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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

36 Jazz Heroes in 32 US cities – and there are many more

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 or profit motives to sustain and spread the vital music born in America. This year the JJA (a non-profit professional organization for journalists covering jazz) is honoring 36 such Heroes in 32 US cities. If we had the capacity, we could do twice that number. Indeed, here’s the Honor Roll of all “A Team” members and Jazz Heroes since the initiative began.

Personality profiles and portraits of each Hero, written by members of their communities, are posted at JJAJazzAwards.org. Besides being hailed online, which the JJA hopes will interest local media in advancing the human interest elements of stories about neighbors putting themselves out for the sake of creative music, Heroes receive engraved statuettes at events in their localities during the summer.

The Heroes, by city:

Albuquerque – Mark Weber, radio-show host, writer-photographer, record producer

Atlanta – Dr. Gordon Vernick, trumpeter and educator at George State University

Austin – Pedro Moreno, founder of Epistrophy Arts

Baltimore – Eric Kennedy, drummer and pre-K-to-college teacher/mentor

Boston – Carolyn J. Kelley, Jazz All Ways/Jazz Boston 

Bronx – Judith Insell, Bronx Arts Ensemble director/programmer, violist

Brooklyn – Andrew Drury, drummer, Continuum Arts & Culture 

Chicago — Carlos Flores, Chicago Latin Jazz Festival curator

Cleveland – Gabriel Pollack, Bop Stop, Cleveland Museum of Art

Dallas – Freddie Jones, trumpeter, founder of Trumpets4Kids

Denver – Tenia Nelson, keyboardist-educator, A Gift of Jazz board member

Detroit – Rodney Whitaker, bassist and educator

Hartford – Joe Morris, guitarist/mentor

Indianapolis – Herman “Butch” Slaughter and Kyle Long, preservationists on radio

Los Angeles – LeRoy Downs and Frederick Smith, Jr., Just Jazz media partners

Minneapolis-St. Paul – Janis Lane-Ewart, public radio stalwart

Missoula – Naomi Moon Siegel, trombonist, Lakebottom Sounds

New Hampshire-Vermont Upper Valley – Fred Haas and Sabrina Brown, Interplay Jazz & Arts Camp

Morristown – Gwen Kelley, HotHouse magazine publisher

New Orleans – Luther S. Gray, percussion and parade culture preservationist

New York City – Brice Rosenbloom, Boom Collective producer

Philadelphia – Homer Jackson, Executive Director, Philadelphia Jazz Project

Pittsburgh  Gail Austin and Mensah Wali, founders of the Kente Arts Alliance

Portland OR – Yugen Rashad, host at KBOO community radio

San Francisco Bay Area – Jesse “Chuy” Valera, Latin jazz maven, KSCM host

San Juan – Ramon Vázquez, bassist and community organizer

San Jose – Brendan Rawson, Executive Director San Jose Jazz, producer of Ukraine exchange project

Sarasota – Ed Linehan, Sarasota Jazz Club president

Seattle – Eugenie Jones, singer-songwriter, Music for a Cause

Stanford – Fredrick J. Berry, trumpeter-educator, College of San Mateo + Stanford Jazz Orchestra

Washington, D.C. – Charlie Young III, coordinator Instrumental Jazz Studies, Howard Univ.

Wilmington NC – Sandy Evans, North Carolina Jazz Festival, Jazz Lovers newsletter

More information about the campaign, part of the JJA’s programs aligning with Jazz Appreciation Month and International Jazz Day, is reported at JJANews.org. One exciting tidbit is that the JJA’s 2023 Jazz Heroes were announced on April 6 — 100 years to the day after King Joe Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band with Louis Armstrong recorded an early high of jazz development, the classic “Dipper Mouth Blues.”

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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 a clear, functional way. Kudos to designer Melanie Nañez. You have to visit the site yourself to see what it really has to offer.

My gratification extends, though, to the range of activities this small although international professional membership organization has initiated to keep jazz media in public discussion. In the past year JJA members have launched a podcastThe Buzz, taking on issues like “White Critic/Black Music” — and Seeing Jazz Photography Master classes, such as one being held Saturday March 26 with Award winning Carol Friedman discussing her selected images, live and interactive, the hour-long program later archived at our YouTube channel. It’s held three innovative events at SyncSpace — which allows attendees to have private, personal encounters as well as participate in panels, presentations, live music events and a Screening room full of jazz videos seen no where else.

The JJA has published articles from correspondents in Havana, Vienna, Romania, Bergamo and elsewhere. Its 220-some members post news of their latest accomplishments month, and individually are addressing jazz in all its forms, in every available media, pushing into new areas same as jazz musicians restlessly expand the bounds of what’s been considered acceptable in music. Jazz journalists, mostly freelancers, have to be deft, quick, adaptable in the fast-changing media marketplace. And we should not be limited as writers OR broadcasters OR photographers OR videographers, because most of us have learned to do whatever we can to advance our messages about the joys and relevance of music.

Armstrong Park — Entrance to the JJA’s SyncSpace.live venue

So big websites such as JJANews, with its portals to diverse departments themselves rich in content, surely seem like good models for going forward. Sites that feature cross-platform multi-media are sure to outlast those trying to refresh conventions of print newspapers and magazines. True, the JJA as a membership-driven professional organization does not have a viable business model — there’s no advertising to sell, few grants to apply for, and its generous sponsors (currently the Joyce and George Wein Foundation, Arkadia Records, the Jazz Foundation of America) are highly prized. But still — this is the way. Look and listen back to history, for guidance as well as pleasure. True direction is forward ho.

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. sandke book cover.jpegRather 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 while downplaying white Americans’ contributions to jazz. He thinks white musicians deserve more attention and credit, if jazz is a true meritocracy; I think instead that the generally accepted shape of jazz’s narrative and its canon is representative of jazz’s meritocracy, and that white musicians for the most part have gotten plenty of notice, plus fame and fortune frequently disproportionate to their artistic achievements. Read my review at JJANews.org — and look for Sandke, a composer-trumpeteras well as author, to post a response, here or there.

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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…

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