{"id":3097,"date":"2024-04-16T20:03:28","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T00:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2024-04-16T20:25:51","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T00:25:51","slug":"its-jazz-appreciation-month-hail-jazz-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2024\/04\/its-jazz-appreciation-month-hail-jazz-heroes.html","title":{"rendered":"It’s Jazz Appreciation Month: Hail Jazz Heroes!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since 2001, the Jazz Journalists Association (over which I preside) has celebrated some 350 \u201cactivists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz,\u201d<\/a> as Jazz Heroes.<\/strong> The class of 2024 Jazz Heroes<\/a> has just been announced, recognizing the good works of 33 people whose efforts extend from the Baja-San Diego borderland to Ottawa, Canada, through 27 U.S cities, from Akron to Tucson, rural Montana to<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a>
photo collage thanks to Melanie Na\u00f1ez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

the South Carolina Lowcountry, New York\u2019s Capital Region as well as Brooklyn and Harlem, Newark, Chicago, the Bay Area, LA, NOLA, DC, Austin, Denver, Boston, Detroit, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Brattleboro, Hilton Head Island, Portland, Seattle \u2014 where there\u2019s music, there\u2019s jazz (and given more organizational resources, the JJA could celebrate 33 more . . .)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jazz Heroes do the background work, sometimes acknowledged but seldom fairly compensated, that sustains as a vital cultural entity the past and present of an art form that reflects better than any other (I\u2019ll argue) what people not much driven by commercial concerns do to keep themselves and their communities humming. Most serious jazz fans understand their connections to this music as more than a hobby, perhaps as much as a calling. It might be considered a lifestyle, or even a way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why these folks and and others (like me) love jazz more than (if not always instead of or to the exclusion of) other genres of music is a question for speculation, to what ends I\u2019m not sure. I grew up on Chicago\u2019s south side in the \u201850s, jazz was in the air but so was Sinatra, Elvis, show tunes, r&b, popular classical works, Lawrence Welk, tv and ad ditties, quasi-Jewish music and movie soundtracks. I\u2019m temperamentally partial to narrative drama, heightened emotions, saturated colors, sudden (spontaneous? unpredictable?) action, an ethos that values imaginative engagement, emotional range and a whatever\u2019s-necessary work ethic. Demographics + personal preferences = personal esthetics. Call that news? Seems tautological.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what\u2019s cool, maybe deserving of note, and demonstrated clearly by the JJA\u2019s Jazz Heroes campaign is that this music, for many years reportedly representing a tiny and diminishing percentage of record sale and concert returns, holds sway beyond such metrics. Jazz may be deemed elitist or crass, the most elevated form of spontaneous creation or sheer noise, but it\u2019s here, everywhere, ineradicable. Its proponents are working across many sectors of the arts world, from artist to audience, patron to promoter to presenter. Think too of the references to jazz \u2014 the sound, the iconography, the immortals \u2014 that pops up in advertising. See what jazz is used to sell, then consider how jazz-the-music may not be selling, but jazz-the-idea is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Yet \u2014 maybe that\u2019s not quite true. Andr\u00e9 3000 playing processed wood flutes is fine by me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n