The Jazz Journalists Association announces the 2023 Jazz Heroes — “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz,” formerly the A Team — emphasizing as it has annually since 2001 that jazz is culture that comes from the ground up, by individuals crossing all demographic categories, working frequently with others and beyond basic job definitions […]
Jazz journalism online, virtual reality book party
I’m inordinately proud of the new JJANews website because it makes easily accessible the videos, podcasts, articles with photos and online-realtime activities of the Jazz Journalists Association, such as lthe March 26 public Book Bash! with authors, editors and publishers, being held on on our unique virtual reality SyncSpace.live site — plus background/office assets, in […]
Fighting history and myth re racial politics in jazz
I completely disagree with the point of Randall Sandke‘s bookWhere the Dark and the Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz. Rather than celebrate a century of inter-racial collaboration modeling society’s progress on civil rights, instead Sandke proposes that a cabal of journalists, scholars and left-leaning “activist” producers exaggerated black musicians’ centrality […]