[Dixielandjazz] Where did it go?

[Ken Mathieson]

Mike wrote:
"I often wonder if we in the Disunited States suffer from the music being indigenous, as it were, so to speak.  Here, it's "that stuff they played back in the 20s."  Other places, it's "that stuff that came from America, like down in New Orleans, etc."  The fact that "jazz clubs" still exist in the UK to this day, is still something that wows me."

The relative profusion of jazz clubs in Europe has probably got a lot to do with the existence of so many totalitarian regimes from the 1930s to the 1990s. Jazz was synonymous with the voice of protest, especially if the regime tried to supress it. In the UK after WW2, even though the regime was not totalitarian (there will be letters of dissent I'm sure!) jazz was part of a protest against the "old order" i.e. part of a popular movement to make society and politics more democratically representative.

The problem with music which becomes a totem of protest against the old order (whether parental or political) is that, one generation on, in the eyes of a new generation, it comes to represent the "repression" of  the current old order. Hence the need to invent a new music of protest, hence the rise of rock'n'roll and later forms of music of mass-appeal. There are obviously cultural changes at play too in the continuing evolution of existing art forms into new genres, but the sweeping changes in European politics since the fall of Communism may accelerate the ongoing reduction in numbers of jazz clubs as the generation which embraced jazz as a music of protest "shuffles off the mortal coil."

Ken Mathieson
www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk