Since I read about Jazz (the late 70ties) Freddie Hubbard gets bashed.
For some he is to „Oscar Peterson“, to some he is to „Fusion“, to others he didn’t not die young enough and the Free Jazz/New Thing Fans sometimes claim that he was the „clumsy“ Mainstream Guy who could not really keep up with the real Avantgarde.
He played on Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartett, he played on Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy, the Blues and the Abstract Truth by Oliver Nelson, but those Leaders somehow couldn’t find a better one.
He Recorded Red Clay on CTI which I consider the best Record on a Label I care as much for as let‘s say ECM. (Which means I buy some of the Stuff but not for the Label.)
I am not a Fan of Freddie Hubbard but rarely have I read harsher Words about one of the real great Musicians of his Time.
I do not think that being a Music Publizist in the Field of Jazz, Rock, Blues or any other African American derived Music makes the majority of „Crits“ rich.
What is wrong is that most of them see themselves as Journalists and not as People who write about Music.
When Bruce Lundvall used Michel Petruchiani the French Piano Player to rediscover Charles Lloyd who was „unearthed“ 1982 after 12 Years of Recluse, 21 Year old Me couldn’t believe how nearly all Jazzwriters snd Jazzpromoters swallowed the Bait and toutet the Return of Robinson Crusoe after being lost over a Decade.
I have seen to many of his diverse 70ties Records in the 5 Bucks Cutout and Dustbins in Swiss Record Stores to fall for it. But till this Day the Story how Michel Petruchiani found Charles in Big Sur is told on and on.
2015 one of the greatest Promo Stunts was orchestrated by the Techno and Dance Label Brainfeeder when they launched the 3 CD Set by Kamasi Washington with the Bruner Brothers.
The Label made sure that Crits from Rockpapers and the Rockcrits of great international Daylies, Weeklies and Monthlies were told that these totaly new Jazz Cats that picked up from when 1973 Spiritual Jazz turned to Ouiet Storm had no past in the regular Jazzszene.
They were launched in Locations and Festivals that presented Hip Hop, Alternative Rock and EDM.
And it worked.
Coz these Crits and Promoters didn’t know that Kamasi Washington and the Bruners used to play with George Duke, Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller.
And that was the Trick:
All those Non-Jazz Musicscribes and Promoters were proud to be Part in the Invention of „New Sliced Bread“.
When about 2 Month Later the Jazzszene finally caught up some went with it as they went with the Charles Lloyd Story.
Others thought it was of no use to go against the Grain and loved the Fact that so many young Kids bought the Tripple and Double CD‘s.
Is it a Catastrophe? No! But it shows that Music and Journalism rarely ever go together.
Do the Crits for those Hypes for Money?
I don’t think. It is just not enough Money in the Jackpot.
I know it is frustrating when „promo“ goes for Journalism, but if we really wanted Monthlies with a 100 criticized Records we all would have to spend about 30 Dollars per Monthly.
If we wanted opposing Opinions we might have to spend a 100 Dollars.
I don’t know why some Answers can get redacted and others not.
English is not my Mothertongue, so when I follow a Stream of Thoughts Mistakes occur.
Most often the Mistakes can be corrected but not all the Time like in this „Al Fresco” Stream.
I remember that I wanted to rewrite the whole Thing but other “Duties” took my Time. So sorry for spelling Errors and some „Half Sentences“ which work in German but not in English.
it is, you are correct, a very small amount of money and work that these critics are working for; but in a way that creates the opposite of what you are implying. It forces them, more and more, to obey the commands of record companies and publicists and distorts the reality of what is, at the end of the day, an art form. It is a very small pie and they all want a piece of it.
The two biggest Daylies in the Swiss German Part of Switzerland have an astonishingly big Readership for a Country of 9 Million People but it is such an insignificant Market that the only Jazzcrits that live from Journalism are Editors for their Papers. The others are „Amateurs“, they do not feel the same pressure as Scribes from New York, Paris, Berlin, Chicago and Tokyo.
I do not know anybody in Switzerland who lives from writing about Music. It is only a Side Income.
I am sure it is different in New York.
And there you are surely right. Since there is not that much to earn from the Jobs, you have to take the Jobs you get.
In Switzerland in the opposite it can be annoying how often the Writers waste Time in being critical in the negative Sense and not in the Original Greek Sense.
So they finally don’t write about Sonny Red either, since they use a lot of Space to tell People what they don’t like.
In German we call them sometimes „Die Jazz Polizei“.
Allen, your idea that critics follow the dictates of record companies and publicists is utter nonsense. Journalists write about what editors will publish. Editors who know little about jazz may be influenced by record companies and publicists, mostly to think there is support and so must be an expectation of audience, rather than take some freelancer’s enthusiasm that a lesser known, died young sideman from 60 years ago rates the limited space they’re willing to afford to jazz ( or music/arts at all).
here is transparency about typical payments for jazz journalism. Blogs and substack of course pay zero, zilch, nada unless subscribers kick in or readers tip. Both my blog on ArtsJournal and posts on substack are free, always have been.
downbeat pays $45 for a record review, and in my 50 year experience less than $400 for full length feature articles. $150 to $200 for short features ( including Blindfold tests). The magazine does not cover expenses like travel, hotel, meals to festivals. often fest provide free tickets, and some foreign festivals have paid travel and accommodations in return for coverage ( which the publications compensate at their usual rate).
in my experience no fest producer-presenter-curator has required any particular opinion or slant in my texts and no editor has ever told me what to say in a feature or review (except one movie critic-editor at NYC’s now defunct weekly City Arts, who wanted me to writer negatively about some obscure artists-produced cds that I told him weren’t worth the effort of covering, and would needlessly hurt the struggling artists who’d sweated them out. I wouldn’t write what he wanted and he fired me from a weekly column for which I was getting $100 each piece, paid late).
I was an on-air arts producer-reporter for NPR from 1985 through 2019. my pieces, 7 minutes long requiring on-site reporting with my own equipment and seldom backup staff, which I edited with a razor blade, timed, scripted, voiced and fought my editors for, paid $400. One time I was paid $1000 - that was to cover an Art Ensemble performance for which I drove from Chicago to Ann Arbor and back in my own car, put myself up for three nights, paid for my own meals.
I have never been paid more than $250 to be on a panel by grants organizations or academic institutions or music presenters, and have done more than half of those I’ve sat on for free.
I was an adjunct at NYU for 27 years, teaching 6 music-related electives for which I created curriculum, once a week, 90 to 120 minutes (twice that for my homework responding to writing I assigned) to classes numbering 6 to 25. I was never repaid more than $2500 per semester. No expenses paid.
For most of my career I’ve gotten free recordings, tickets to shows and no cover charge at many clubs. I’ve paid for my own drinks.
I don’t want to say what I charge for liner notes, but it’s usually about what I’ve gotten for features. Same with writing press releases. And these days I do a lot of favors for musician-friends.
Stop kicking journalists. We don’t write only or mostly for you - we write for the people who are not as versed or interested. Yes, some of us are lazy — so lazy we are jazz journalists instead of doing other work.
PS — IMHO Freddie Hubbard was the most exciting, fiery big-toned (so that excludes Miles and Don Cherry), melodically inspired, musically generous, prolific and daring if not always successful trumpeter of the early ‘60s and into the ‘70s. I enjoy-respect-learn from many others, such as Dizzy, Booker Little, Morgan, Dorham, Dixon, Woody Shaw, Charles Sullivan, Barbara Donald among them, but find more satisfaction in Hubbard’s works as leader, sideman, composer, improviser in a range from experimentation (Sing me a song of songmy, Free Jazz, Ascension, OTL) to straightahead progressive hard blowing (with Blakey, Rollins, Hancock, Shorter, Rivers) and even commercially-aimed projects (with Milt Jackson, for instance, or the Columbia album Super Blue with Kenny Barron, Hubert Laws, DeJohnette, et al) of any of them (again, excluding Miles and Cherry, my other faves). It was sad when Hubbard’s chops declined but kudos to David Weiss for continuing to believe in him and extend his work.
