[Dixielandjazz] Why is it that big business always gets a hold of art and takes the life> blood out of it?

[Steve Barbone]

philwilking at bellsouth.net wrote:

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>Because that's how the creatures who rise to the top of large corporations
>think.

>1) There is nothing but the making of a profit.

>2) What sold before will sell again, always has, always will, so keep on
>rolling out the same product, making as few substantive changes as possible
>along the way.

>3) Innovation is risky, because, even if all you intended to do was to make
>production more efficient in order to increase profit margin,  you may
>inadvertently change a known money maker just enough to mess up sales.

>4) Art is much worse than innovation because it intentionally changes things
>things a lot, and most of it is not commercial (=saleable), so revert to
>rule 1 and not only not support art, but actively destroy it when you can to
>prevent diversion of customers' attention from your own product.

Numbers 2, 3, and 4 bring up an interesting problem if we relate them to the
current state of Dixieland, at least in the USA.

Many current bands seem to be stuck in a time slot that mirrors 2 above.
"Making as few substantive changes as possible", while steadfastly
declaiming that what they play is "The Truth" since it was good enough for
grandpa 70 years ago, it should be good enough for everybody else today.

Nor do they innovate like in 3 above.

And they ignore 4 above treating innovation as if it was the enemy. What,
make changes? Like Louis or Bix, or Condon or Watters, or Turk, or the
British Trad guys? Nah, not me. I'll just copy them.

The only problem is 1 above. There is no profit in jazz for most of the
players.

Hmmmmmmmm.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone