OK. I won't promote jazz. And you don't trash it, either. --jks
>
> >
> > 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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