White Wash of Brooklyn's Jazz Scene

[Lois Gilbert]

New York Times reporter Nate Chinen's recent article "Brooklyn Jazz: A Red Hot Renaissance" has raised the ire of many Black musicians, club owners, historians, politicians and community leaders. Chinen's piece not only ignores Black culture and the history of Jazz in Brooklyn, it also misrepresents the Central Brooklyn based Black vanguard of its current renaissance - Jazz: A Music of the Spirit.

Brooklyn City Councilman Charles Barron will host a Press Conference Commemorating Black Music Month on the steps of City Hall on Sunday, June 11, 2006 at 3:00pm focusing on Brooklyn Jazz. Speakers include musicians Ahmed Abdullah, James Spaulding, Vanessa Rubin, Charles Tolliver, Cecil Bridgewater, Salim Washington, Reggie Workman, Randy Weston, Sara Jasmin Griffin, Larry Ridley, community activist and owner of Sistas' Place coffee house Viola Plummer and historian Robin D.G. Kelly.

"If this history were truly understood, a discriminating reader would have to question both the premise or intent and most of the content of an article that deliberately positions a renaissance in sections of Brooklyn (Park Slope and Williamsburg) that have no history of the music ever being there before, much less comprising a rebirth" said renowned trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah.

[John P. Cooper]

Wasn't the original article posted on here somewhere?

[John P. Cooper]

It was. The article--which made no pretense of being a history of jazz in Brooklyn--merely pointed out a number of spots where fresh, interesting music is happening, primarily in the Park Slope neighborhood and environs. But because--God forbid--white players play at some of those places (gasp!!), black musicians are up in arms. You'd think we'd be beyond that at this point in time, but I guess not.

Can you post a link to the article or re-post it here? I would like to read it again in context. The reaction seems reactionary, but....I'd like to read the thing again.

OTOH, there have likely been many articles about black jazz places and players and trends that have not mentioned white or Asian players and the like.

[Pete C]

Ultimately, it appears that the approach of the article is the crux of the problem. It probably would have been more accurate to report on a "vibrant improvised music scene" than a "Brooklyn jazz renaissance."

Of course, renaissance itself is a problemetic word, the "re" part being lost in its more commonly used meaning of a Florence-like flowering. So, technically, the Harlem Renaissance was a Harlem Flowering--not only was there not a Harlem tradition to be reborn, but black people had dominated Harlem only for several decades before.

The word renaissance is a lazy shortcut in the context of the article, just another case of rampant inaccuracy and lack of historicity in arts journalism. When such inaccuracy finds its way into "the paper of record" I'm not surprised that certain artists would feel slighted. Paul B's reaction seems to me as knee-jerk as he thinks Abdullah et al.'s are.

That said, I frequent some of the venues mentioned and find the music, which is a very eclectic mix, pretty rewarding. But "red hot renaissance," playing upon the rhetoric of vintage jazz is misleading.

[jazzbluescat]

I get the impression that the article was simply stating that there's renewed interests in jazz in Brooklyn, that renaissance was just a nice way to describe it, rather than renaissance in the true meaning of the word. Besides, it doesn't seem that the author needed to go into the history of jazz, because the article didn't need to be that in depth and might even detract from renew/renaissance, might start folks comparing the present with the "old" days, sorta change the subject. Yet Ahmed Abdullah has started/done just that, sounds like he's pissing all over a good thing. Bless his heart.

[Mike Schwartz]

It was. The article--which made no pretense of being a history of jazz in Brooklyn--merely pointed out a number of spots where fresh, interesting music is happening, primarily in the Park Slope neighborhood and environs. But because--God forbid--white players play at some of those places (gasp!!), black musicians are up in arms. You'd think we'd be beyond that at this point in time, but I guess not.

I get a number of articles forwarded to me from a number of places. I read the one in question a couple of times. It made no mention what *color* the music being made was. It was more in line with the comments above....

[Mike Schwartz]

I just brough Chinen's article thread up at Speakout.........maybe this one can be combined.

[John P. Cooper]

.................
Blacks disgruntled because their "community" isn't mentioned in every damn story about the music are just....well, tiresome.

Oh, you're doomed now. Someone will call you a 'racist' in the next few posts.....or will cite your post 3 months from now to show you are a racist.

