This is old news by blogosphere standards, but my friend Larry Blumenfeld took heat recently for doing what advocates of progressive jazz aren’t supposed to do: write a positive piece about Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Patrick J. commented briefly on some of the ensuing flap, and I just gotta say: It’s hilarious to see Chris Rich rip into others for upholding “an impossibly narrow, arbitrary and near useless definition of what the music is supposed to be and mak[ing] sure there aren’t more than a semi moribund handful around to satisfy these conditions.”
Rich is someone who routinely shits on great musicians like Joe Lovano who fall outside his hallowed Joe Morris-Matt Shipp-William Parker inner circle. Nothing against those players, whose music I admire and often recommend. But please. Could Rich’s tastes be narrower?
JALC is “reprehensible”? Step outside and look around at the world we live in. Executing an innocent man is reprehensible. Conspiring to bury the facts of the case is reprehensible. Running an organization that, whatever its flaws, does much to raise jazz’s public profile and educate children in the bargain is not reprehensible.
Nonetheless, Larry B. has learned from the controversy, and his follow-up remarks exemplify the self-questioning attitude all writers — very much including Chris Rich — should strive for.
One Comment
God almighty – I work in academics; follow national and local politics; am president of my Condo Association; and love baseball. What makes jazz (and music in general) special out of all these things I do is that it's the one pasttime in which I don't have to choose up sides. And yet it's a world that seems full of people telling me I MUST.