[Dixielandjazz] Yoshi's Furor

[David Richoux]

In the local papers this weekend - Yoshi's will be pulling the CD off  
the market and reissue with a different line-up.

Dave Richoux

------------------------------------------------

Shamed, Yoshi's pulls CD, apologizes
Club hit sour note with lack of black musicians on record

Jesse Hamlin, Steven Winn, Chronicle Staff Writers

Saturday, June 2, 2007

The managers of Yoshi's jazz club said Friday that issuing a 10th  
anniversary CD with no African American musicians was "a huge  
mistake" and "a major oversight." In the wake of complaints by some  
African American musicians and community leaders, the club issued an  
apology and withdrew the disc.

With "Live at Yoshi's: Anniversary Compilation" off the market, the  
club plans to create a new recording that more accurately reflects  
the musicians who play the 340-seat venue at Oakland's Jack London  
Square, said Joan Rosenberg, marketing director for the club.

Yoshi's had sold about 500 of the 1,000 CDs it began offering on its  
Web site last month. The disc, the first made by Yoshi's, was not  
distributed to stores.

"We really messed up on the CD," said Yoshi's owner Kaz Kajimura. "We  
apologize to anyone who feels slighted by this omission, as that was  
never our intention."

The musicians on the disc include pianist Marian McPartland, singer  
Madeleine Peyroux, the late guitarist Joe Pass and Latin  
percussionist Poncho Sanchez.

Kajimura and Yoshi's artistic director Peter Williams attributed the  
botched CD to haste and expediency. "This was done on the spur of the  
moment, and we didn't have a lot of time and research to put into  
it," said Kajimura. Yoshi's began working on the project in late  
March to mark the club's 10 years in Oakland in May.

Eight of the 10 tracks, from four different musicians, came from  
Concord records, one of the world's largest recording labels. The  
other two came from San Francisco radio station KFOG's archives.

"That was the easiest, quickest thing to do," said Williams. "We  
assumed Concord would have the most music recorded live at Yoshi's."  
When the new CD is made, he added, it will include African American  
musicians recorded live at Yoshi's on such labels as Verve, MaxJazz  
and Blue Note. That will involve more elaborate negotiations for  
rights and licensing fees.

"If Yoshi's is calling this an oversight, then maybe there needs to  
be a larger discussion about the dynamic of what jazz is all about,"  
said Glen Pearson, an African American musician and College of  
Alameda instructor. "Diversity is a word that gets kicked around a  
lot these days. But how sincerely or honestly is that concept really  
being applied? Or is it just a politically convenient term to use?"

Williams said race and ethnicity are "things that I just never think  
about when I'm booking the club. It always comes out that we have a  
great mix. I'm very comfortable with what we've done."

Kajimura said that more than half of the musicians who play Yoshi's  
are African American.

Orrin Keepnews, the famed Bay Area-based jazz record producer who put  
out classic albums by Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and many others  
on his Riverside label, calls the Yoshi's CD affair "an  
embarrassingly small deal.''

"With all due respect to the venerable Marian McPartland, whom I love  
and have always loved, there's nobody on that record of major current  
importance," said Keepnews. "The club put out an anniversary record  
that was thoughtless and not very well put together. They limited  
themselves to material recorded live at the club. You have a half- 
dozen things here that don't have the making of a significant or  
representative record, regardless of what color anybody is.''

As for Yoshi's pulling the CD in reaction to the controversy,  
Keepnews said: "It's become very customary when you make a big public  
mistake to then withdraw as much as you can. It's been going on at  
all the networks recently. It's childish. If you're insulted, you  
haven't removed the insult by removing the product. I don't think  
Yoshi's necessarily insulted people, but it wasn't a very bright  
thing to do. But I don't really think it's any kind of fatal mistake.''

Black saxophonist Howard Wiley thinks Yoshi's had no choice but to  
pull the CD. "I think it's the right step, to turn a negative into a  
positive. Let's all come to the table now and play some beautiful  
music together."

The racial mix of musicians in this summer's Downtown Berkeley Jazz  
Festival also came into question this week. Susan Muscarella, who is  
booking the festival through the sponsor, Berkeley's Jazzschool, was  
in a diversity committee meeting there Friday afternoon. "We're  
addressing the issue across the board, in all our education and  
performing programs," she said, calling charges of racial imbalance  
"unfair and ungrounded."

Muscarella said the Aug. 22-26 festival is about halfway planned. "My  
problem now is how to book African American artists when they might  
think they're only being invited in response to the controversy."

E-mail the writers at jhamlin at sfchronicle.com and swinn at sfchronicle.com.


On Jun 2, 2007, at 12:10 AM, TCASHWIGG at aol.com wrote:

> Hi Milt Steve et al:
>
> As most of you know I live and work in this marketplace, and I know  
> or do not know all of the loudest protesters being quoted in this  
> article.
>