Howard, telling me how little money is at stake is NOT a refutation of my position - it actually supports what I said, because if money is not at stake, than why is the whole profession so insular and unaware of most of what is happening in jazz? BECAUSE there is so little money, they are thinking, "why the hell should we go to the trouble of searching out the real musicians who keep jazz alive on a day-to-day basis? No one is going to pay us extra to really do the leg work." Think about it - so there is no incentive to do anything except give us the 400th Ron Carter interview, another Glasper story, Esperanza tells us like it is - the crap goes on and on, and I like you but you are a big part of the problem. JJA has devolved into an idiotic popularity contest, and many people believe this but will not go public. The same fucking people win the same awards year after year - look at me - I put out the best project of the last 10 years, got named in a few polls (Francis Davis said the project was "a revelation," some others called it a work of "genius") and how many votes did I get in the JJA poll? None, because you all keep your heads in the sand and covet the fact that the JJA is respectable, a pillar of the jazz community and not going to mess with marginal characters whom no one has heard of. And I am not the only one excluded - keeping your members in the dark and making sure they never challenge the status quo is your version of keeping them barefoot and pregnant. It assures that your corporate sponsors don't get upset and abandon you. So please, do not give us the "tough business, what can we do?" plea. It means nothing to the musicians who actually do the work that keeps you guys in business. Because there is plenty that you can do. Publishing Jordannah Elizabeth, who thinks your whiteness makes you ineligible to write about jazz was the ultimate irony; she won a book award from JJA, and she is completely clueless; shame on you. Liberal guilt just adds to the ridiculousness of an unaware mass of critics. Read my current story about Moran and Duke. And then tell me that the critical profession of jazz coverage has not reached the bottom.
and pushing Harmony Holiday, who cannot write and whose knowledge of jazz and music in general is scandalously non-existent. Come on Howard, let's face reality. We all know what is going on. Tokenism of the worst kind.
Allen, my friend, this is just silly. You asked for financial transparency, I provided some. And it is ridiculous to assert we are all ignorant about what's going on or don't do legwork. The people at NYCJazz Record cover all sorts of on-the-ground stuff; Hot House Jazz Guide's April issues features cover-boys (NOT) Fred Irby III and Danny Simmons; the current DownBeat has, yes, Branford on the cover but the other feature subjects are Steve Lehman, Sasha Berliner, the late Colin Mellett (who?), NOLA bassist George Porter Jr.,. and introduces free jazz tromobist Nanami Haruta. Not a one of those articles is supported by an ad. Although yes, there's an insert on new vinyl with a Resonance/Record Store Day strip touting the Mijngus, Dorham, Hubbard, Montgomery-Kelly and Rouse band you mention.
Maybe you're upset by the NYT coverage, or lack of ANY US daily newspaper or webplatform doing in-depth coverage that's nationwide. Gee, sorry. Many journalists would like to do that. However, you overlook what they do indeed do. Most effective jazz journalism is done locally, which you may not see. Writers for EarShot Jazz in Seattle have been writing about the same old stars (NOT) Andy Coe, Eugenia Jones, Freddie Fuego, Ballaki;´Sissoko, Oscar Holden (1886-1969) and Floyd Standifer (1929-2007). JJA members and unaffiliated colleagues all over are quite present covering their scenes: See for instance Austin's Rob Shepherd, https://postgenre.org/author/rshepherdmusic/ - Cory Hall for the Jazz Institute of Chicago https://www.jazzinchicago.org/jazzgram/southsiders-stand-up, and JohnChacona.com on Cleveland, in Chicago Bill Meyer and Hannah Edgar among others.
My own most recent jazz writing has been a DB record review of trumpeter Joe Magnarelli, liner notes for Antonio Farrao and Amina Claudine Myers, substack posts re George Freeman, and yes Keith Jarrett (extended transcripts from 15 years back, got twice as many views as any other Substack post. I'm currently working on a review of a new production of Treemonisha, and the AACM's 60th Anniversary.
Am I following trends, or doing what I've done since 1975? When I'm out once or twice a week it's to Constellation, Elastic Arts, the Beat Kitchen, the Hungry Brain, Experimental Sound Studio, the Jazz Showcase, Space, Andy's, the Logan Center-- oh, sorry, you don't know what I'm talking about 'cause you're not here, but as well as listening to WDCB, reading everything I can, correspondence with jazz people worldwide, that's how I try to keep my head out of the sand.