[John P. Cooper]

May 26, 2006
Brooklyn Jazz Renaissance: High-Quality Music in Casual Cafés
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/26/ar...pagewanted=all
By NATE CHINEN

ON almost any given Sunday, the trumpeter John McNeil walks out of his apartment and down a few tree-lined blocks to Night and Day, a bistro on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Since February, Mr. McNeil has held a weekly gig in a rear annex of the restaurant with a quartet he formed with the tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry. A hangout for neighborhood residents and a magnet for musicians, the engagement has become a fixture of Brooklyn's rich and booming jazz scene.

The rise of that scene — which, like its borough, is an assemblage of enclaves — has been one of the most significant developments for jazz in New York in recent years. (Every bit as significant as the Brooklyn rock explosion of a few years ago, with which it shouldn't be confused.) Through a growing network of low-rent spaces mostly booked by enterprising musicians, Brooklyn has assumed a vital role in the city's larger jazz culture. And the music has been a boon for listeners of all kinds, including those who have to cross the East River to hear it.

To his great delight, Mr. McNeil barely has to cross the street. "I've lived here since the early 1970's," he said one Sunday, between sets at Night and Day. For a long time he was one of many Brooklyn jazz citizens who had to travel to Manhattan for staples of employment and entertainment. Many musicians still make that commute, occasionally to perform at marquee clubs like the Blue Note and the Village Vanguard, but more often to hold court in small rooms like the 55 Bar, Fat Cat and the Cornelia Street Café, which is owned by Robin Hirsch, one of two partners behind Night and Day.

In a sense Brooklyn's jazz clubs operate on the same plane as those West Village bars. (It's not uncommon for a group to play one night at the 55 Bar and the next at a spot in Brooklyn.) The difference between the two scenes, in terms of audience, is outlined succinctly by Mr. Hirsch, based on firsthand expertise: "The Village will draw an international crowd, while Park Slope is strictly local."

Certainly the crowd is overwhelmingly local at Tea Lounge on Union Street in Park Slope. Walk into the cavernous coffeehouse on a Thursday or Friday night, and you'll probably spot a few strollers nestled among the couches, along with laptop computers and stylish casual attire. You'll also see adventurous young jazz musicians playing for tips, since Tea Lounge doesn't have a cover charge.

That policy attracts an audience more random and robust than the musicians might otherwise hope to reach, especially in Manhattan. This winter the alto saxophonist Andrew D'Angelo played one show to more than 100 people, a large crowd for an avant-garde jazz show. Some of the listeners paid a suggested donation; others merely paid attention. Oren Arnon, who books the room, recently pegged its vibe: "a combination of quality jazz and something social, which doesn't happen often enough in this city."

A similar ethos prevails at Barbès, universally acknowledged as the vanguard (Village Vanguard, even) of the new Brooklyn jazz scene. "We tried to build a no-pressure environment for audiences and musicians," said Olivier Conan, who owns the bar with a fellow French expatriate and musician, Vincent Douglas. The club's success confirms the wisdom of that premise.

Barbès may be the place most responsible for the perception of a Brooklyn jazz renaissance. Its cozy dimensions suit small audiences and rapt attention. And its booking describes a rough bouquet of sounds: from French musette to Brazilian forró, as well as multiple strains of jazz, from Gypsy swing to collective free improvisation.

Long-term residencies, hardly a staple in Manhattan, are a prominent feature of the programming at Barbès. The violinist Jenny Scheinman usually plays on Tuesday nights, seasoning her music with flecks of jazz, classical and rustic folk. Wednesdays are devoted to an avant-garde series organized by the saxophonist Michaël Attias. (He isn't the only musician maintaining a series in the area; six blocks south, the keyboardist James Carney books Sunday nights at Bar 4, a red-lighted dive.)

Last month the clarinetist and saxophonist Chris Speed started Skirl, an independent record label with the express purpose of documenting some of the experimental artists in the regular Barbès orbit. The label's next release party is scheduled for Thursday at the club.

Experimentation and eclecticism are hardly limited to Park Slope. In Williamsburg they converge at Rose Live Music, a stylish lounge on Grand Street that opened just a few months ago. They come together even more explicitly during the Williamsburg Jazz Festival, which will have its fourth season in September.

But nothing beats the neighborhood's leading spot, Zebulon Café Concert, which combines the flea-market chic of Barbès (the owners, Guillaume Blestel and Jef and Jocelyn Soubiran, are French) with the no-cover rule of Tea Lounge (but with one significant distinction: every artist receives a guarantee). Zebulon's programming has lately leaned markedly toward world music, but the free-jazz violinist Billy Bang has made notable appearances, as has the composer and conductor Butch Morris.

