Life's a pitch: Where are the women jazz listeners?

Hello Jazz Beyond Jazz

This is just some input from a seasoned song writer musician .

I think song writing should be paying attention to world community in regard to
women's struggle and life experience . Example ( Song For My Son ) is a song about children weapons or a son away at war . It is culturally diverse because of it's performance .This song has over 51.000 views and growing on You Tube . I invite you to view it and hope you enjoy

Song For My Son -Preformed by Jackie Jones & Mickey Carroll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gey8AAlMHDs

All the best with your ongoing creative Blog adventure

Mickey

Mickey Carroll
Grammy nominee
Gold Record recipient
http://www.motherj.com
http://www.motherj.com/featuredartists.html

Eric Scott Reed said, "Most of the women I see in clubs are accompanied by other male fans or they are the girlfriends/wives of musicians. . . . Finally, you have to admit there's a certain physical strength/prowess that goes hand-in-hand with playing Jazz - look at Fats Waller or Art Blakey - those guys could barely be bested by other men, let alone women."

I don't have to admit anything. Re the first statement, how do you know the women you see in the clubs didn't bring the men with them, and not the other way around? And as for the second argument, how do you account for the women who do play piano, drums, trombone, bass, etc., and play well? Consider context, Mr. Reed. Opportunity. History. If you think it takes a strong man to play an instrument (or is it just jazz that requires that special strength?), you're not exposing yourself to enough music.

Sherrie Tucker's article from 1997 does a good job of discussing sexism in the way jazz history is written and how it has been experienced by women performers. Check it out here: http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/pre/Vol1-10/Vol1-10html/Vol8.html

Um ... so ... ah, you're telling me that the only reason that I actually LIKE jazz is because 'they' HAVE marketed it to me? Is that all it is?

OMG that's depressing.

But I think it is also a false, and I think you think it is false too. What brought you to jazz? I'd say look at that first. Then, as an ex jazz-journalist, I'd have to point out the glaring truth that 'jazz' is a really really fuzzy term that encompasses a great deal. Grover Washington Jr and latter-day George Benson were both HEAVILY rewarded by a largely female audience. Nat King Cole too. And Sinatra.

But maybe not Anthony Braxton, but I have to confess that I didn't really 'like' Braxton so much as I studied and puzzled over him like some kind of Rubix Cube. You have no idea how happy I was to hear him in Guelph say that he eventually realized that "'intellectually interesting' just wasn't interesting enough!" -- had I been there I would have given a standing ovation for that, because it sums up EXACTLY why I didn't like a great deal of the 'jazz' I had to cover in my career.

So, like, maybe it's like what our ma's told us when we were back in High School: "Girls get smarter faster than boys do." -- I mean, it IS a possibility, no?

HM: Right, nobody marketed jazz to me, I had a little exposure then pursued it myself. But as a 16 year old I was intrigued with the gritty aspects of the Jazz Record Mart, jazz and blues, which would have put a lot of people off, boys and girls alike. You're right, too, Gary, that a lot of jazz (by men) that's smoother or more romantic has attracted women fans. And men fans. And Braxton, who was BRILLIANT and candid and funny in Guelph a couple years ago, has wracked up a slew of very talented women colleagues/proteges/students, among them Marilyn Crispell, Nicole Mitchell and Mary Halvorson. Intellectualism (thoughtfulness? content?) isn't necessarily a turn off to either/any gender, either.

I agree; you don't have to know ANYTHING about Jazz to enjoy it, but you DO have to know something about it, if you're gonna talk about it.

Most of the women I see in clubs are accompanied by other male fans or they are the girlfriends/wives of musicians.

Anyone who expects that when it comes to "bonding" that men should behave any differently than women do in that area, is in denial. It's just the nature of things.

Finally, you have to admit there's a certain physical strength/prowess that goes hand-in-hand with playing Jazz - look at Fats Waller or Art Blakey - those guys could barely be bested by other men, let alone women.

Nobody's saying you have to be Black and male to be a great Jazz artist but, history has shown us that the paradigm was formed by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, etc. It's cultural NOT genetic.

One glaring omission in both your lists of important leaders AND educators, women in radio, etc.-- Marian McPartland. She has arguably done more to further exposure to women in the jazz world than any other single person in the past 30 years. She performs a large number of compositions by women in her sets and on PIANO JAZZ, has performed for multiple Presidents, received numerous prestigious awards and has long made a point of featuring women jazzers as a large percentage of her guest artists on this show hear by close to a quarter million listeners weekly for 30 years. Props must be given where they are due. We need more like Ms. McPartland.

