[Dixielandjazz] The New OKOM was Austin Jazz Opportunities

[Stephen G Barbone]

> Augustine Daniel <ds.augustine at utexas.edu> wrote in part:
> 
>    My buddy Dave Stoddard doesn't know i'm doing this, but it occurred to me that the kind of traditional-jazz-with-a-twist that is emerging in Austin is probably also occurring in other cities around the USA and the world.
>    His list below includes not only relatively restrictive 'dixieland'/traditional jazz/New Orleans jazz (like the Second Line Jazz Band that i play tuba in), but 2012-takeoffs of it, but including a lot of what in the 1920s and 1930s might have been viewed as marginal jazz -- not quite small-group jazz, not big-band jazz, not skiffle, not dance-music, not Condon-style jazz, not Bessie Smith, but some really interesting styles on the fringes of all of those, transmogrified for these times.
>    I think that younger folks are rediscovering the joys of making jazz themselves, but their approach is not circular, but spiral: they've adapted those early quasi-jazz styles into something organic to these times, and a lot of people under 40 (or even under 25) are liking it.  I bet you'd find similar bands and styles in your area.  
>    If you asked someone who likes traditional jazz if there were any dixieland bands in Texas, they would be hard-pressed to come up with anyone except Jim Cullum Jazz Band and the new Mission City Hot Rhythm Cats (both of San Antonio) and maybe a couple of little dixieland bands in Austin (nothing much in Dallas or Houston).  But if you asked some folks in their 20s or 30s if they knew of any jazzy acoustic non-guitar-based bands, that played songs from the 1920s and 1930s and people knocked themselves out dancing to them, just in Austin alone i bet you'd get a dozen bands like that, playing in houses converted into restaurants/clubs in the cheaper sections of town, in lots of minor and unpublicized venues.  I suspect that as our old styles of jazz seem to be played by and listened to by fewer and fewer people, at the same time a number of new styles of the same kinds of jazz are being reinvented under our noses, unbeknownst to us.


Thanks for posting that Dan. Here too, in the Philadelphia metro area, there are lots of young bands playing "traditional jazz with a twist". And they are playing in all sorts of joints around town. Just like we used to do as kids in the 1950s.

I suspect it is happening in other parts of the USA as well. BUT, we oldsters don't know about it. For the most part we don't go clubbing anymore, don't stay up late (The scene is 10 PM to 2 AM here) and thus are totally oblivious to what is going on live, in our own areas.

As Billie Holiday sang, "God Bless The Child That's Got His Own".

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband