Opinion

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

OPINION June 13, 2020

Renegade or Retrograde: Questioning Little Richard's Legacy

In the many retrospectives on rock musician Little Richard since his death on 9 May 2020, some major narratives have emerged: he has been alternatingly cast as a queer forefather in the tradition of Oscar Wilde; a transgressive figure who broke racial, gender, and/or sexual boundaries; and a music pioneer largely defined by his influence on subsequent artists such as The Beatles. But in exalting the singer as a boundary breaker, observers have overlooked retrograde elements of Richard's legacy: his ...

OPINION June 8, 2020

A response to yet another senseless public murder of a Black Citizen by officers of the law

By Wynton Marsalis

With the crescendo of public outcry and proliferation of opinions and justifiable expressions of outrage by so many experts, officials and popular celebrities, I fear there's little room or need for yet another person voicing a commonly held opinion. I also believe that the everyday tragedies that are commonplace and routine to our everyday way of living, should be addressed when they happen, not when so much pressure has built up in the system that it must be ...

OPINION June 6, 2020

Black Lives Matter, Black Culture Matters

By Franz A. Matzner

Black lives matter. I am a jazz writer, so my lens on this truth is in some respects through music. The protests sweeping the country—and globe—are potent and necessarily focused on ending racial violence and police brutality. The images we see with increasingly open eyes of the barbaric treatment of African Americans are changing perceptions and helping us begin to confront systemic racism, the original sin of America's founding that will continue to bar our society from fulfilling the promise ...

OPINION May 23, 2020

On Missing Live Jazz

By Douglas Groothuis

This pandemic has snatched much from us through its reign of disease and death. We have lost family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances to COVID-19. Millions have lost jobs or fear losing them. By all accounts, the whole thing stinks. We try to cling to what remains, and we hope and pray for restoration. How does all this upheaval affect the jazz world? We have lost a host of old and not-so-old jazz luminaries to this disease, such as ...

OPINION April 28, 2020

Half Reopen To Food Delivery: Jazz Headwinds In China

By Jiaowei Hu

The festive electronic music pours out of the Vietnamese restaurant across the square, welcoming back its customers, already at two-thirds volume compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. Su Yan frowned: “It looks like hiring a DJ does help the business. But what can we jazz clubs do with DJs?" As the Director of Publicity at JZ Club (a major jazz venue brand in China, based in jny: Shanghai), Yan together with his company, has been in the most ...

OPINION March 22, 2020

Can Jazz Survive COVID-19? China Has Tested the Waters

By Jiaowei Hu

In the coming weeks, Frank Sinatra's line “I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep" from “New York, New York" may not strike a chord. On March 17, the epicenter of jazz ground to a halt. By the decree of governmental enforcement, all jazz venues in jny: New York City announced closures in rapid succession. Being the last to surrender, Blue Note New York's closure has not only marked a complete suspension of the Mecca of ...

OPINION March 17, 2020

New Media, Jazz and Camille Bertault

By Steve Provizer

A recent headline in Fortune.com read: “Why 'Success' on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty." Hundreds of thousands, even millions of views often result in meaningless royalty checks to musicians from YouTube (owned by Google). And yet, there are musicians whose videos on that platform, combined with a Facebook and Instagram presence, have either created or dramatically elevated their careers. While this is a much likelier scenario for a pop or a hip-hop artist, it has happened ...