It's shocking you think I control JJA members' writings or thoughts, that anyone could or should. Jordannah Elizabeth has a point of view that ought to be read, whether I subscribe to it or not. I would have (and did, in DownBeat) publish Amiri Baraka, too. Her book for young readers "She Raised Her Voice! 50 Black Women Who Sang Their Way Into Music History" isn't up to your standards, but may introduce some kids to music. Nothing shocking about that. This year's Awards went to Jonathan Grasse's bio of Eric Dolphy, and Jelly Roll Blues by Elijah Wald. Problems with those choices?
I do not dictate JJA Jazz Awards winners -- and news for ya, no election is guaranteed to be won purely on the nominee's idealized merit (pretty obvious, no?). Personally I think this year's JJA Awards are all well deserved if not radical choices -- and in my view the recognition of Marshall Allen, George Coleman, Myra Melford, Patricia Brennan, Val Jeanty, Tomeka Reid and Isaiah Collier is refreshingly welcome.
I already read and responded to your piece on Jason, Duke and yourself. Cool out! I think you have important things to say, but trolling jazz journalism is not part of the solution to the problem you think I'm part of.
oi; I won't name names but at least two if the people you mention are complete charlatans, and if you don't recognize that, then so be it, I have gone far enough out on this limb. As for Jordannah Elizabeth she is beneath contempt as a historian and critic. You are aware that she thinks you are an illegitimate critic by virtue of your race?
I've edited Jordannah's work published at JJANews, working with her. She's been grateful for my attentions, or a good actress. As I commented earlier, I published Baraka, who at the time had no love for white Jewish critics. I'm sure I've encouraged and enabled others who are not as tolerant as I like to think I am. I've certainly moderated panels with musicians who've called me racist, sitting with well-known, acclaimed critics who've agreed. I can't do anything about that, any more than you can.
PPS, It bugs me that Allen never says he was named a Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association, the only professional organization of jazz journalists, in recognition of his assiduous independent and original research. This Award is presented annually since 2001 to “ activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz”. The JJA is not paid to do those Awards by any entity, it does so through the volunteer efforts of members and contacts to support local jazz communities across North America. See details at www.JJaJazzAwards.org.
Since I read about Jazz (the late 70ties) Freddie Hubbard gets bashed.
For some he is to „Oscar Peterson“, to some he is to „Fusion“, to others he didn’t not die young enough and the Free Jazz/New Thing Fans sometimes claim that he was the „clumsy“ Mainstream Guy who could not really keep up with the real Avantgarde.
He played on Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartett, he played on Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy, the Blues and the Abstract Truth by Oliver Nelson, but those Leaders somehow couldn’t find a better one.
He Recorded Red Clay on CTI which I consider the best Record on a Label I care as much for as let‘s say ECM. (Which means I buy some of the Stuff but not for the Label.)
I am not a Fan of Freddie Hubbard but rarely have I read harsher Words about one of the real great Musicians of his Time.
I do not think that being a Music Publizist in the Field of Jazz, Rock, Blues or any other African American derived Music makes the majority of „Crits“ rich.
What is wrong is that most of them see themselves as Journalists and not as People who write about Music.
When Bruce Lundvall used Michel Petruchiani the French Piano Player to rediscover Charles Lloyd who was „unearthed“ 1982 after 12 Years of Recluse, 21 Year old Me couldn’t believe how nearly all Jazzwriters snd Jazzpromoters swallowed the Bait and toutet the Return of Robinson Crusoe after being lost over a Decade.
I have seen to many of his diverse 70ties Records in the 5 Bucks Cutout and Dustbins in Swiss Record Stores to fall for it. But till this Day the Story how Michel Petruchiani found Charles in Big Sur is told on and on.
2015 one of the greatest Promo Stunts was orchestrated by the Techno and Dance Label Brainfeeder when they launched the 3 CD Set by Kamasi Washington with the Bruner Brothers.
The Label made sure that Crits from Rockpapers and the Rockcrits of great international Daylies, Weeklies and Monthlies were told that these totaly new Jazz Cats that picked up from when 1973 Spiritual Jazz turned to Ouiet Storm had no past in the regular Jazzszene.
They were launched in Locations and Festivals that presented Hip Hop, Alternative Rock and EDM.
And it worked.
Coz these Crits and Promoters didn’t know that Kamasi Washington and the Bruners used to play with George Duke, Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller.
