[Dixielandjazz] Spitting in the wind? The OKOM jazzer's quandary

[tcashwigg at aol.com]

Hi David:  Thanks for you most thoughtful reply:

Don't Promote it as OLD, promote it as the next New Thing because it is 
indeed NEW to all those who have not yet been exposed to it.
Never underestimate the musical Ignorance of any Talent Buyer for any 
potential gig, especially those whose only exposure to music may be DJs 
or hip hop and rap or even ROCK AND ROLL.   For instance ReBirth Brass 
Band can best be described as Dixie Rap & Hip Hop, while Dirty Dozen 
Brass Band slips into Dixie/N.O. Jazz Fusion, both keeping the roots 
yet trying to expand the music to appeal to today's youth and aging 
Baby boomers who may still have limited exposure to it.

I am even trying to go into a different more commercial direction with 
my band to reach all the Soul Music and R&B boomers who are floundering 
around looking for some new music.  Many of my OKOM colleagues and 
purist no doubt hold me in disgust for what my band plays even though 
we  often certainly can and do play the same thing that most of them 
do.   Ask any member of this list that has gone on a gig with me if 
they had a good time on the gig and made decent money for the gig as 
well and I don't think you will hear any complaints for the most part.  
I say that because not one of them has ever turned me down when I 
called them for another gig opportunity unless of course they were 
already previously committed. I do not compete for the status quo gigs 
and offer no threat to any OKOM group and will create and or bring my 
own audience to any event That hires my shows whether it be my band or 
one that I represent.

History Repeats itself OVER AND OVER AND OVER Again,  what I am saying 
is very simple and the answer to what you just said about looking out 
the rear view mirror to the past.

Get up tomorrow morning and go put up Burma Shave Signs fifty miles 
 from your next gig in all directions leading up to the GIG then show up 
and play and see how many new audience members you will have,  Book 
your band in another town where they don't see you and do the same 
thing.

We have only just begun to Fight, and we must fight until we die and 
teach the ones under us to fight even harder , that's how I got into 
this music I saw the soldiers before me falling and even committing 
suicide, so I picked up the crusade and have never looked back and I 
too am an aging Baby boomer.

What I am simply trying to say is that there are millions of us that 
never got an exposure to grandpas music or even much of our father's  
music,  Heck AARP just realized that and they are doing something about 
it we should all be competing to join them right now as they are
damned sure gonna do more for OKOM than even Ken Burns did.

Now if we don't want our grand kids to be warped by Rap and Hip Hop 
then there is really only one way to stop it,  Do everything in our 
local regional and national and international power to EDUCATE them 
about good and real music.   Something sadly that many of the IAJE 
folks decided not to do since most of them got their education about 
jazz form the latter day Jazz saints like Coltrane and Ornette Coleman 
, Cecil Taylor geniuses yes, but by force of survival since most OKOM 
folks would not hire any of them in the hey day of OKOM.   Therefore
they were forced to invent different styles of music and go out and 
market to the new audiences while OKOM folks sat back and did little or 
nothing to compete, waxing poetic about how great they already were.

The OKOM market of players simply in my opinion lost their competitive 
edge and slipped away in to almost obscurity while organizing small 
preservation societies locally and regionally to try and keep whatever 
jobs they still had to hold onto.   I honestly know many great players 
right around here that are quick to get together for jams and such and 
mainly just bitch about their not being any work anymore and chatting 
about the good old days.   Now believe me I respect all these guys and 
gals and love them dearly when I get the  rare opportunity to be with 
them, but it saddens me to see that so many of them simply gave up the 
fight and just sit back and take whatever comes.

American Jazz is considered all over the World to be the USA's  "ONLY 
Contribution to World Culture"  and guys like Louis Armstrong toured 
the world as our Ambassador to open up the world marketplace to Jazz 
for all of us, so why have not more of us gone out there and opened 
more doors and spread it even further.  Louis was only one Man and look 
what he accomplished , Who among us will even attempt to do the same.   
And he did it when nobody wanted to know about no Trumpet players too,  
  I started as a Trumpet player when surf music was the rage, and nobody 
wanted a trumpet player, not because they didn't like trumpet players 
but because nobody had written a part for the instrument,  so I 
switched to drums, then ten years later the Beach Boys had a horn 
section.

Rock and ROLL MUSIC did not go away either, it became Country Music 
with the vocals done by singers with a Western drawl, Hell, even 
nashville went electric with Guitars and Fiddles, who woulda Thunk 
that? Heck they even added drums. :))

Gospel became Blues, and blues became Jazz, and jazz became swing, and 
bop, and smooth "again" and jazz rock fusion and world music, and Latin 
Jazz,  Afro Jazz , Afro Cuban Jazz.  etc.  all just another way of 
playing JAZZ and free form music.

We need to revisit our roots and continue to try and be creative, even 
if we fail guys, it is better to have played and failed than to give up 
   and never have played at all.    I am having a wonderful time playing 
this music that was denied me for whatever reasons for so many years of 
non exposure and if ever I am remembered for whatever my contributions 
might be it is my hope that they will say Tom Wiggins did something to 
inspire and push forward American Jazz usually with a lot of guys with 
a lot more technical  talent than him.

Hell maybe I am Woody Allen or Guy Lombardo, or the reincarnated Jack 
Laine who knows, all I know is I like this music and will continue
to try everywhere in the world I go to live it and play it and create 
places for others to play it.  It's the least I can do.


Don't give up the ship guys we have only just begun to fight:   And may 
the sinking ship of Hip Hop have an OKOM band playing on it as it goes 
down beside the titanic,  I just hope I don't have that gig :))   But 
if I do at least I'll be Famous for something. :))

And there is nothing shameful or regretful about playing those 
retirement homes, I do it when we are on tour whenever we can get a 
festival organizer to set it up, and they are often some of the most 
rewarding sets that we play on the entire tour.

So please all of you guys understand that I am not mocking any of you 
for the gigs that you do find and play, just trying to stimulate all of 
you into reaching further because the gigs are indeed still there, just 
tougher competition for them often because of idiotic talent buyers and 
committees and incompetent bands and musos of other genres trying to 
get the same gigs for any money that is available.

I have even seen idiot twenty something entertainment directors at 
senior centers try to program DJs for entertainment for their seniors, 
and the DJ's they hire don't show up with Benny Goodman or Tommy 
Dorsey, Louis Armstrong,  or  Les Brown or Harry James Cds either, yes 
you guessed it they show up with rap and hip hop because that is all 
they know as music.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins

It ain't over till the Fat Lady Sings and there are so many Fat Ladies, 
that if we just keep bringin' up those chick singers it may never be 
over :))   Sorry Ladies, not intending to be politically incorrect or 
insulting to any of you ladies with a few extra pounds, simply coining 
a phrase from yesteryear.




-----Original Message-----
From: postmaster at fountainsquareramblers.org
To: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
Sent: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 7:31 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Spitting in the wind? The OKOM jazzer's 
quandary

   Tom Wiggins wrote:

We saw a start at it again with the Ken Burns series and all the hype
about it, that is the kind of thing that in my opinion NPR should be

doing a lot more of and they already have Jim Cullum to help launch it
and perhaps if they were to expand it and exploit the music more it
would continue to grow and the other forms of media might get on board.

  The one thing is for certain that if we all don't push them they
won't.    Where there is a will there is always a way!  maybe many have
just lost the Will or maybe never even had it and are just content to
rest on their laurels and play for fun.  Heck I don't know, just trying
to stimulate others to help push it anyway and everywhere they can no
matter how small a paper, magazine, internet radio, blogs, websites or
TV  on local cable stations etc, who are always begging for
programming.  I just think there is a lot more available out there for
all of us if we just get and remain creative with our marketing and
promotion.

