Editing and producing a profile of Dave Holland that aired on Weekend Edition this past Saturday made me wonder why a musician of Dave Holland's stature should have to spend time hawking his own wares.
Holland is one of the most profound jazz musicians playing today. The bassist is not just a superb soloist on hundreds of recordings, but a talented composer; a bandleader; and a mentor to young musicians. It seems like he should be able to devote all of his time to these pursuits and not have to sweat maintaining a web site or selling his own records.
It's an almost silly thought in this day and age. After all, Holland joined such giants as 79-year old saxophonist Sonny Rollins in the pursuit of online identity building in the wake of the fragmentation the mainstream music industry.
And this isn't really new. The late Charles Mingus co-founded Debut Records with drummer Max Roach in the early 1950's as a way of controlling the access to and presentation of their work. It's unclear how much time they spent on the business side of things--Dizzy Gillespie complained that it was years before he saw any royalties from the Debut classic, Jazz at Massey Hall.
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