Well folks the deed is done.  With yesterday’s anticipated announcement from International Association for Jazz Education president Chuck Owen, the doors have been officially closed on IAJE’s offices in Manhattan, KS, the 2009 Seattle conference has been cancelled, and the whole shebang is about to be turned over to receivership.  The one hopeful note in that avalanche of bad and disappointing news is that an independent investigator will now be assigned to determine how this all transpired.  I for one remain astounded that fiscal malfeasance of this magnitude could only have been revealed in the full light of day to the IAJE board just last Fall — as characterized in an earlier ‘we’re as surprised and dismayed as you’ memo from the board.  How could that be?  How could this level of incompetence have gone on so long, so thoroughly unchecked.  As a 25-year NAJE/IAJE member I for one want some answers — not a pound of flesh mind you — just some legitimate answers as to how the membership and volunteer support of so many of us in the jazz community could have been so thoroughly betrayed.  Have the chickens come home to roost?  WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?

If there are any readers out there who still think The Independent Ear has some manner of axe to grind where it concerns the current critical state of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) with our original editorial rant Woe is IAJE (if you’re not hip to it, scroll down to just below the Transparent Productions interview — and don’t sleep on the Nicole Mitchell interview or Transparent piece in between — and read for yourself), then you are humbly advised to read the extensive list of comments readers have left in the wake of that piece.  And please pay particular attention to comment #26 from a former IAJE staffer.  As they say in the old country… ’nuff said!

Peace,

Willard Jenkins

The Independent Ear

P.S. Does anyone out here have any substantive solutions to this mess?

…Just got this response to our editorial rant WOE IS IAJE from a veteran jazz artist manager:

I began to have a strange feeling about IAJE over the last 10-15 years in discussions with people that I know in the business around the world.  IAJE wasn’t about what’s really happening in the music, in jazz education, or [in] giving service to jazz musicians anymore.  The IAJE was about those who could wheel and deal on the administrative level and who they could network with.

My oberservation was [IAJE] was about $$s coming into the exhibition halls, selling of tapes which musicians never received a dime for or any royalties; bit advertising in the program guide, courting big companies with big expense accounts for catered dinners, etc…  The IAJE was too far right for me…  [IAJE] never helped managers, producers, the booking/concert agents who are killing themselves to keep the music alive around the world…

What’s your take on all this?  Scroll down for the original WOE IS IAJE posting (and keep scrolling down past Woe is IAJE pt.2 which is the editor’s response to one particular cowardly jazz lion)…  And the beat goes on!

What was once the National Association for Jazz Educators (NAJE) and what morphed into the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) has/had become the omnibus organization for the entire jazz community (despite the narrow-minded comment of "A jazz educator" below).  And now it appears as though quite sadly and tragically IAJE is crumbling before our very eyes.  It didn’t have to happen this way.  Scroll down for the original "Woe is IAJE" post ("Woe is IAJE Pt. 2" is purely a reaction to a specious, unattributed comment); KEEP SCROLLING…  you’ll find it…  And please feel free to leave a comment.

The Independent Ear