International Jazz Day: Will This Bring More Respect?

The Marlowsphere (#3)

On March 20, UNESCO announced that April 30 would be designated as International Jazz Day with no less than jazz legend and Grammy-winner Herbie Hancock leading the charge.

According to the Charles J. Gans’ authored Associated Press article:

“Ambassador Herbie Hancock believes what the world needs is a little jazz diplomacy. The renowned jazz pianist’s first major initiative since being named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador last July is to establish International Jazz Day to be held on April 30 of every year. That date coincides with the last day of what has been celebrated as Jazz Appreciation Month in the U.S. This year’s inaugural event — organized by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in partnership with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz,   which Hancock chairs — will include star-studded concerts in Paris, New Orleans and New York, as well as jazz-related events in at least two dozen countries from Algeria to Uruguay.” (Read full article here.)

The official kick-off will be on April 27 with an all-day program at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris that will include master classes, round-table discussions, improvisational workshops, performances by artists from various countries, and capped off with an evening concert.

Hancock will begin the April 30 celebrations with a sunrise concert at New Orleans’ Congo Square, the birthplace of jazz, which will take place right after the first weekend of the city’s huge Jazz and Heritage Festival celebrating its 42nd year.

He then plans to fly to New York for a sunset all-star jazz concert for the international diplomatic corps at the U.N. General Assembly Hall to be hosted by Quincy Jones, Morgan Freeman, Robert DeNiro, and Michael Douglas. The concert will be streamed live via the U.N. and UNESCO websites.

For Hancock, the two concerts symbolize the jazz globalization he’s observed since he launched his career a half century ago. “It’s America’s music, born and bred in America, that has spread its wings throughout the rest of the world,” said Hancock. As Monk Institute chairman, Hancock has seen more foreign musicians selected as finalists in its yearly competitions as well as fellows for its two-year jazz performance college program at UCLA. Hancock sees his latest initiative as an extension of his 2010 CD, the double Grammy-winning “The Imagine Project,” a globe-trotting, genre-mixing effort that featured a United Nations of pop and world music stars from 10 countries. “I’m really excited about International Jazz Day because so many artists from various countries and genres have a connection to jazz and will be able to honor this music that has had a profound effect on them,” Hancock said. “I hope that this day spreads the joy of spontaneous creation that exists in this music,” he said. “My feeling is that jazz will be getting its just due.”

This last Hancock statement needs to be seen in context. Yes, certainly in the context of 2012 the statement “My feeling is that jazz will be getting its just due” is apt especially when directed at an American audience. The generations following WWII—the generations that grew up with rock ‘n roll, acid rock, punk, grunge, rap, and hip-hop—have forgotten (or are completely unaware) that jazz (perhaps I should say “swing”) was the music of the day. Of course, the advent of bebop changed all that. Jazz moved from the dance music of the day to listening music.

This is, of course, an over-simplification. There’s much more to the story—such as the fusion and evolution of jazz and Latin-tinged music, the application of electronics to jazz performance, and so on.

The point is, while jazz was once the pre-eminent music of America, it is now relegated in this country to a second-class musical citizenship–some would even say lower than second-class. Outside the United States, on the other hand, jazz, in all sorts of stripes, gets its due. Jazz musicians do better financially in Europe than they do here. Jazz gets respect in parts of the Middle-East. In Japan the jazz scene is huge. Brazil has adopted jazz. You can even find jazz in Beijing and Shanghai, China. Jazz was already in China in the 1920s!

Ambassador Hancock is right when he says jazz is global. It has been global for almost all of the 20th century when in the 1920s steamships, then planes, transported musicians, 78 rpm records, and gramophones to various parts of the world. Radio and then early television helped generate more audiences. Then came LPs, CDs, and now the Internet, as in streaming downloads, et al.

People in the United States are unaware that jazz is the progenitor of much of today’s pop music. They are also unaware that jazz can be found in television and radio commercials, film scores, television series theme songs, even in the language. Young people do not dance to jazz anymore, but the jazz aesthetic is all around them.

One more observation. Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM) was created by Dr. Edward Hasse of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2001. How many folks—other than those in the jazz world—know about it? How many Americans are aware that jazz is “America’s classical music,” as the late Dr. Billy Taylor called it? How many Americans realize that jazz is their music, a musical style that they can call their own?

Perhaps the Hancock International Jazz Day initiative will do for jazz in this country what the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition did for classical piano virtuoso Van Cliburn. He had to go to Russia in 1958 to win this highly coveted prize to become famous in America. This is certainly not the first time someone had to go out of town, so to speak, in order to get deserved respect back home. Jazz gets respect in many parts of the world. Americans, however, have forgotten what their forbears have given to the world.

It’s about time this country gave renewed respect to a musical art-form that has more substance and historical significance than the shallow, manufactured pop music being purveyed to a young, unsuspecting mass audience by major record labels that only have profit motive at the core of their business ethics.

Eugene Marlow
March 25, 2012

© Eugene Marlow 2012

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