Robert Glasper backstage at Oberlin College the other night greeting one of his fans, the writer’s daughter Iyesha Jenkins.

One element of our dialogue on the black audience for creative music, as well as our conversation with Nicholas Payton (scroll down for that dialogue) and his ongoing promotion of the omnibus term “BAM” relates to the need for artists to be more audience-friendly. And by that I am certainly not advocating for outright pandering to the lowest common denominator. Several examples of what is meant by being audience-friendly hit home just over the last few days. Listening to Robert Glasper’s new disc “Black Radio” (and one could make hay on the cryptic scale for that title!) leaves this writer with a sense of a contemporary artist skillfully juggling his deeply creative and heady impulses with the music of his peers and the “body” sensibilities of those sounds. Check his recent appearance on Letterman via YouTube for video/audio evidence; balance the vocals with your sense of his acoustic piano and his rhythm section’s complex pyrotechnics (dig particularly Derrick Hodge‘s bass guitar contribution), then take into account the studio audience’s raucous response to that blend. Your commentator also recalls Payton’s recent apt reaction to the work of Glasper’s longtime drummer Chris Dave‘s traps work as more akin to Baby Dodds than Tony Williams, clearly demonstrating that these contemporary musicians, though decidedly forward-thrusting, still reflect the root.

Just finished checking out Esperanza Spalding‘s latest effort, coincidentally titled “Radio Music Society.” (Is there a common theme thread to these artists’ intentions? Seems so…) Again, this writer is struck by the melding of creative impulses and canny song selection – originals seamlessly blended with gems from Wayne Shorter and Stevie Wonder for example – mixed with vocally delivered timely thematics, like emphasizing self-pride to African American youth on “Black Gold,” and once again you get the sense of a creative, uncompromising artist who has set out to successfully craft audience-friendly sensibilities.

Last night was certainly well spent at the Bohemian Caverns on DC’s bustling U Street nightlife corridor. The subject was a unit led by young tenor & soprano saxophonist Kenneth Whalum lll, a rambunctious band that included bassist Burniss Travis, pianist Kris Bowers, and the elastic pocket of drummer Jamire Williams. In front of a pleased and packed house, Whalum and company took no prisoners on the creativity scale, performing a program laden with their originals and leavened with re-workings of nuggets from the likes of Radiohead. Yet they engaged the audience and the audience – with a significant component of 20-something black folks, including plenty of women – engaged them right back. Whalum, part of the growing Memphis music dynasty of the Whalum family (led by his uncle Kirk), has worked with the likes of Common and other prominent hip hop denizens and he brings that sensibility (ala Glasper) to an uncompromising music pallet that speaks to an audience. It ain’t all about odd meters, overly complex originals and young musicians playing for themselves. More on the Bohemian Caverns in a moment; stay tuned…

At another, though decidedly related end of the scale in DC there’s another eminent audience-friendly band, the Michael Thomas Quintet. Their trumpet playing leader is deeply steeped in Blue Note lore, particularly keen on the Art Blakey–Lee Morgan axis. Together over a dozen years, this is a ruff & ready group that likewise rejects compromise, yet at the core of its hard bop proposition is a keen sense of engaging their audience. The opening line from yesterday’s Washington Post review of their March 8 hit at the Strathmore Mansion in suburban DC says it all:

If the complex music theory and technique threaten to leach all the feeling and fun from jazz, D.C. area trumpeter Michael Thomas seems determined to bring it back. Thomas’s quintet — intact after 14 years — plays classic hard bop, but avoids cerebral labyrinths, relying on riffy melodies and playful but impassioned performances to hit the listener in the gut. That approach filled the Mansion at Strathmore’s music room Thursday night with a crowhat thrilled to the quintet’s every vibrant note.