Mr. Morris also helped inaugurate a more extreme outpost, the nonprofit Issue Project Room, when it relocated last June from the East Village into a silo on the Gowanus Canal. "The industrial environment tends to inspire a rugged sort of experimentation," said Suzanne Fiol, the organization's director, hours before a recent premiere by the Japanese composer Shoko Nagai.

Rugged experimentation of a different sort was one hallmark of the jazz scene in Brooklyn during its original heyday, from the late 1950's through the 60's. Throughout those years a cluster of African-American establishments thrived around Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue.

One of them, the Blue Coronet, served as a laboratory for youngbloods like the tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. Another was immortalized by Mr. Hubbard with a 1965 Blue Note album called "The Night of the Cookers: Live at Club La Marchal," on which he locked horns with Lee Morgan in a casual but heated exchange.

"Going back to 1960, there was something loosely called a Brooklyn sound," said Robert Myers, referring in part to that album. "And it started with the venues, which gave the musicians license to explore new avenues onstage and not be confined by management." Until the close of 2004 Mr. Myers operated Up Over Jazz Café, a bar on Flatbush Avenue that fulfilled a similar function for the latest generation of post-bop strivers, like the tenor saxophonist Marcus Strickland and the pianist Robert Glasper.



Mr. Glasper provides an illustrative example of the current Brooklyn-Manhattan jazz symbiosis. He arrived in the city at the tail end of the 1990's, settling in Brooklyn but matriculating at the New School University in Manhattan. He quickly plugged into a circuit of jam sessions stretching from Freddy's Backroom, on Dean Street in Park Slope, to Smalls, a crucible of young talent in Greenwich Village.

At Up Over Jazz he found steady work and a space to hone his craft. But after he earned the imprimatur of a Blue Note Records contract, his next career move was clear: a week at the Village Vanguard. (He concludes his second engagement there this weekend with his trio.)

Mr. Glasper's example also illustrates the existence of a parallel Brooklyn jazz movement among African-Americans in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. Self-consciously styled as a revival of Brooklyn's golden era, this scene includes institutions like Jazz 966, a series held for the last 16 years at the Fort Greene Senior Citizens Council; 651 Arts, a nonprofit concert presenting organization; and the Concord Baptist Church, which holds occasional jazz services. In April a consortium of these and other groups mounted the seventh annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival, with "Jazz: A Music of the Spirit" as its theme.

The author of that theme, the trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, was a visible presence during the festival, especially at Sista's Place, a communally owned coffeehouse and salon in Bedford-Stuyvesant. "African-Americans have rarely owned the music's means of production," he said in a phone conversation. "The music has to be in our community if it's going to grow. We've got to have an alternative to mainstream institutions."

The crowd that packed Sista's Place one rainy Saturday for a festival performance by the trumpeter Charles Tolliver made it look as if Mr. Abdullah's objective was being fulfilled. Less expectedly, his words seemed nearly as pertinent to a performance held on the same night at the Center for Improvisational Music, or CIM, a nonprofit educational effort run by the trumpeter Ralph Alessi near the northern stretch of the Gowanus Canal.

It featured the alto saxophonist Tim Berne, one of the early homesteaders of the newly ascendant Brooklyn jazz community. Mr. Berne long ago claimed ownership of his music's means of production with a self-sustaining record label based in a brownstone near Flatbush Avenue. And he has spent most of his career on the alternative fringe of jazz culture, though his audience at CIM included a couple of industry veterans like Jeff Levenson, who has a working affiliation with the Blue Note, one of New York's most obvious mainstream jazz institutions.

"Brooklyn is essentially an incubator, where a lot of things get messed with and hybridized," Mr. Levenson said later, speaking as an almost 30-year resident of the borough. "I think an audience approaches that experience differently than the audience that comes to the Blue Note. There's a different agenda, a different motivation. We're talking works in progress, which moderates the expectation levels."

A good many Brooklyn musicians would agree with that characterization, which casts the borough's jazz scene almost in the role of a loose-and-limber Triple-A baseball team. (Higher in the pecking order than the Class A Brooklyn Cyclones, anyway.) But the idea probably wouldn't sit well with Mr. Abdullah, who sees community-based creative action as a goal in itself.

Nor for different reasons would it agree with the percussionist Matt Moran, who leads Slavic Soul Party, an improviser-stocked Balkan brass band that performs on Tuesdays at Barbès, after Ms. Scheinman. "Maybe this started out as a place where people workshop things," Mr. Moran said outside the club recently, between sets. "But it's on the radar now, and you need to step up and present your work in the best possible light."

