• Home
  • About
    • Jazz Beyond Jazz
    • Howard Mandel
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Daley bad for Windy City’s music?

Contrary to my paean to Richard M. Daley’s support of Chicago’s music and arts, Chicago Tribune rock-crit Greg Kot writes of the Mayor’s treatment of the local music scene as a “second class citizen.” It’s true the City has messed with club venues — Marguerite Horberg of  established the multi-genre Hot House years back and now runs the progressive culture initiative Portoluz regaled me last weekend with tales of fire inspectors evacuating theaters mid-show over petty infractions and other harrassments; Kot reminds us of Chi’s failure to get behind its indigenous rock, blues, pop and jazz as New Orleans, Austin and other U.S. cities have. Jury’s out on whether Daley’s been overall good or bad for music, but the issue deserves careful analysis, and I urge Jazz Beyond Jazz readers to take a look at Kot’s piece as well as this collaborative Trib report.

howardmandel.com
Subscribe by Email or RSS
All JBJ posts

Future of music journalism: It’s about the audience (?)

The dozen “music journalism” professionals at yesterday’s Condition Critical panel of the Future of Music Coalition’s three-day long “policy summit” became somewhat divided (at least from my perspective) over the course of a well-attended hour & three-quarters session. At one end of a spectrum of opinion were the old guard — me, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune and Tom Moon, formerly of the Philadelphia Inquirer — asserting that good music journalism puts the music in context, “illuminates, educates and entertains” its readers and reaches beyond its niche to satisfy those who are not devoted yo but may be curious about a given musical topic. At the other was Raymond Leon Roker of URB/URB.com and Todd Roberts, co-founder of the Daily Swarm, who suggested that success in music journalism comes from amplifying, echoing and reinforcing the interests of the largest attractable audience. I may be drawing this too reductively, but it felt like an argument: developing substantive content vs, ever-better marketing, without much interest in content, using the processes of social media.

[Read more…]

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

@JazzMandel

Tweets by @jazzbeyondjazz

More Me

I'll be speaking:

JBJ Essentials

Archives

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license