[Dixielandjazz] Hope for the future

[Tony Davis]

We played at a 60th birthday party last night - no surprises there.  What
was surprising was that one of the young men behind the bar said how much he
was enjoying our music, and told me that he and some of his mates go once a
week to a Worcestershire pub to hear a traditional jazz band.  Also there
was a teenage boy among the guests who didn't take his eyes off the band all
evening, and at the end came up and thanked us for the great music.

This follows a gig I did three weeks ago at a pub in Bristol where the
audience was mostly young people, presumably students.  What's more, they
were really listening, some of them standing close to the band, obviously
*feeling* the music and showing their appreciation by their enthusiastic
applause.  It was like going back in time about 45 years.

It has to be said that such events are rare, at least in my experience, but
it shows that the potential for appreciation of our music by people in their
teens and early twenties is there, given the right combination of
circumstances.  I took part in a school workshop recently where I had the
wonderful experience of hearing a young trumpet player - a competent
reader - begin to improvise as he played without written music for the first
time.

Some idiot said to me once - about 45 years ago, as it happens - "Jazz is
dead, innit - rock 'n' roll's like taken over."  It wasn't true then, and
it's not true now.  The future is bright!  Per ardua ad astra!

--
Tony Davis
Trumpet/Cornet
Zenith Hot Stompers/Kaminsky Connection/Harlem
Aston, Oxfordshire, UK
www.tony-davis.co.uk