Backlash against grants for jazz?

Nate Chinen, estimable New York Times music journalist, questions the effect of grants like the $253,000 announced by Chamber Music America for jazz composers: Are applicants pressed to create overly grand and pc projects? Ottawa Citizen blogger Peter Hum asks why Canada’s government supports jazz at all.

But Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra leader Arturo O’Farrill has been commissioned to write a Latin jazz orchestra piece in honor of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Are grants and government support bad for jazz?

Chinen’s blog entry centers on his interest in whether “the current system creates more or less freedoms, more or less pressure(s)” and refers to a column he wrote for Jazz Times in which he raised “unsettling questions” about artists creating “self-consciously intellectual or pointedly interdisciplinary works” on the basis of patronage or under sway of other “vested interests.” He does recognize that jazz needs support, however it can be gotten, but he cites musical projects that are funded because they read good on paper to funders, rather than grab the inherent passions of audiences or the artists themselves.

I can see his point — there are indeed some works that seem to get funded because of high concepts (and often, also, connections in high places) and don’t deliver the best music possible for the money. I’ve always felt jazz is in a uniquely honest position among American arts because musicians have had to create a relationships with a general public for financial support, rather than expect their esthetic imaginations be indulged by deep-pocket individuals, elite arts panelists or corporations with agendas.

However, the current crop of Chamber Music America fellows — including Rudresh Mahanthappa, Adam Rudolph, Mario Pavone, Rez Abassi, Jason Kao Hwang, all of whom I’ve heard, enjoyed and written about, and Amir ElSaffar, Ellery Eskelin, John Hollenbeck and Joel Harrison, who I’ve heard with respect and interest at the very least, live and/or on records — areÂ tried and true artists, known for quality productions over many years leading up to significant recent (pre-grant) successes (there are only three CMA fellows I haven no prior knowledge of: Josh Moshier of Evanston, IL and NY NY’s Ole Mathiesen and John Escreet). With record co’s for the most part unable to fund work in development if they’ve survived at all, concert opportunities limited and commercial clubs typically not the best places to try something new, how’s a musician supposed to find the do-re-mi to fiddle around,Â er,Â create, if not by applying to foundations? And if you apply, why not go for the dream project, which you couldn’t even think of when scrappling in the Apple is the daily grind?Â

Up in Canada, the conservative Harper administration’s funds to jazz among other cultural events as a lure to attract tourist caught Hum’s attention, raised the hackles of Tabatha Southey, who wrote an almost funny op-edÂ for The Globe and Mail about it –Â

I don’t mind other people liking jazz. What people listen to behind closed doors is their own business. I accept it: Jazz happens. I just don’t see why we need to use tax dollars to promote it. . .Â

and a more straightforward putdown by Ottawa Citizen‘s Randall Denley headlined “Throwing Parties With Your Money” that starts with

The government of Canada is now so desperate to spend the billions of dollars it is borrowing that it is shoveling money out the door to New Orleans jazz musicians.

Oh, so that’s how they’re getting rich. At issue in both of these articles is the treatment of Canadian jazz artists, who seem to be getting passed over, But if the government’s point is to raise tourist dollars with jazz, don’t they have to encourage jazz attractions? And though Canada’s jazz funding has been the envy of U.S. presenters and musicians for a while now, not many of its musicians-in-residence have yet been widely-heralded as must-listening. In time, that may change. Meanwhile, Canada’s jazz fests in Victoriaville, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Guelph and elsewhere are acknowledged internationally as stellar, and deserve being underwritten to stay that way, even if they import headliners from the U.S., Europe, Africa, wherever.

Back here at home, pianist-composerÂ O’Farrill, winner of a 2009 Grammy and Jazz Journalists Association’s Jazz Award for the album Song for Chico, has beenÂ chosen byÂ Symphony Space and the Bronx Museum to compose a song celebrating the elevation of the first Latina woman to the Supreme Court.. The music is being financed by private donors and is expected to be performed at Symphony Space in November. Says O’Farrill,Â

To pay tribute a woman who has shown incredible progressive judicial prowess, someone who has distinguished herself on so many levels, ,et alone come out of the Bronx, out of a housing project, and done such incredible and amazing things, it’s an opportunity of a lifetime.

Opportunities — to perform, to find audiences, to make statements, to take chances, to make livings — that’s what musicians (among other artists) need. Considering today’s economic realities, few of us are being too scrupulous about where the bucks for sustaining opportunities come from, but in truth no jazzer worth his or her name is conning anyone out of their dollars or loonies with sub-par music, which isn’t signficantly easier to realize or monetize if it’s a suite or multi-media experiment than if it’s a jam session. Let’s keep applauding governments that give jazz its propers, and clap in clavÃ© for Judge Sotomayor upon her upcoming confirmation, without Republicans if need be.

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