"It has really arrived as a scene," he continued, gathering steam. "People are saying, 'I'm not going to step into the shininess of Manhattan, I'm going to do it in my own earthy way.' And rather than struggling in obscurity, they're finding that now it's a celebrated thing."

[John P. Cooper]

A response to the NY Times article, Brooklyn Jazz: A Red Hot Renaissance

by Ahmed Abdullah and Louis Reyes Rivera on behalf of Sistas' Place

If Brooklyn Jazz is a “Red Hot Renaissance,” as described in Nate Chinen's NY Times article of May 26, 2006, one would be hard put to understand how its history in Bedford-Stuyvesant (aka Central Brooklyn), an area with the largest African Diasporic population
outside of Brazil and the continent of Africa, relates to what was described in the same article as a rebirth of the music. The true renaissance of Jazz in Brooklyn does go under the name of Jazz: A Music of the Spirit. It can be heard throughout Central Brooklyn, and it is performed mostly with African Americans in leadership roles. African American leadership, even amid its own culture, is obviously news not fit to print in the New York Times.

Part of what was omitted in the Times article is that this renaissance grows out of Central Brooklyn as A Music of the Spirit (read: renewal) and is focused on the development of an African American audience. This omission by Mr. Chinen deliberately ignores the fact that developing this audience is even more crucial today in light of the overwhelming onslaught against the African American community occurring without the traditional buffer of a culture that represents dignity and respect.

The term, Jazz: A Music of the Spirit, was adopted because of the necessity for African Americans to own and control those art forms that come from our culture. This Music of the Spirit represents a spiritual, socio-political, economic and, therefore, an ideological paradigm shift. As it appears, the Times article actually buttresses the reasons why this is necessary in the 21st Century. There is an absolute emergency for African Americans and their kinfolk to understand the distinction between Jazz and Jazz: A Music of the Spirit, likened to the difference between calling oneself a Negro and calling oneself an African American. The former has no meaning, except that it was a noun imposed, while the latter is meaningfully based on a self-determined act.

The musicians who play Jazz: A Music of the Spirit are connected to a rich tradition, epitomized by such as Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Sun Ra, Betty Carter... They represent a breadth and depth of a music that covers all styles and genres. Above all, Mr. Chinen, there is no question about which culture nurtured them.

When we looked at the lives of these six people, we found seven criteria/ factors to help defined Jazz: A Music of the Spirit: (1) some transformative event takes place in the life of the musician which eventually influences the listener as well; (2) an advanced improvisational
ability is present; (3) leadership and originality are also present; (4) dedication and devotion of the music to the Creator or some higher cause; (5) the given composer understands music as a vocation and further cognizant of the need to teach it with passion and intensity; (6) activism on behalf of the communities from which one comes; and, (7) movement towards self-determination as well as ownership of the music thus created.

The musicians currently playing Jazz: A Music of the Spirit have international reputations, are well established and do not “play for tips.” The younger musicians interested in aligning themselves with this paradigm shift follow their lead.


In a phone interview with Mr. Chinen, we pointed out that the difference between what had occurred in Brooklyn during its “Golden Era” and what is now occurring is clearly defined by the fact that the present day latter is an organized effort, involving musicians, writers, venue operators, educators, political activists and producers alike. This fact was demonstrated through sixteen years of Jazz 966, ten years of Sistas’ Place, and seven years of a Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium (CBJC) hosting seven consecutive annual Jazz Festivals, one of which was Brooklyn-wide, all of which were barely or slightly hinted at in Mr. Chinen's quick reportorial.

In addition to Charles Tolliver, Billy Bang and Ahmed Abdullah (mentioned in the article), among the lead musicians performing at these CBJC venues are: Olu Dara, Cecil Bridgewater, Carla Cook, Gary Bartz, Judy Bady, Jimmy Owens, Akua Dixon, Eddie Gale, Vanessa Rubin, Andrew Cyrille, Kiane Zawadi, Jerry Eastman, Odean Pope, Sonny



Fortune, Reggie Workman, Larry Ridley, Randy Weston, Lou Donaldson, Houston Person, Etta Jones, Gloria Lynne, Curtis Fowlkes, Harry Constant, Cyril Greene, Billy Harper, Oliver Lake, Bluiett, Rashied Ali, Alex Harding, Rene McLean, Kaissa, Steve Turre, Alex Blake, Craig Harris, D.D. Jackson, Alvin Atkinson, Salim Washington, Hakim Jami, Donald Smith, Lenora Zenzalai Helm, Roland Alexander, Fred Ho and Brooklyn Sax Quartet James




Spaulding, the late John Hicks and Andrei Strobert and working with poets like Sekou Sundiata, Louis Reyes Rivera and Amiri Baraka, to name a few. A virtual who's who of excellence, and no where near the handful of musicians (a la Chinen) who are just now learning how to use a venue through which to hone their potential. The omitted are seasoned musicians, with long track records, coming back to Brooklyn communities. If truth be told, it is precisely because musicians of this caliber have been returning to Central Brooklyn that there is a renaissance.

