Cobweb Collective

Jazz is many things to many people. To some it is an obscure, elitist and exclusive, even dead art form. To some it is a living, breathing expression of our times - a challenge to engage with the moment. Jazz has undoubtedly undergone a journey like that of no other art form, intrinsically linked to the history of the twentieth century. Jazz has been a symbiotic vessel, unifying immigrant folk cultures and fulfilling a human necessity for expression in a newborn country. Jazz has been dance floor filler, airwave dominator, big business high-flyer, independent artist, political activist, sonic wallpaper, drug addict, spiritual leader, sketch show comedian, sideshow entertainer, high culture, low culture, subculture, black, white and everything in between…

In a world that is rapidly leaving the twentieth Century behind, where social, political and technological evolution are changing the face of cultural consumption, what is jazz’s predominant persona in twenty-first Century Britain?

In late 2006, Tak Wing Chan and John H. Goldthorpe of The University of Oxford published a paper, based on the 2001 Arts in England Survey. They found that 70% of the test group were what they called “univores”, who listened to pop and rock music almost completely exclusively. About 20% were “omnivore – listeners” who had wider taste, including pop, rock, classical, operetta, jazz etc. but they indulged it exclusively through media - that is they enjoyed it through recording, from the comfort of their own home. The remaining 10% were “omnivores”, who shared a wide taste in music but were also active cultural consumers - they attended gigs, visited art galleries and generally went out into the real world to experience these things first hand. Interestingly, they found that "in no case can we identify the... "elite consumer" who engages actively in 'high' culture while shunning 'low' or 'popular' forms. The elite consumer does, we would suppose, exist but is so minoritarian as not to show up on any national survey of normal size".

OK, so those are the numbers. I’m sure you already knew that jazz was essentially a minority past time. If you’ve dedicated yourself to a life as a jazz musician then you’ve probably already gone well beyond that particular point of acceptance. An artist is driven to create. He or she does what he or she can to get by and pay the bills. If those two facets of life join forces, all the better. Musical evangelism, therefore, is something that you can’t necessarily dedicate time to in this climate. You’re busy enough as it is. Besides, what difference does it make?

Chan and Goldthorpe found that the deciding factors in whether you stayed at home listening to pop or went out and listened to a jazz gig were social status and education. This doesn’t mean “class” and “schooling” though – this comes down to who you socialize with, where you hang out and what you are exposed to. The numbers make sense then, as we leave a century ruled by mass media – pop music charts, television, Hollywood and all that - it’s not surprising that most people in this country sit at home listening to their pop and rock CD’s.

But the times are changing. I don’t mean this in an idealistic, bohemian, student revolution kind of way. I mean that we really are leaving many of our twentieth century ways behind - particularly when it comes to media and the arts. The defining factor seems to be our increasing ability to get involved. The BBC offer a good example. Here is arguably the world’s greatest broadcasting corporation, having to pay as much attention to Youtube as it is it does its conventional competitors. Here is a corporation that now offers the previous week’s television as streaming online content and makes its content available (for free) through myspace and Youtube. The relaunch of BBC3 as a pioneering multimedia “channel” has changed the definition of a channel as we know it. E-mail, surfing, blogging, streaming, social networking – daily these things increase in popularity and importance. Outside of the USA and Canada, the UK boasts the largest Facebook community in the world. I mean, for Allah’s sake, a Facebook petition managed to bring back the “Wispa”.

So, what has this to do with jazz? Well, that is precisely the question I wanted to raise. The fact is that things are changing and these changes will directly affect our lives as cultural consumers and our livelihoods as musicians. Will jazz’s identity change? Should we actively exploit new opportunities to raise the profile of our music? How does social conscience affect us? Do we yearn to reach a larger audience or would we rather be appreciated by those few who really appreciate us? Do we want to continue the lineage of positive impact that has reached us through the music? How much should any of this concern us as musicians… as a community? Do we have more than enough to deal with getting our playing together? Is it really important? Is it perhaps enough that the music happens at all?

– February 2008