Yesterday, NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon published his interview with the writer and arts administrator Willard Jenkins, focusing on Jenkins's ongoing series of talks with black jazz writers, Ain't But A Few Of Us. As the title suggests, there are (and always have been) very few black jazz writers—a state of affairs that's typical of the low numbers of African-Americans in journalism, but striking since, historically, jazz musicians have been predominantly black. The relationship between black culture and today's jazz is complicated, little discussed, and vitally important; I'm planning a much more substantial inquiry into the issue in a longer post this weekend.
For now, let me set up what I view as the big questions. If, for most of its history, jazz was "about" black expression and liberation, then what does jazz "mean" if black culture no longer cares about it? Is its existence now purely aesthetic? Is today's jazz just a more rarefied form of indie rock or new classical music, with an audience that's almost exclusively highly-educated white urbanites? What's the future like for jazz if the following excerpt from Jenkins's interview with the writer Greg Tate is true?
Jazz might as well be dead as far as the majority of Black Americans at every class level are concerned. If Culture is defined as what people do, then we can say that in significant numbers Black people don’t do jazz anymore.
