Read Part 1 here.
From: Steve Pick
Some interesting thoughts come out of this.
>I think that a festival organizer must determine what the goal of a (for example, jazz) festival is. Your goals will determine what kind of a festival you will present.
I completely agree that great music is generally not the first goal of any festival, though I think it has to be at least the second to make things worthwhile. I'm fine with festivals having to make money (or not lose it, at least), but the quality of the music has to be second only to that. Otherwise, you wind up with compromises that don't end up pleasing anybody.
> Reggie Thomas and I were talking the other day and it seems to us that in order for someone to become a jazz fan, he or she must have some sort of epiphany at an early age, either through a hip teacher or by experiencing a live performance by a great musician, etc.
Hmm. This doesn't strike me as being necessarily true. For one thing, I didn't get into jazz until I was 24 years old. But, I was already a huge fan of music, so I guess that prerequisite is most likely necessary, and most easily accomplished at a younger age. (Though again, for me, my fanaticism about music didn't start until I was 19.)
That said, I think older audiences are hungry for great jazz, but they're afraid of it. Or more precisely, they're afraid of not knowing how to react to it. Jazz did itself no favors by calling itself "America's classical music." This convinces a lot of people that they have to have Phd's in music to understand jazz. I don't believe this is true, of course, but a lot of potential listeners believe it.
I think jazz can appeal to anybody who loves music, and I've noticed when I play jazz cuts on my rock-based radio show, I get calls from people who are excited to hear something different. I've seen increased sales of jazz at Vintage Vinyl because of Lew Prince's excellent Jazz Primer series in their newsletter.
This is why I maintain that an exciting jazz festival can help build a larger audience for the music, whereas the piecemeal ones we've had will simply live or die based on the particular popularity of acts each year, or the social setting of a huge picnic in a park.
I think Dennis is very right about the percentage of African Americans who support jazz being relatively the same as that of whites (though probably not the same as Latins or other ethnic groups, to be honest). Jazz, by the way, isn't the only American musical form with greater popularity in other countries than it has at home. Blues, garage rock, Americana, and alt-country, just to name a few, are all bigger over there than here.
> I have no problems with having a festival that has diverse music that will draw a lot of people (like the New Orleans Fest), but that Festival is no longer called a jazz festival. Those things are good for the economy.
I've long since given up hope that St. Louis will ever have a festival on the scale of the New Orleans Fest, but I've never really wanted anything that big, anyway. Too much music in too short of a time tends to make the whole experience too diffuse. You focus more on how much you can consume than on the actual pleasures of the consumption. Still, I think there is room for some nice live music festivals of a variety of genres and cross-genres in this town. Look at how many people went down to the Riverfront in summer of 2004.
From: Dean Minderman
Dennis' point about clarity of purpose is a basic but important one. You can't have a successful event without a clear definition of what success is for your particular situation. One of the things that chafes my shorts about the Shaw Park festival is that it is presented in some ways as if it were an event emphasizing quality music, but it is booked like it's a commercial endeavor designed to make money. There are some real mixed messages there. And like you, Steve, I'd like to see more risk-taking and more thought put into their booking policy, but I'll come back to that later.
Dennis is also absolutely right about the lack of local talent at the Shaw Park festival. All you have to do is look at the numbers. I did a little back-of-the-envelope math regarding the talent budget for the 2005 festival, and my best guess that less than 1% of the budget went to hiring St. Louis musicians, at a time when organizers were talking to the press about their continuing commitment to presenting St. Louis talent. As Bugs Bunny once said, it is to laugh.
You could put together a nice day or two of music featuring nothing but St. Louis talent. The Old Webster festival, though still somewhat musically conservative for my taste, is evidence that this can be done. It doesn't draw a crowd in the tens of thousands, but attendance has gone up every year, and last year they even tied in with Webster University to offer some free workshops for student musicians as part of the event.
Which brings me to one of my pet notions on this subject, namely that a festival ought to be more than just a day or two of outdoor concerts. Steve is right when he says that there's an upper limit on how much an event that people have to pay to attend can grow. So why not have a one-day, outdoor free concert as the centerpiece of a festival, and then build other programming around it? Jazz festivals in other cities include indoor concerts; pub crawls; jazz cruises; film screenings; workshops, clinics and symposia; and various other programming elements that can draw different types of people who may not, for whatever reason, enjoy big outdoor shows.
These kinds of events can help people learn about the music, too. I think Steve is right when he says that many people think you have to be a musical expert to appreciate jazz. It is incumbent upon presenters to showcase the music in a way that makes it accessible to all. Big outdoor shows are a "one size fits all" sort of solution, and not everyone will respond to music presented in that sort of atmosphere. However, there's really no reason a St. Louis festival couldn't incorporate a lot of the elements mentioned above; the only limitations are budgets, which can always be re-jiggered to fit new priorities, and the imagination of the programmers.
Finally, I agree with the idea that it is important for jazz to get new fans while they are young, but I think the cutoff age may be a little higher than 18. Many young people in their late teens and early 20s are still forming their tastes and open to new ideas; Steve's account of discovering an enthusiasm for jazz while in his 20s is a great example of that. But I don't think that jazz presenters, locally or nationally, have a good idea of how to target and reach the college and post-college audience.
(Edited immediately after posting to add a link to Part 1 and fix some formatting problems with block quotes.)
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