Completed the weekend (March 9-11) with Herbie Hancock at the Kennedy Center. The KC Concert Hall was packed and Herbie delivered an exceptional, groove-oriented career retrospective of sorts – ranging back to “Canteloupe Island” and “Speak Like a Child” and covering selections from his Columbia electric records with pieces like “Actual Proof”, and even working in a return to his vocorder days with “She’ll Come Running.” The master adroitly moved from acoustic piano to the latest toys in keyboard wizardry, and trotted out his “keytar” to good effect. This tour he sports a rhythm band, with James Genus on bass guitar, relative newcomer Troy Lawrence on drums (a bit of a basher on occasion; bit too much backbeat, bit short on finesse – though admittedly this was a first sighting) and most significantly the immensely gifted guitarist from Benin, Lionel Loueke. A relaxed Hancock kibitzed with his audience, joking between pieces and strolling the stage – working the room as it were, the epitome of the original point of this screed – being audience friendly, and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that, especially when you consider audience development the #1 challenge for creative music.

Always on the read for young writers with a viewpoint on creative music, I’ve recently been exchanging Tweets with Brooklyn-based writer Angelika Beener. Ms. Beener, who at least in part comes to this music through the influence of her father, trumpeter Oliver Beener, wields one of the most probing, vibrant and positive pens its been my pleasure to encounter in a minute. She has contributed to the jazz prints, including JazzTimes where she’s written about some of her peer artists, including saxophonists Marcus Strickland and Kenneth Whalum. But as is the case with other writers, its in her blog Alternate Takes (http://alternate-takes.com) where you can sample the true heart of her writing. At Alternate Takes she’s written most recently on the rising vocalist Gregory Porter‘s new Motema release, her dear friend Robert Glasper‘s scintillating new disc “Black Radio,” and an interview with a subject not often covered in the traditional jazz prints (yet another reason to blog!), Max Roach’s lively daughter Dara Roach.

Given her writing proclivities, Angelika seemed a natural to contribute to our ongoing dialogue on the black audience for this music. Here’s what she had to say:

First off, I’d like to thank Willard Jenkins for the invitation to join in on this discussion about the Black jazz audience. I think it’s both a wonderful subject, and a great time in the music to bring it up.

Whether or not people agree, per se, with Nicholas Payton’s BAM ideology, it’s stunning to witness the amount of response and passion associated with the subject. It has become a springboard to more open and honest discussions about race and jazz, which I believe can be a move in the right direction for the music overall.

I agree a great deal with the points Atane [in our most recent dialogue post, preceding our Payton interview] made about the baton dropping between generations. I would just add that jazz is only one of the many African American gems that were seemingly not willed to us. There is an overall abandonment of Black cultural pride in my generation. Utter indifference regarding our history is evident in the glorification of an ignorance our youth seems to revel in. We’ve apparently “arrived” so much so that embracement of our history is viewed as a set back. Black youth are dropping out of high school at record speed and in record numbers, and we can sadly go on and on with disturbing statistics in a myriad of areas. There is no wonder about why there is such a small Black jazz audience.

This being said, I think Atane makes another great point regarding actual and perceived. There is a movement brewing in jazz which is enlisting a younger, Blacker audience. Most strikingly, artists like Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding (both of whom have released urban-leaning jazz albums this week) are ushering in this audience in significant numbers. But my mother always said, “Once jazz moved downtown, that was it.” Harlem’s jazz scene is all but ignored, and to be quite honest, most of the better jazz musicians don’t play Harlem. There is an undeniable difference in caliber of musician that generally plays in the Uptown venues and jam sessions. (I say generally, please don’t misunderstand me!) Presenters like Harlem Stage and Revive Da Live are starting to bring that stellar quality back to Harlem, which is essential, but we have a ways to go in terms of a vital scene with top notch musicians. This is a vivid illustration of what I spoke of earlier regarding the way our history is viewed: as something passé and categorical, and in terms of jazz, a place which went “out of style” in the 50s. I have no doubts that the uprooting of the music from its home was a calculated move, and we need to be just as calculative and strategic in bringing it back home.

