[Dixielandjazz] Too many musicians, not enough gigs

Elazar Brandt jazzmin at actcom.net.il
Wed Jul 6 14:04:35 PDT 2005


Shalom Jazz fans,

IMHO, the premise of the title of this thread is seriously flawed. What, if
there were fewer musicians, then there would be plenty of work for them (us?)?
Or if there were only more gigs, then there would be plenty of work for the
existing musicians? Something is wrong with the logic there somewhere.

First of all, there are one hell of a lot of people in this world, and with the
advent of modern media, I dare say we are well on the way to there being almost
NO real musicians left, except those who grew up spoon fed with MTV blather,
then spend their lives trying to imitate it. When I get a crowd of kids on the
street or in a school program, and they ask how my horn makes music when there
is no place to plug it in, I can tell you that this world is not in danger of
being overpopulated with musicians.

An analogy: there is a story of Moses in the Bible, who met with 70 hand-picked
men who would be his assistant administrators of the recently freed slave nation
of Israel. At the meeting, the assistants begin to prophesy. Now there were a
couple who didn't make it to the staff meeting , and were still wandering around
in the camp, and they also started to prophesy. Some brave tattler ran to inform
Moses of these seemingly extraneous prophets. Moses response: "Are you jealous
for me? I wish that all of the people would prophesy!" The point of my little
sermon is that we should be wishing that there were more musicians, and that all
people should have an appreciation of, and even an ability to play real live
unplugged music in all its splendor and variety. It seems to me that people who
know music are the first to pay for capable performers. I do not believe that
"too many musicians" are a danger to the profession.

The danger is that too many of us are fishing in the same diminishing pond of
existing venues and audiences, rather than getting out into the world and
finding or creating new venues and audiences. Sure it takes some work. We've
been demonstrating that it can be done over here, as my band of young Israeli
and Russian players are drawing more and more jobs from among native Israelis
and immigrants of middle eastern background who don't know what our instruments
are called, or any of the OKOM songs, or much else about the music, except that
when they hear it, they like it. Well, if they like it enough to pay for it,
that's a good place to start, isn't it?

July 4 being this week, a big organization of Americans and Canadians are having
a big picnic tomorrow. They expect over 2000 people. We were asked to play for
half an hour for free on a day that is a work day for the Israelis. Thanks, but
no thanks. I'm not holding my breath waiting for the English speaking audiences
to invite us for paid gigs.

The generations that made OKOM happen are passing, and will soon be gone. We can
sit around and cry about the end of an era, or we can carry the ball forward
into a new century, to new audiences, with new young players. Nobody guaranteed
the jazz great any venues or audiences or pay. They went out there and made
music and made their mark. Now the ball is in our court, and it's our turn to do
the same.

Elazar "what do I know, I wasn't born until 1952" Brandt
Doctor Jazz Band
Tekiya Trumpet Ensemble
Jerusalem, Israel
<www.israel.net/ministry-of-jazz>
Tel: +972-2-679-2537






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