a half hour of smokin' music!)

[robertoart]

Yep. How marginalised has instrumental music become in favour of warblers from the commercial side of things. Lest we expect an audience to want to actually be active listeners. How does someone with Bob Dylan's etc.al. legacy, fit into a Jazz or Blues context. If memory serves he was/is a multi-million selling Rock musician.