I would be remiss not to mention the onus on our musicians to help expand the Black audience. To touch on the woman’s perspective, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve walked into a jazz venue, and had to check a nearby mirror to see if I had grown nine more heads from the looks on the faces of the typical jazz audience. That I am viewed as the odd woman out (Black and female) for embracing and enjoying my own culture says a whole lot about the state of the jazz audience. Additionally, to be able to bet that most of the musicians I am watching won’t be leaving with Black women that night says its own mouthful. We are all human beings, with a right to choose to date whomever we please, but we cannot expect to grow our audience, and run from our women. Period. I am exhausted of the “Black women don’t come to the club” thing. Blame is a dangerous and historical tool that we are unfortunately still falling for, instead of looking at the real issues on the table. We have to stop blaming our women for not supporting the music, especially when so many Black male musicians of my generation stumbled into this music themselves. (That one uncle you had who played Ramsey Lewis albums, or that high school band director who hipped you to Bud Powell.) Now all of a sudden we are so cultured that we are above affording a Black woman that same opportunity to happenstance-ly discover a piece of her heritage? White women should be as rewarded for being more “cultured” than Black women, as Black women should be blamed for being robbed of her culture. Black women have been relentlessly disinvited from the jazz community at large (let’s reflect on Miles Davis’ Someday My Prince Will Come album cover). We have to want to see our women in the clubs, and do what is necessary to make that happen. Is it a little extra work? Sure. But that’s called being Black in America. We have always had to be vigilant about education from the days of slavery, and we still do today. We have to remain vigilant.

Cultural disconnect is one of the saddest things to witness, and there are so many dynamics to consider when it comes to rectifying it. Namely, purists versus non-purists (whatever that really means). That’s a discussion for another post, I suppose, but it is a big part of the overall audience problem. We have to be willing to allow a bridging of the gap, however a musician deems artistically necessary, if we are ever going to see a Black audience develop. We don’t have to love all of it, but again, we cannot blame and condemn musicians for their artistic choices. Goodness knows this goes against the very philosophy of what jazz is. It has always been cutting-edge, and brave. We have to allow this tradition to continue, less we compromise the art and further ostracize the audience.

That’s all for now. Thank you again, Willard, for the opportunity to talk to your readership about this very important topic.

NEXT TIME: Greg Osby meditates on issues related to the audience in general… Stay tuned!

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Want to know why trumpeter Nicholas Payton is so convinced that the term JAZZ is completely outmoded, and why he suggests BAM – shorthand for Black American Music – is a more ecumenical and honest term for today’s creative music? We interviewed Nicholas on Sunday, February 19, 2012 at the 3rd annual Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival on that wide-ranging subject hours prior to Nicholas, Terell Stafford, and Brian Lynch lifting the roof off the festival and thoroughly slaying their audience with a killer Trumpet Summit. Here’s our interview, courtesy of good friend Bret Primack, The Jazz Video Guy (check his incredible inventory of videos on his The Jazz Video Guy YouTube channel).

Our ongoing Independent Ear dialogue on the black audience for creative music (wherefore art thou?) continues with contributions from two readers responding to question as well as previous posts. Stay tuned, shortly we’ll be posting our public interview with Nicholas Payton from last weekend’s Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival.

Our first response comes from Jackie Harris, director of the Louis Armstrong Jazz Camp in New Orleans, a former administrator at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, former cultural commissioner of the city of New Orleans, and a keen observer of black culture and the overall cultural scene.

Classroom work at Jackie Harris’ Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp at Loyola University in New Orleans

Twentieth century Jazz artists and supporters are unfortunately leaving us. We – boomers and generation x’ers – did not fight hard enough to keep music education in the schools of our children and grandchildren. Every generation will support the music of its era. Therefore, young people are always going to listen to what they create and what appeals to them. They will not look for what they know nothing about. Therefore, we must expose and teach.

We – boomers – were immersed in the music of the R&B greats – Stevie, Gladys, Patti, The O’Jays, SOS, Temptations, and many other groups. However we were also a part of the Jazz community. Jazz was played in our homes, we heard it and saw the joy and excitement as we sneaked a look into the neighborhood bar while walking home some evenings. That time has come and gone. Jazz is now taught in the classroom, in summer and after-school programs. Many young parents do not know nor are they able to see the advantages of having their kids enrolled in arts education. They are embracing the hype of more academics to pass standardized testing as justification to exclude music education.

We said “it takes a village.” Let’s be the village that makes the commitment to support and help parents in our school districts advocate for music education in their schools. Let’s insist the music taught in our schools include Jazz instruction. Where is the Jazz audience? The Jazz audience is in remote non-urban communities in middle and high schools, universities and colleges. These communities are not heavily populated by African Americans.