Should we wonder why this article was accompanied by colorful photographs of white musicians only? Certainly, a Park Slope and Williamsburg surge is not, by any stretch of a note, indicative of anything close to a “Red Hot Renaissance.” The equally colorful anecdotes filtering throughout the article would be best described as the experiences of local white musicians.


While being local in New York is not the same as being local anywhere else on the planet (Mr. Chinen is certainly in accord with this much), the musicians he chose to mention will soon be able to go to the bank more frequently, now that they have been given exposure in the Times at the expense of a fair and equitable assessment of the full range of the true renaissance emerging in Brooklyn.


If renaissance means rebirth, then, certainly, the use of the term would also require some explanation as to what exactly is being birthed anew in order for readers to understand the extent to which all of it translates into vibrancy.


According to Mr. Chinen's article, the “birth” of Jazz in Brooklyn is described as having occurred at clubs like La Marichal (on President St. and Nostrand Ave.) and the Blue Coronet (on Fulton St.), in the 1950s and 60s. Venues for Jazz in Brooklyn in fact go back at least to the 1930s and 40s, and certainly those two clubs were but among many others, including: Turbo Village on Reid and Halsey; Putnam Central on Putnam and Classon; Tony’s on Grand and Dean; Sonia’s Ballroom on Putnam and Bedford; the Arlington Inn on Fulton and Arlington Place; The East on Claver Place between Fulton and Putnam; the Val Hal on Lafayette and South Elliot; The Muse on Lincoln Place and Bedford; and certainly, along with many others, Brooklyn's own Club Baby Grand on the same block as the Blue Coronet.


While two musicians mentioned in the article, Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan, are great trumpeters, there is an even greater omission of the many other musicians contributing to that “Golden Era" of Jazz in Brooklyn: pianists Randy Weston, Ed Stoute, Wynton Kelly, Joe Knight, Duke Jordan and Danny Mixon; drummers Max Roach, Willie Jones, C. Scoby Stroman, Wes Anderson, Al Hicks, Bobby Hamilton, Arthur Edgehill and Andrei Strobert; trumpeters Kenny Dorham, Herbie Jones, Cal Massey (a great composer!), Ray Copeland,
Ted Curson, Irving Stokes and Leonard Hawkins; singers: Carmen McRae, Betty Carter, Marie Toussaint, Tulivu Donna Cumberbatch; violinist: Noel Pointer; saxophonists: Roland Alexander, Cecil Payne, James Spaulding, Sonny Rollins, Harold Cumberbatch, Ernie Henry, Ray Abrams; bassists: Ahmed Abdul Malik, John Ore, Bob Cunningham, Larry Ridley, Wilbur Ware, Chris White, and guitarists like Eric Gale. And this is just a list of those who were also Brooklyn residents.

There were many other great and well known musicians who frequently played in Black Brooklyn: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Gigi Gryce, Charlie Mingus, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra and Thelonius Monk, to name just a few.

If this history were truly understood, a discriminating reader would have to question both the premise or intent and most of the content of an article that deliberately positions a renaissance in sections of Brooklyn that have no history of the music ever being there before, much less comprising a "rebirth." The one photo supplied in the two page article coming anywhere near reflecting the actual facts is of a Black male wearing a hood and working from a laptop. One can only hope he is also listening to music?

How does Barbes get to be "universally acknowledged as the vanguard" of this renaissance? By whom? Not to quibble, but if any single Brooklyn venue deserves that accolade, it would have to be either Jazz 966, which even Mr. Chinen's article admits has been doing it every Friday night for sixteen years, or Sistas' Place, which launched a Brooklyn To Milan series well over a year ago.


Reader's would really appreciate this phenomenon: a name band that makes a debut at Sistas' Place, takes the same hit to West Orange, New Jersey's Cecil's Lounge ( run by drummer Cecil Brooks III) to play for the Black Telephone Workers for Justice, on its way to Milan, Italy, with likely stops at Catania, Sicily, and Helsinki, Finland, then back to Manhattan's Sweet Rhythm (run by former WBGO DJ, James Browne). If anything in Brooklyn borders on "universal acknowledgment," it would be what has happened out of Bedford-Stuyvesant's Sistas' Place. When did Park Slope venues garner that kind of attention?