Tom, I truly admire your insight and passion. Indeed, it¹s tough to 
know how
to market ³OKOM² when the problem seems to be that it¹s not ³TKOM² -- 
³THEIR
kind of music². There is a relentless, inexorable momentum to popular
culture. When the 20th Century was young, jazz was young and it remained
³OKOM² until Benny Goodman played the Palomar and the teens of my 
parents¹
day and age embraced a new sound.  It wasn¹t just their father¹s jazz
anymore, it was THEIR jazz, and it was THEIR jazz up until the 1950s 
when my
generation, the Boomers, started taking fast swing into Rock. And it 
wasn¹t
our father¹s jazz anymore.  And Rock has splintered into HipHop, Rap, 
and
types of music which are really hard for aging Boomers like me to 
fathom,
especially since some of us always liked the ODJB, early Ellington,
Teagarden, Armstrong, Bix, Paul Whiteman, Hoagy (and even worshipped 
Glenn
Miller and Tommy Dorsey ‹ can I admit that in this forum?). And for my 
kids,
it¹s not their father¹s ³jazz² any more!  And these new types of music 
are
now global, common to a global youth culture that adapts the musical 
forms
to Chinese culture, Japanese culture, Indian culture (how many of us pay
attention to Bollywood film scores?), Vietnamese culture, African 
culture.
Makes my head swim ‹ even makes my 26-year-old daughter¹s head swim ‹ 
it¹s
not her ³jazz² anymore already either!   These people don¹t know about 
and
don¹t revere the early jazz traditions. They are into writing ³the 
future,²
the next big thing in that global cultural maelstrom, the thing that
inspires them the way they are living today.  As Dire Straits¹ Mark 
Knopfler
wrote presciently in about 1978, ³They don¹t give a damn about no 
trumpet
playin¹ band...it ain¹t what they call Rock and Roll!²  (from ³Sultans 
of
Swing²).  We can fulminate all we want about cultural loss, our lack of
ability to market OKOM, our complacency in accepting the dregs of gigs 
and
fees, but it is what it is: the deck is stacked against those of us who 
look
to the past for our enjoyment and inspiration. The majority of the 
world is
looking out the windshield, not the rearview mirror.  Sure, 
occasionally a
rising generation will catch a whiff of nostalgia and we¹ll see a 
momentary
time warp where we loop back to Swing and particularly ³Jump swing² 
(Big Bad
Voodoo Daddy, et al.), or loop back to the Beatles (believe it!), but 
those
are fleeting miniscule aberrations which will do nothing to stem the 
global
tide of change and taste. OKOM will remain what it will always be, 
something
cherished by a fringe of fans and players who find it and thrill to the
different beats and voicings and derive great satisfaction from looking 
out
the back of the car instead of watching the road ahead unfold.  We can¹t
change it and reorder the universe.  The fact that this is so ‹ that 
great
players from 50 and 60 years ago end up scuffling for meager gigs in
obscurity -- is not a moral failing. It is the way things are and we 
trad
players must keep our chops up and not disdain playing those retirement
homes and free outdoor concerts where 60 people means you had a TERRIFIC
outing, and soldier on.  I don¹t have any other answer because marketing
like crazy isn¹t going to change the world, even if I had the chops of
Teagarden, the resources of a Bill Gates and a band that sounded like Ed
Polcer¹s.  I have none of those things and so I ³tend my own garden² and
just do what I can do...play trad as much as I can and be happy when I 
see
60 people in lawnchairs around a community bandstand, or navigating 
walkers
into a community room at a local nursing home and be THRILLED to death 
when
I actually see some folks doing the Charleston to my music.  (It 
happens now
and then. I  remind myself not to let it go to my head.)  Thanks for 
letting
me ramble.  Proust had nothing on me, except perhaps a method and a 
message.

Fuerte y afinado (³Loud and in tune²)

David Dustin (a guy who has loved jazz and the trombone as long as he 
can
remember)
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