As for BAM [editor’s note: i.e. New Orleans’ own Nicholas Payton] that is up to my homeboy. He can call it whatever he wishes. I respect his wishes. As for me, it will always be Jazz, the art form that was created by African Americans in New Orleans – “The Birthplace of Jazz.”

A voice from a younger perspective…
Jackie Harris, as is the editor of The Independent Ear, is of the so-called baby boomer generation. Another reader, Atane, contributed the following to our dialogue.

These conversations about the lack of a black audience for jazz (BAM) are always the same circular discussion that rarely, if ever, puts the blame squarely where it belongs, the older generation. They have failed us. Our parents failed us. It’s not “the black community” in total, it is the stewards of the black community, the elders. The older generation needs to squarely look in the mirror and understand that the problem exists because of them. Young kids are a product of their environment. No one grows up in a bubble. So if we see that the audience continues to dwindle, why are obvious reasons (guardianship/parenting/education/access) not the focus of the conversation?

I’m a young man who was fortunate enough to have grown up exposed to music, but I can’t say the same for most of my peers. Why didn’t the older generation champion this music to us? When inner-city schools were being decimated by cuts to music education programs, where were our parents to make a stink about it? Why didn’t they raise hell? Why wasn’t this seen as valuable to them? How else will young black kids gain exposure to the music if one of the main avenues is always on the chopping block? Where were the initiatives to fight this? Meanwhile, as this was going on to poor black kids, jazz education for the people that can afford it is big business and continues to grow. So, why are we shocked when fewer and fewer black kids are getting involved?

Also, while the black audiences are smaller, the narrative that black people have turned their back on the music is simply not true. I have no delusions that this will ever be popular music for the average black person, but it is quite insidious to continue this meme of black people not coming out to see this music. It’s not true, or at least not in NYC. The problem is how jazz is covered. In the NYC press, the jazz worlds does not exist above Lincoln Center. There is absolutely no coverage of the happenings above there [editor’s note: apparently the writer is referring to uptown, north of Lincoln Center]. Everything is either the clubs downtown or midtown (Village Vanguard, Blue Note, Birdland, Iridium, Jazz Standard) and Lincoln Center; all venues frequented largely by whites. If those were all the places I went to, I’d think blacks didn’t care for the music also. In all this, it’s almost like the clubs in Harlem don’t exist; clubs where there are black patrons! The Shrine, St. Nick’s Pub, Lenox Lounge, Smoke to name some. What about them? I guess if there is no Winter Jazz Fest happening there, then it’s not important.

Why is there little to no coverage of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival (http://www.centralbrooklynjazzconsortium.org)? It is mostly attended by black folks. I won’t hold my breath for coverage from the major jazz publications, but it is painful that the black press ignores it entirely also. Young folks aren’t running media companies, so why won’t the older black people with clout come out and show support, or those with influence make sure [jazz] gets coverage? How will people know about it, if no one covers it? Who is at fault there? Part of the problem is that no one is exposed to these happenings. I’m glad that outfits like Revivalist (http:///revivalist.okayplayer.com/ at least focus on many of the black musicians still dedicated to the craft. Lord knows NPR, DownBeat, and JazzTimes, etc. won’t cover half these guys grinding away in obsurity.

To reiterate my point, our parents failed us. That’s why we are in the precarious situation with the music today. They didn’t lead by example.

Cuyahoga Community College’s new Center For Creative Arts; a case could be made for this being the House that Tri-C JazzFest Built