Even while surreptitiously alluding to "a consortium" just completing seven years of annual festivals, Mr. Chinen further slights the African American community's leadership in its own culture by his refusal to give CBJC its own well-earned paragraph. The Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium is an organization affiliated with no less than 20 independent venues cooperating with one another to jointly sponsor an annual inter-neighborhood festival. For 20 competing venues to put "cut throat economics" aside and join together in a common project on behalf of the entire range of this music is certainly news enough to warrant a fuller more respectful disclosure.

[John P. Cooper]

Quoted and responded to by Paul B.

Quote:
African American leadership, even amid its own culture, is obviously news not fit to print in the New York Times.

Pure horseshit. What tiresome, inane thinking.

Quote:
Part of what was omitted in the Times article is that this renaissance grows out of Central Brooklyn as A Music of the Spirit (read: renewal) and is focused on the development of an African American audience. This omission by Mr. Chinen deliberately ignores the fact that developing this audience is even more crucial today in light of the overwhelming onslaught against the African American community occurring without the traditional buffer of a culture that represents dignity and respect.

Quote:
There were many other great and well known musicians who frequently played in Black Brooklyn: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Gigi Gryce, Charlie Mingus, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra and Thelonius Monk, to name just a few.

What "onslaught?" Jeez, get real.

The Times article did a damn good job of describing what is happening now in Brooklyn (it doesn't claim to be a history of jazz in "black" Brooklyn), and this disgruntled response is just sour grapes. Whenever somebody from a "community" gets pissed for not being mentioned in a news story I cringe. It's a big world out there. Tony Malaby is as f**king happening as any tenor player on the scene these days (yes, he's white), and Jenny Scheinman's Tuesday night gigs at Barbes are a high point of the New York music scene. If you have to whine and bray like the writers of this "rebuttal," it's pretty clear your point is weak.

Bye-ya
Last edited by Paul B : June-5th-2006 at 03:09 AM.

*If I did any part of this incorrectly, please let me know or have an admin. fix it up.

[Pete C]

Nothing like a failed poet calling a New York Times journalist "lazy."

Always nice to hear from a successful professional saxophonist.

[Uli]

When I first read the article two things hit me.

- an incredible journalistic fluff piece. this little example cracked me up But nothing beats the neighborhood's leading spot, Zebulon Café Concert, which combines the flea-market chic of Barbès (the owners, Guillaume Blestel and Jef and Jocelyn Soubiran, are French) ...."lifestyle" reporting par exellence. it seems to be quite obvious that the writer does not care much about the actual subject "jazz in Brooklyn".

- photos of white musicians only

I can easily understand that Mr. Abdullah is pissed.

[bernardlyons]

Is it not difficult enough for jazz musicians of any color to find work and exposure without being subjected to this kind of diatribe.

Give Tony Malaby a gig at Sistas Place and Randy Weston a gig at Barbes!

(For the record, both have played at concerts I promote in Baltimore and attracted diverse audiences who came purely to hear them based on the power of the music.)

It seems to me that more collaboration is needed between all the Brooklyn musicians,promoters and fans..not inflamatory statements and protests,which will only serve to fracture this already fragile scene.

[jeg]

Many black artists play at Barbes: Gerald Cleaver, Dave Burrell, Craig Taborn, Stooges Brass Band (last minute gig after Katrina), Bob Stewart, Mark Taylor, Tyshawn Sorey, Jonathan Finlayson, William Parker.
Also Hispanic artists: Tony Malaby, Angie Sanchez, Oscar Noriega
Asian artists: Take Toriyama, Akiko Pavolka, Jennifer Choi, Shoko Nagai

Barbes is not a "white" club.

[Pete C]

I don't think the complaint is necessarily about the race of artists at the clubs focused on, but more on the short-shrift given the parallel "renaissance" of clubs in historically black neighborhoods that have been jazz meccas in the past. And call it PC if you want, but I certainly understand why a "community" would be vigilant about monitoring the way its cultural history is represented, even if the response in this case may be somewhat extreme (e.g., the press conference in response to the article).

Until last night I hadn't intended to defend Abdullah's position, but the kind of knee-jerk angry responses I saw made me want to point out that, even in disagreement, there could at least be grounds for understanding where the complaints are coming from. It's more complicated than sour grapes.

[Uli]

Pete, is Nate Chinen a jazz critic? does he frequently write about music in the NYT?

[Pete C]

Pete, is Nate Chinen a jazz critic? does he frequently write about music in the NYT?

I just did a search. I don't think his jazz credentials are in question--he's written for The Times, The Voice, Jazz Times and co-authored George Wein's autobiography.

[Uli]

Cool, I was just wondering because the article certainly does not say a whole lot about the music.

[Brian Olewnick]

Off the top of my head, I think Chinen's had about as many jazz articles/reviews in the NYT as Ratliff in recent months.

[Pete C]

"vigilant" (which usually means revisionist)

Which thesaurus do you use?

[Uli]

As does "Abdullah."

"Paul B." you are a disgrace to my race.

[Lois Gilbert]

In March 2003, Jazz at Lincoln Center hosted a forum titled “Jazz and Social Protest” that drew a predominantly black, standing-room only crowd. Moderated by Robert O’Meally, director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, the panel consisted of poets Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka, and trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater. All three artists made explicit statements against the war in Iraq. Coincidentally, three days later the Los Angeles Times ran an article by critic Don Heckman arguing that there were few jazz musicians out front against the war.1 From this, he concluded that despite some historic exceptions, the jazz world simply is not that political.

Of course, critics like Heckman who look for “politics” in song titles, explicit references to world events, or musicians’ commentary, invariably reduce politics to protest. But during the forum, Baraka insisted that the language of “social protest” obscures the real political meaning of the music. Indeed, the entire panel discussed jazz in terms of building community and sustaining African American culture, mentoring new generations in the tradition, recognizing the democratic, communal, even spiritual nature of jazz performance, and reclaiming and preserving this great African American art form.

If these issues really lie at the heart of the politics of jazz, then a revolution is taking place in Brooklyn. While predominantly white “downtown” audiences squeeze into the Blue Note or the Vanguard to be entertained by the hip, across the bridge Brooklyn’s black activists and artists are reclaiming the music’s roots and employing it for the political, social and spiritual uplift of the community. Jazz is everywhere in Central Brooklyn—at intimate nightclubs like Up Over Jazz Cafe, Pumpkins, and The Jazz Spot; at local coffeehouses like Sistas’ Place; in community centers; even in the house of the Lord. Brooklyn has its own black-oriented jazz magazine, Pure Jazz, edited by the tireless JoAnn Cheatham. And as anyone who has attended the annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival can tell you, the audiences for the music are predominantly black, representing all classes and ages. Quiet as it seems, reaffirming the music’s links to black community struggles and social transformation marks a radical challenge to jazz’s current trajectory, which has become deeply commercialized, rendered color-blind and apolitical, and promoted as American high culture.

The key force behind the Brooklyn revolution is the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium. Founded about five years ago by a group of black artists, activists, and entrepreneurs, including the late singer Torrie McCartney, trumpeter and composer Ahmed Abdullah, and veteran black community activists Viola Plummer and Jitu Weusi, the CBJC set out to promote “African American classical music” as a collective, community project. The CBJC is made up of several club owners, nearly half a dozen churches, and a variety of community centers. More than a business venture, the CBJC was created to spread positive cultural values through the music. Bob Myers, owner of Up Over Jazz Cafe and original CBJC member, explained, “This is the African way, to promote the culture through the music and arts, and to do so not in competition but in cooperation.”2

What the CBJC is attempting to do has deep roots in Brooklyn’s history and its rich jazz heritage. Back in the day, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, and others played at Brooklyn venues like Putnam Central, the Blue Coronet, the Baby Grand, Club La Marchal, or Tony’s Club Grandean. Trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan helped put Brooklyn on the global jazz map in 1965 with the release of Night of the Cookers, vols. 1 and 2, recorded live at the Club La Marchal on Nostrand Avenue and President Street. Brooklynites enjoyed occasional concerts at the Paramount Theater, and many danced to big bands at the Elks or Sonia ballrooms. But this barely scratches the surface, for as long-time Brooklyn resident and former musician Freddie Robinson told me, “The music was everywhere. Every little corner bar had jazz.” Some of the better known joints were the Pleasant Lounge, Club 78, Kingston Lounge, and Club Continental.3

Brooklyn jazz musicians have also been working cooperatively for at least a half-century. Indeed, one of Myers’s models for the CBJC was Club Jest Us, a group of jazz musicians’ wives living in Brooklyn during the 1960s who worked collectively in order to secure gigs for their husbands. A decade earlier, Brooklyn-born pianist and composer Randy Weston recalled working with his neighborhood pals, including drummer Max Roach, to organize musicians’ collectives. Weston and other musicians learned a great deal about cooperation and self-reliance from his father, Frank Weston, who inspired young musicians at his restaurant with stories of Marcus Garvey, Africa, and the continuing struggle to uplift the black community.4