HM: Absolutely correct, and an egregious omission. Know that Seattle-based jazz journalist Paul de Barros is writing a biography of Marian McPartland. She's been a Jazz Awards winner in several categories including last year Lifetime Achievement, and the Jazz Journalists Association's Award for Broadcasting is co-named for the late Willis Conover (of Voice of America) and the very-much-with-us Ms. McPartland.

Howard, Howard, Howard, you are sounding like a chauvinist. You need to get out more and see the number of women in the clubs. Unfortunately I don't see enough Black women but there are plenty of women who like and study jazz. Out of the nine WBGO announcers four are women, ironically Black women (OK, Awilda is a Puerto Rican). Women are making names for themselves these days. Tia Fuller has an all female band and she is a terrific multi reed player, composer and arranger. Sadly, I have heard male musicians say that they don't like women in jazz because they interfere with the male bonding and many feel that women don't swing like men. Let's face it, the "jazz police" have done more harm than good by telling people that they can't like jazz unless they KNOW something about it. Why can't people just hear it and like it?

HM: Sheila, I should *definitely* get out more. But I'm quite aware that women have found radio to be welcomg to them as jazz producers, announcers, station managers, and listeners, too. As far as my being a chauvinist, I won't deny it's possible because that comes with my gender, though I have consistently argued for women to have equal access and billing in jazz (not to mention jazz journalism -- I've commissioned women to write articles, invited them onto panels, edited and mentored women writers, asked them to join the Jazz Journalists Association, voted for them in the Jazz Awards, and so on). Please see where this thread started -- with a blog posting by Amanda Ameer on ArtsJournal's Life's a Bitch, wondering why women weren't at a Brad Mehldau Village Vanguard show. Or did you just not like my headline paraphrasing Freud?

There are some jazz women, here:

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showEvent&event=MJWIL

Its not New York or Chicago Jazz but still...have a look.

HM: I'd like my examples to be drawn from wider, but I haven't been getting around so much recently. In most recent distant trip, last October, there was a loose coterie of women of several different generations attending the concerts as personally appreciative devotees. But that was in the Azores off the coast of Portugal.

Thanks to the Kennedy Center for its longtime support of Women in Jazz initiatives including the Mary Lou Williams Festival. I've written of a couple women instrumentalists heard at the PDX Jazz Fest, Portland OR, and a couple yrs ago reviewed a record by a Seattle women's big band. There are women instrumentalists in Berklee and New England Conservatory, but I don't know their names -- Miami? Pittsburg, Cleveland, Memphis, Louisville, KC, Detroit, St. Louis, Madison, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Omaha, heck right out to SF and LA and down to Denton, Tx, there are women musicians and listeners out there. Tina Marsh is doing unreasonably unheralded great things in Austin, Kitty Margolis and Madeliene Eastman in the Bay Area, Ruth Price as Jazz Bakery proprietor in LA, etc.

Did I mention Esperanza Spalding? Playing bass and scat singing at the White House. Amazing, who'd a thunk it?

i don't think it's a good idea to blame men, marketing, etc. there will always be things in the way of discovery of anything wonderful. one has to take chances. blaming others is a very negative dead end. i went to jazz clubs on my own as a teenager and loved the music on the spot.

HM: Agreed: It's not the doing of "men," but rather society, that things are as they are, and it's always up to the individual to make it different.

Thanks for the post on "Women jazz listeners"...I really enjoyed reading it!

HM: I believe this commentor has recently completed my coure "The Arts: Jazz" at NYU. If I've identified correctly, she was in my weekly 80 minute seminar with a dozen other students whose prior experience with jazz was to start with more or less limited, and whose progress over 15 weeks of directed viewing, reading, listening, talking and written responses was 100 per cent to the good. That is, every person got something out of it -- no one rejected the music, jazz history, culture, issues, personalities after the exposure; all seemed pleased with new discoveries. They are men and women, self-selecting electives to fulfill undergrad degrees, often while working fulltime and with families -- taking the time to learn about jazz comes at a price to them (not least of all, NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies tuition). But I'm grateful for such students who rigorously engage me in learning about jazz and thinking about its resonances.