And that was the Trick:
All those Non-Jazz Musicscribes and Promoters were proud to be Part in the Invention of „New Sliced Bread“.
When about 2 Month Later the Jazzszene finally caught up some went with it as they went with the Charles Lloyd Story.
Others thought it was of no use to go against the Grain and loved the Fact that so many young Kids bought the Tripple and Double CD‘s.
Is it a Catastrophe? No! But it shows that Music and Journalism rarely ever go together.
Do the Crits for those Hypes for Money?
I don’t think. It is just not enough Money in the Jackpot.
I know it is frustrating when „promo“ goes for Journalism, but if we really wanted Monthlies with a 100 criticized Records we all would have to spend about 30 Dollars per Monthly.
If we wanted opposing Opinions we might have to spend a 100 Dollars.
I don’t know why some Answers can get redacted and others not.
English is not my Mothertongue, so when I follow a Stream of Thoughts Mistakes occur.
Most often the Mistakes can be corrected but not all the Time like in this „Al Fresco” Stream.
I remember that I wanted to rewrite the whole Thing but other “Duties” took my Time. So sorry for spelling Errors and some „Half Sentences“ which work in German but not in English.
it is, you are correct, a very small amount of money and work that these critics are working for; but in a way that creates the opposite of what you are implying. It forces them, more and more, to obey the commands of record companies and publicists and distorts the reality of what is, at the end of the day, an art form. It is a very small pie and they all want a piece of it.
The two biggest Daylies in the Swiss German Part of Switzerland have an astonishingly big Readership for a Country of 9 Million People but it is such an insignificant Market that the only Jazzcrits that live from Journalism are Editors for their Papers. The others are „Amateurs“, they do not feel the same pressure as Scribes from New York, Paris, Berlin, Chicago and Tokyo.
I do not know anybody in Switzerland who lives from writing about Music. It is only a Side Income.
I am sure it is different in New York.
And there you are surely right. Since there is not that much to earn from the Jobs, you have to take the Jobs you get.
In Switzerland in the opposite it can be annoying how often the Writers waste Time in being critical in the negative Sense and not in the Original Greek Sense.
So they finally don’t write about Sonny Red either, since they use a lot of Space to tell People what they don’t like.
In German we call them sometimes „Die Jazz Polizei“.
Allen, your idea that critics follow the dictates of record companies and publicists is utter nonsense. Journalists write about what editors will publish. Editors who know little about jazz may be influenced by record companies and publicists, mostly to think there is support and so must be an expectation of audience, rather than take some freelancer’s enthusiasm that a lesser known, died young sideman from 60 years ago rates the limited space they’re willing to afford to jazz ( or music/arts at all).
here is transparency about typical payments for jazz journalism. Blogs and substack of course pay zero, zilch, nada unless subscribers kick in or readers tip. Both my blog on ArtsJournal and posts on substack are free, always have been.
downbeat pays $45 for a record review, and in my 50 year experience less than $400 for full length feature articles. $150 to $200 for short features ( including Blindfold tests). The magazine does not cover expenses like travel, hotel, meals to festivals. often fest provide free tickets, and some foreign festivals have paid travel and accommodations in return for coverage ( which the publications compensate at their usual rate).
in my experience no fest producer-presenter-curator has required any particular opinion or slant in my texts and no editor has ever told me what to say in a feature or review (except one movie critic-editor at NYC’s now defunct weekly City Arts, who wanted me to writer negatively about some obscure artists-produced cds that I told him weren’t worth the effort of covering, and would needlessly hurt the struggling artists who’d sweated them out. I wouldn’t write what he wanted and he fired me from a weekly column for which I was getting $100 each piece, paid late).
I was an on-air arts producer-reporter for NPR from 1985 through 2019. my pieces, 7 minutes long requiring on-site reporting with my own equipment and seldom backup staff, which I edited with a razor blade, timed, scripted, voiced and fought my editors for, paid $400. One time I was paid $1000 - that was to cover an Art Ensemble performance for which I drove from Chicago to Ann Arbor and back in my own car, put myself up for three nights, paid for my own meals.
I have never been paid more than $250 to be on a panel by grants organizations or academic institutions or music presenters, and have done more than half of those I’ve sat on for free.
