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All What Jazz? Not at This Fest

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The Paetec Jazz Festival, coming to Baltimore this week, has its bases covered.

Blues? B.B. King.

Rock? Little Richard.

Soul? Al Green.

Funk? Earth, Wind & Fire.

But jazz? Not so much.

“It's a music festival," said Andy Bienstock, host of a nightly jazz show on WYPR-FM. He said he wouldn't describe it as a jazz festival since the majority of the 40 acts fall into some other category. But Bienstock knows the reality of the market: Jazz doesn't sell.

“What's interesting is that jazz as a marketing term seems to mean more than jazz itself," he said. “We'll call it a jazz festival and people will love it. But we won't put any jazz in it because people won't come."

In other words, jazz might be respected, even revered as the essence of cool, but relatively few people listen to it. Sales of jazz CDs are down, and jazz clubs in Baltimore and across the country have closed. But none of that has prevented the proliferation of “jazz festivals," such as the one arriving tomorrow in Baltimore.

True fans, though, say such festivals are jazz in name only.

“No doubt B.B. King, Little Richard and Al Green are well-established, well-loved artists," said Henry Wong, owner of Baltimore's An die Musik, which sells jazz and classical CDs. “But only in an umbrella sense are they jazz. They're not even close to smooth jazz."

To be fair, the three-day Baltimore festival has booked a few jazz acts of local, national and international renown. From the Hungarian fusion jazz group Djabe to Baltimore's Todd Butler, jazz does have a (small) place in the festival. But organizers acknowledge that to sell tickets, they needed to widen their focus.

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