Tri-C JazzFest (TCJF), produced by Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), will celebrate it’s 33rd anniversary festival April 19-28 as the Cleveland metro area’s most enduring and important annual jazz-based event. (See our complete 2012 lineup elsewhere on www.openskyjazz.com or visit www.tricpresents.com/jazzfest/. The festival was originally conceived by the late Dr. Reginald Buckner and our director emeritus Dr. Thom Horning, primarily as a catalyst for development of a jazz studies program at Tri-C, and also as part of the college’s commitment as a partner in the ongoing development of the downtown Cleveland Playhouse Square theaters. Those four theaters – the State, the Palace, the Allen, and the Ohio – have been a TCJF lynchpin ever since, today serving as the festival’s bookend major weekend concert component. The Playhouse Square theaters are an excellent example of a successful urban recovery story. They were classic old downtown movie houses, with seating capacity ranging from approximately 950 to over 3,000. Such grand old theaters are no longer fashionable in the movie business, and that coupled with Cleveland’s unfortunate and ongoing downtown retail malaise resulted first in their being vacant hulls, and later in the decree that they be demolished. At the 11th hour they were rescued from the wrecking ball by a combination of the late U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum’s intervention and a newly developed not-for-profit whose mission was to save the theaters, the Playhouse Square Foundation; a classic case of vigorous civic and social activism. Sidebar: my great friend Dr. Larry Simpson, former Tri-C Provost and current Berklee College of Music Provost, and I served on the original TCJF organizing committee as representatives of the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society, which we’d founded in 1977.

The inaugural Tri-C JazzFest featured a burgeoning education component at its core, along with weekend concerts at a Playhouse Square theater featuring the likes of McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Mann. Since then the festival has grown its education component to close to an entire week of clinics, masterclasses, and high school jazz band (non-competitive) performances and adjudications; the concert component now encompasses approximately ten days. Out of Tri-C’s jazz education efforts have come such promising young players as the trumpeters Sean Jones, Dominick Farinacci, and Donald Malloy. The first step in growing our concert component was the presentation of performances at Tri-C’s attractive and very accommodating 800+ seat Metro Campus Auditorium (Tri-C has 3 campuses: Metro (just east of downtown, right across the street from the nation’s oldest public housing project), Eastern Campus, and Western campus), and secondarily in the smaller 300+ seat Metro Campus Theater. Tri-C JazzFest has always had a mission of presenting concerts throughout the Greater Cleveland community, including what has become a significant concert component in some of Cleveland’s traditional African American communities.

TCJF built this component with such venues as East Cleveland Public Library (East Cleveland, OH is an urban African American community just east of Cleveland), the historic black theater Karamu House, Mt. Zion Church, Olivet Baptist Church, and Antioch Baptist Church. TCJF’s highly successful series of presentations at East Cleveland Public Library were part of the catalyst which energized the library’s visionary, now-retired CEO Gregory Reese to raise $10M to build a gorgeous 270-seat chamber hall on-site as a home for jazz. For the most part, Karamu, Mt. Zion, Olivet and more recently Antioch have been venues for special (often themed) presentations of some of Cleveland’s finest artists, sometimes augmented by visiting special guests, ala young vocalist Charenee Wade (backed by Farinacci’s band) as part of a Betty Carter tribute and Columbus, OH B3 ace Bobby Floyd for an organ summit with Cleveland’s B3 king Eddie Baccus last April.

East Cleveland Public Library

East Cleveland Public Library has long been the scene for presentations of some of our visiting artists-in-residence, including NEA Jazz Masters Bobby Hutcherson and Randy Weston, as well as such stalwarts as Cecil Bridgewater, Marcus Roberts, Bobby Watson, Lesa Terry, Cyrus Chestnut, Mulgrew Miller, Winard Harper and a raft of other recording artists. Mt. Zion, and now Olivet, have been the scene of our annual Women in Jazz concert, and last April Antioch hosted our first Gospel Jazz concert.

The crux of this commentary relative to our ongoing Independent Ear dialogue on the black audience question is that each of these venues is based in Cleveland’s African American communities, so the great majority of our audiences at these presentations is black folk. Every concert we present in these venues, which per festival typically average anywhere from 4-5 concerts, is blessed with energetic – bordering on raucous – SRO, turn-away crowds. The longest standing of these, at East Cleveland Public Library and Karamu House, witness audiences which line up in the street hours prior waiting for the doors to open. And lest one think black folks only show up for black artists, we’re talking across-the-board SRO audiences here. A couple of years ago we launched our own resident ensemble, the multi-racial TCJF SoundWorks for annual thematic programming. Their first performance, an evening of their arrangements of McCoy Tyner’s music to celebrate our 30th anniversary, was met with the same SRO audience at East Cleveland Public Library, the same amen corner. SoundWorks second concert featured special guest, and that year’s artist-in-residence, NEA Jazz Master Charlie Haden and his Liberation Music Orchestra music. Here I should emphasize that these have always been FREE concerts.