I was an adjunct at NYU for 27 years, teaching 6 music-related electives for which I created curriculum, once a week, 90 to 120 minutes (twice that for my homework responding to writing I assigned) to classes numbering 6 to 25. I was never repaid more than $2500 per semester. No expenses paid.
For most of my career I’ve gotten free recordings, tickets to shows and no cover charge at many clubs. I’ve paid for my own drinks.
I don’t want to say what I charge for liner notes, but it’s usually about what I’ve gotten for features. Same with writing press releases. And these days I do a lot of favors for musician-friends.
Stop kicking journalists. We don’t write only or mostly for you - we write for the people who are not as versed or interested. Yes, some of us are lazy — so lazy we are jazz journalists instead of doing other work.
PS — IMHO Freddie Hubbard was the most exciting, fiery big-toned (so that excludes Miles and Don Cherry), melodically inspired, musically generous, prolific and daring if not always successful trumpeter of the early ‘60s and into the ‘70s. I enjoy-respect-learn from many others, such as Dizzy, Booker Little, Morgan, Dorham, Dixon, Woody Shaw, Charles Sullivan, Barbara Donald among them, but find more satisfaction in Hubbard’s works as leader, sideman, composer, improviser in a range from experimentation (Sing me a song of songmy, Free Jazz, Ascension, OTL) to straightahead progressive hard blowing (with Blakey, Rollins, Hancock, Shorter, Rivers) and even commercially-aimed projects (with Milt Jackson, for instance, or the Columbia album Super Blue with Kenny Barron, Hubert Laws, DeJohnette, et al) of any of them (again, excluding Miles and Cherry, my other faves). It was sad when Hubbard’s chops declined but kudos to David Weiss for continuing to believe in him and extend his work.
Howard, telling me how little money is at stake is NOT a refutation of my position - it actually supports what I said, because if money is not at stake, than why is the whole profession so insular and unaware of most of what is happening in jazz? BECAUSE there is so little money, they are thinking, "why the hell should we go to the trouble of searching out the real musicians who keep jazz alive on a day-to-day basis? No one is going to pay us extra to really do the leg work." Think about it - so there is no incentive to do anything except give us the 400th Ron Carter interview, another Glasper story, Esperanza tells us like it is - the crap goes on and on, and I like you but you are a big part of the problem. JJA has devolved into an idiotic popularity contest, and many people believe this but will not go public. The same fucking people win the same awards year after year - look at me - I put out the best project of the last 10 years, got named in a few polls (Francis Davis said the project was "a revelation," some others called it a work of "genius") and how many votes did I get in the JJA poll? None, because you all keep your heads in the sand and covet the fact that the JJA is respectable, a pillar of the jazz community and not going to mess with marginal characters whom no one has heard of. And I am not the only one excluded - keeping your members in the dark and making sure they never challenge the status quo is your version of keeping them barefoot and pregnant. It assures that your corporate sponsors don't get upset and abandon you. So please, do not give us the "tough business, what can we do?" plea. It means nothing to the musicians who actually do the work that keeps you guys in business. Because there is plenty that you can do. Publishing Jordannah Elizabeth, who thinks your whiteness makes you ineligible to write about jazz was the ultimate irony; she won a book award from JJA, and she is completely clueless; shame on you. Liberal guilt just adds to the ridiculousness of an unaware mass of critics. Read my current story about Moran and Duke. And then tell me that the critical profession of jazz coverage has not reached the bottom.
and pushing Harmony Holiday, who cannot write and whose knowledge of jazz and music in general is scandalously non-existent. Come on Howard, let's face reality. We all know what is going on. Tokenism of the worst kind.
I want to see writing by people who are interested in the music. I want to encourage people to engage, believing that by doing so they improve.
Allen, my friend, this is just silly. You asked for financial transparency, I provided some. And it is ridiculous to assert we are all ignorant about what's going on or don't do legwork. The people at NYCJazz Record cover all sorts of on-the-ground stuff; Hot House Jazz Guide's April issues features cover-boys (NOT) Fred Irby III and Danny Simmons; the current DownBeat has, yes, Branford on the cover but the other feature subjects are Steve Lehman, Sasha Berliner, the late Colin Mellett (who?), NOLA bassist George Porter Jr.,. and introduces free jazz tromobist Nanami Haruta. Not a one of those articles is supported by an ad. Although yes, there's an insert on new vinyl with a Resonance/Record Store Day strip touting the Mijngus, Dorham, Hubbard, Montgomery-Kelly and Rouse band you mention.
