UK jazz musicians are in an uproar — as they should be — over the decision by the Mobo Awards to drop jazz as an award category. “Mobo” stands for “music of black origin.” As saxophonist Courtney Pine has argued (hat tip: Norm), “Jazz was the stepping stone for rock’n’roll, rhythm and blues — all popular music.”
Great to know that the execrable Black Eyed Peas are being honored while worthy UK musicians like Pine, Abram Wilson and Soweto Kinch are being written out of existence.
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On another note — and I’m not nearly as mad about this — Stephen Colbert, on last night’s “Colbert Report,” mocked some of the 2006 MacArthur Fellows, one being avant-garde saxist/composer John Zorn. [Update: The video is here.] Colbert played about 15 seconds from one of Zorn’s unaccompanied alto sax shriek-fests. With a big sarcastic smile, he donned a top hat and cane and started doing a Fred Astaire routine. I have to admit, it was hilarious. But there’s far more to Zorn than this. In early 2005 I saw a magnificent program of Zorn’s chamber music at the Miller Theater. There will be another in the same room on October 26.
Even more hilariously, Colbert reprised part of a classic segment called “Hiphopketball: A Jazzebration.” Part 1 is here. In Part 2, Colbert plays marvelously incompetent alto sax, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on double bass. Watch and savor.
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