This April will mark my 18th as the festival’s artistic director. Several years ago, largely in response to the growing number of young artists who communicated about the possibility of being presented at the festival in spite of the fact that they had no discernible track record of performance in our market, we created our Debut Series. This afforded us an opportunity to present young artists who had not previously played the Cleveland market in their festival debut. The Debut Series has been a very successful venture, presented largely at the East Cleveland Public Library, and on several occasions at Nighttown, an intimate supper club in nearby Cleveland Hts. which under Jim Wadsworth has become the area’s most vibrant venue for visiting and touring artists.

Some of our Debut Series artists have included pianists Helen Sung, Gerald Clayton, and Jonathan Batiste, saxophonists Eric Person and Tia Fuller, The Barber Brothers (Rahsaan & Roland), drummer (and Cleveland native) Neal Smith, trumpeters Theo Croker and Maurice Brown, and vocalist Sachal Vasandani. Our 2012 Debut Series will present bassist Ben Williams and saxophonist Marcus Strickland and their bands.

One of the hippest circumstances at all of our African American community venues for these free concerts is the level of audience involvement. There is absolutely nothing like an engaged black audience, responding to the music with great vigor, energizing the artists with their interaction, again that amen corner feeling. More than one of our visiting artists has delightedly asked our community series concert audiences if they could pack them up and take them on the road. These are deeply appreciative audiences which always sell-out the artists’ CD stock post-concert. Last April’s Olivet audience went positively nuts for Charenee Wade, and we expect a similar response to our other Debut Series artist this April, Canadian vocalist Kellylee Evans, who’ll pay homage to Nina Simone.

These audiences and their enthusiasm for our artists strongly suggest that there is certainly an African American audience out there for this music, but one wonders how much of a Field of Dreams factor there is to that equation – an if-we-build-it-they-will-come mentality, given that each of those venues is in one of Cleveland’s black communities. And I can’t emphasize enough that heretofore these concerts have been FREE of charge. Besides TCJF its been my experience in other parts of the country that if jazz artists are presented free of charge – particularly if they’re African American artists and there’s a black community in the vicinity of the venue – the African American audience will be significant. Witness the annual Rosslyn Jazz Festival and Silver Spring Jazz Festival, presented in my home community of the Washington Metro area; and in that community they sure didn’t need George Clinton to sing about the DC area being Chocolate City to know that. Despite the fact that those festivals, both featuring robust talent rosters neatly balancing resident artists with touring artists, are presented on the same fall Saturday afternoon, and each enjoys large African American audience participation. Not sure if it matters much, but it should also be pointed out that most of the TCJF Debut Series concerts, as well as the Rosslyn and Silver Spring events, are all matinee performances.

So the question becomes, are we dealing here with a purely economic issue? I can’t really co-sign that because from my own audience observations – and I serve as MC of TCJF concerts and have been a frequent MC at the Rosslyn Jazz Festival through WPFW, affording an up close & personal audience viewpoint – these are decidedly not audiences comprised of economically-deprived black folks. Remember, I characterized this installment as a case study. What are we to make of the twin phenomena of presentations either in or near large pockets of black populace, presented free of charge, and their resulting in at or near capacity audiences? Let me tell you, a real test case is coming at TCJF in 2012. Current harsh economic realities have compelled the Cuyahoga Community College administration to determine that we must charge a nominal fee ($10) for our Debut Series this April (Ben Williams and Marcus Strickland). Thankfully that’s not the case with our Women in Jazz presentation of Kellylee Evans’ tribute to Nina Simone at Olivet, but it will be quite interesting to compare these three separate audience results for artists who are being introduced to our Cleveland community.

What’s your take on this black audience conundrum? Next installment we’ll include reader responses to the overall question of Where’s the Black Audience for Jazz?, and you’re welcome to be part of the dialogue. Hit me back at willard@openskyjazz.com. Also forthcoming is master saxophonist and conceptualist Greg Osby‘s take on this issue. As we say in radio, stay tuned…