Maybe you're upset by the NYT coverage, or lack of ANY US daily newspaper or webplatform doing in-depth coverage that's nationwide. Gee, sorry. Many journalists would like to do that. However, you overlook what they do indeed do. Most effective jazz journalism is done locally, which you may not see. Writers for EarShot Jazz in Seattle have been writing about the same old stars (NOT) Andy Coe, Eugenia Jones, Freddie Fuego, Ballaki;´Sissoko, Oscar Holden (1886-1969) and Floyd Standifer (1929-2007). JJA members and unaffiliated colleagues all over are quite present covering their scenes: See for instance Austin's Rob Shepherd, https://postgenre.org/author/rshepherdmusic/ - Cory Hall for the Jazz Institute of Chicago https://www.jazzinchicago.org/jazzgram/southsiders-stand-up, and JohnChacona.com on Cleveland, in Chicago Bill Meyer and Hannah Edgar among others.
My own most recent jazz writing has been a DB record review of trumpeter Joe Magnarelli, liner notes for Antonio Farrao and Amina Claudine Myers, substack posts re George Freeman, and yes Keith Jarrett (extended transcripts from 15 years back, got twice as many views as any other Substack post. I'm currently working on a review of a new production of Treemonisha, and the AACM's 60th Anniversary.
Am I following trends, or doing what I've done since 1975? When I'm out once or twice a week it's to Constellation, Elastic Arts, the Beat Kitchen, the Hungry Brain, Experimental Sound Studio, the Jazz Showcase, Space, Andy's, the Logan Center-- oh, sorry, you don't know what I'm talking about 'cause you're not here, but as well as listening to WDCB, reading everything I can, correspondence with jazz people worldwide, that's how I try to keep my head out of the sand.
It's shocking you think I control JJA members' writings or thoughts, that anyone could or should. Jordannah Elizabeth has a point of view that ought to be read, whether I subscribe to it or not. I would have (and did, in DownBeat) publish Amiri Baraka, too. Her book for young readers "She Raised Her Voice! 50 Black Women Who Sang Their Way Into Music History" isn't up to your standards, but may introduce some kids to music. Nothing shocking about that. This year's Awards went to Jonathan Grasse's bio of Eric Dolphy, and Jelly Roll Blues by Elijah Wald. Problems with those choices?
I do not dictate JJA Jazz Awards winners -- and news for ya, no election is guaranteed to be won purely on the nominee's idealized merit (pretty obvious, no?). Personally I think this year's JJA Awards are all well deserved if not radical choices -- and in my view the recognition of Marshall Allen, George Coleman, Myra Melford, Patricia Brennan, Val Jeanty, Tomeka Reid and Isaiah Collier is refreshingly welcome.
I already read and responded to your piece on Jason, Duke and yourself. Cool out! I think you have important things to say, but trolling jazz journalism is not part of the solution to the problem you think I'm part of.
oi; I won't name names but at least two if the people you mention are complete charlatans, and if you don't recognize that, then so be it, I have gone far enough out on this limb. As for Jordannah Elizabeth she is beneath contempt as a historian and critic. You are aware that she thinks you are an illegitimate critic by virtue of your race?
I've edited Jordannah's work published at JJANews, working with her. She's been grateful for my attentions, or a good actress. As I commented earlier, I published Baraka, who at the time had no love for white Jewish critics. I'm sure I've encouraged and enabled others who are not as tolerant as I like to think I am. I've certainly moderated panels with musicians who've called me racist, sitting with well-known, acclaimed critics who've agreed. I can't do anything about that, any more than you can.
PPS, It bugs me that Allen never says he was named a Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association, the only professional organization of jazz journalists, in recognition of his assiduous independent and original research. This Award is presented annually since 2001 to “ activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz”. The JJA is not paid to do those Awards by any entity, it does so through the volunteer efforts of members and contacts to support local jazz communities across North America. See details at www.JJaJazzAwards.org.