Jazz

John Halle john.halle at yale.edu
Sun Jan 21 10:14:14 PST 2001



>
> Hey, John; I just love the music. It's not even a political thing in any
> direct way, at least for me. The politics and history of it is interesting,
> but mainly I just love the music. I promote it because I hope to get other
> people as excited about this wonderful stuff as I am, and to help keep it
> around in a living form. It's not out of a sense of obligation to the
> oppressed, for example.

Jazz needs "promotion" just about as much as the Gore campaign did. It has a firmly established presence in the universities and conservatories, the universal respect of opinion makers from all political and aesthetic perspectives (Doug being a rare exception), massive financial support from virtually all of the major foundations, a signficant (albeit subsidized) presence on radio in most major markets, shelves of books published by commercial and academic presses, hundreds of newly issued recordings, many of these vanity projects financed by middle-class families who are comfortable subsidizing what is now a thoroughly respectable idiom.

If the public (as opposed to elite opinion) doesn't share your love for jazz, (just as it did not share Eric Alterman's love for Al Gore), it's not for want of "promotion," because the chemistry just isn't there, I'm afraid. The courtship by jazz proselytizers has been long, intense, ardent and unfortunately largely unrequited. At this point, jazz promoters are beginning to resemble stalkers, and a restraining order seems to be necessary.

Why don't we both agree to save our promotional energies (positive and negative) in support of something that needs it, like the Green Party or the Black Radical Congress.

Best,

John



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