[Dixielandjazz] Jazz is not a museum piece

[Steve Barbone]

 Butch Thompson <butte1 at mac.com> wrote (polite snip)

> It's hard to fight the perception
> that we're in the nostalgia racket, isn't it?

Now that is one knowledgeable statement, from a knowledgeable guy and an
expert player of OKOM. It conjures up all sorts of discussion points about
what business, or racket many OKOM bands are in. And how we are perceived by
audiences as well as critics out in the world. Consider what Sudhalter says
about Dixieland in Lost Chords: (page 296)
---
"The listening audience, moreover, was aging; in that generational way
peculiar to American fans, it embraced the music more tenaciously, and less
for strictly musical reason than personal and psychological. It symbolized
their youth, the well,(if selectively) remembered time in their lives when
the future seemed limitless, immortality was theirs for the asking. Reminded
them of a Zeitgeist vivid and enjoyable, before time and change edged it
into memory." . . .

"The Poet Philip Larkin, a hot music fan since his undergraduate days at
Oxford in the 30s, caught it deftly when he described 'men whose first
coronary is coming like Christmas; who drift helplessly with commitments and
obligations and necessary observances, into the darkening avenues of age and
incapacity, deserted by everything that once made life sweet.'"

"George Frazier, celebrating a long-ago evening at Nick's, also understood.
'The beers are short and there is never a moment when you can't cut the
smoke with the crease in your pants. (Downbeat 1941) . . . but there are
still those of us who . .  in the days to come will think of it and be
stabbed, not with any fake emotion, but with a genuinely heart breaking
nostalgia. We will think of this place at 7th Avenue and 10th Street, and
all, of a sudden the fragrant past  . . . will sneak up on us and for a
little while we will be all the sad young men.'"

" . . . hyped to death as good time party music  by the promotional
machinery of journalism and public relations. It takes only a brief look at
the covers of 'Dixieland' LPs issued in the late 1950s and early '60s to see
the result; straw hats and candy-striped blazers, such album titles as 'That
Happy Dixieland Jazz' and 'Dixieland My Dixieland'; breathless sleeve notes
likening bands playing this form of jazz to barbershop quartets, Stanley
Steamers, and Fourth of July fireworks displays."
---
40 years ago I attended a business seminar where the speaker opined that in
reality, each one of us had five different personas. They included:
1) Who we really are; 2) Who we think we are; 3) Who we would like to be; 4
Who others would like us to be and 5) Who others think we are. Number 5 was
the key because it is how we are perceived and that's what counts.

IMO, the business we band leaders and players of OKOM are in, depends upon
the audience for whom we perform. If we are playing in front of old folks at
Jazz Society Concerts, or at OKOM Festivals, perhaps we are in the nostalgia
business whether we like it or not. Haven't we all gotten a request for say
"I Can't Get Started" by some knowledgeable old fan, who after the trumpeter
finishes playing it, comes back and says with obvious disappointment; "That
didn't sound like Bunny," And the guys who played it to that reaction
included greats like Randy Reinhart, or Jon Erik Kellso. Many of those folks
want not to hear a jazz take by today's greats, but a nostalgic rendition of
some dead guy's version.

On the other hand, there are some OKOMers playing today, for young
audiences, who hear the music for what it is right now, not what it was,
back in the good old days. They are not in the nostalgia business. Kenny
Davern was a player like that.

Yep, perception of what we do as bands is key, and the nostalgia perception
is out there big and bold. Let's change it.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone