By Gordon Brisker
Gordon Brisker is a tenor saxophonist/composer who now lectures in Jazz Studies at the University of Sydney. His second CD for Naxos Jazz, "My Son John", featuring Mike Nock, Tim Hagans, Billy Hart and Anthony Cox, will be
released in early 2001.
I have read with great interest the Diatribes in BirdLives.com which bemoan the distortions record companies, agents and critics have imposed on jazz and its business in recent years. We once thought the people controlling the industry were as immersed in the music from an art perspective as the musicians and that they would maintain a purist position into perpetuity. Unfortunately, the substance expressed in the axiom: "A Capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him" remained operative and the handwriting had been on the wall for quite some time. The Hollywood mogul who would insist on at least one 'A' picture for each two 'B' films produced was replaced by twenty year old schlockmeisters, bringing the plethora of car wrecks, blood and explosions we now witness in most films. The takeover of record companies, the film industry, Las Vegas and television by juvenile beancounters
foreshadowed the "young men in suits" era in jazz, as much as we hoped it would not.
I believe the faultfinding in the tirades is well placed and should not be discontinued. Hopefully it will touch nerves and be productive of change for the better. But, along with this tack we should consider other ways we can use our energies. For instance, I see the lack of education and exposure of young people to good music as a major threat to jazz and culture as a whole.
If there is no audience coming up what good would it do to have reasonable policies in the recording, journalism and promotion industries? It would be productive to use our frustration as a catalyst to form incentives for promoting jazz to the younger listener, "putting something back in the pot" for the opportunities we've been given, while helping to insure there are performing situations for those who follow. Finding a way to reinstitute the school music classes lost in the Reagan era could be a logical first step
for the jazz movement. Perhaps the reader will have other objectives to add to this discussion.
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