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the late Cal Massey, an extraordinary composer and trumpeter, turned his Brooklyn home into a veritable community center. Besides writing explicitly revolutionary pieces like “The Black Liberation Suite,” Massey organized benefit concerts for the Black Panther Party that encouraged the full participation of the community, especially youth, by banning alcohol and providing free childcare. Around the same time, Jitu Weusi, founder and current chairman of the CBJC, promoted jazz as a cultural and political force to mobilize Brooklyn’s black community when he founded The East in 1969. Located in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant, The East was a black cultural center where artists such as bassist Reggie Workman performed and held workshops for youth.5

During the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the borough’s decline due to high unemployment, federal cutbacks, and drugs, black activists who sought to revitalize Brooklyn once again turned to jazz. The Bed-Stuy Restoration Corporation was one of those institutions that helped pave the way for the current Brooklyn renaissance. The Center for Arts and Culture at Bed-Stuy Restoration Corp, for example, trains young people in the art of jazz and runs the Skylight Gallery where musicians frequently perform. Myers’s Up Over Jazz Cafe is also a space for community building. Neighborhood musicians work out ideas through open jam sessions, and Myers has even hosted several nights of “Hip Hop Meets Jazz,” where singing sensation Bilal jammed with friends, including the equally sensational pianist Jason Moran.

Perhaps the best-known and most politicized community space for jazz is Sistas’ Place on Nostrand and Jefferson Avenues. Run by a collective whose members have ties to political organizations such as the December 12th Movement and the Harriet Tubman/Fannie Lou Hamer Collective, Sistas’ Place hosts a wide range of cultural activities. Any given week one might hear the Sun Ra Arkestra or
saxophonist René McLean, or check out a Sunday afternoon panel discussion on reparations for slavery or police brutality.6

The jazz revolution in Brooklyn has not led to a distinctive “Brooklyn aesthetic,” largely because virtually all genres are represented—from bebop to avant-garde. Nevertheless, some general characteristics of the music and artists deserve comment.

The CBJC encourages young artists by hosting frequent open jam sessions and promoting conversations between jazz and other musical genres. During the 2003 festival, for example, BRIC Studio on Rockwell Place hosted DJ Logic performing with jazz musicians, and The Jazz Spot committed its entire March calendar to young women instrumentalists. The most important characteristic of the CBJC’s artistic vision is its reverence for black music and musicians throughout the African Diaspora and on the continent. Following in the footsteps of native son Randy Weston, a pioneer in the movement to reconnect Africa with African American musical traditions, several of the festival performers incorporate African instruments, Afro-Latin and Caribbean rhythms, as well as various forms of black sacred music. Ultimately, if there is any essential principle behind the movement, it is to celebrate and reclaim black music for Brooklyn’s black community.

For CBJC co-founder Ahmed Abdullah, the very existence of black, community-based spaces for jazz is “regenerating.”7 Abdullah himself has helped to create these spaces by working closely with schools and churches. In February 2003, Concord Baptist Church held a well-attended tribute to Gigi Gryce and Randy Weston, at which elementary school kids sang Gryce’s “Social Call” and a teenaged band known as Friends and Strangers struggled valiantly with Weston’s best-known compositions. The predominantly black crowd embraced this music with the enthusiasm of a Sunday morning revival. For the last two springs, Concord hosted “100 Golden Fingers in Praise,” a concert of sacred music led by pianist Barry Harris and at least nine other pianists, including Bertha Hope, Gil Coggins, and Valerie Capers. Besides Concord Baptist Church, several other religious institutions including St. Philips Episcopal Church, Our Lady of Victory
Roman Catholic Church, Jane’s United Methodist, First Pres-byterian Church,
and Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church have hosted performances as part
of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival. Last year, Brooklyn’s 651 ARTS and musical director Akua Dixon brought together a jazz ensemble featuring trombonist Craig Harris with the Total Praise Choir and rocked Emmanuel Baptist Church.

For many of the ministers involved with the CBJC, as well as for activists like Abdullah, bringing the music back to its roots in black communities is necessary, both for the music’s survival as well as for the community’s resurrection. No one is saying jazz ought to be the exclusive property of black folk; it never was. Instead, the music needs to be “allowed to grow in the atmosphere that nurtures its creative juices,” Abdullah explained. This is not a tale of protest but a story of social and spiritual liberation. And for Abdullah, and presumably most of the folks behind the Brooklyn revolution, thinking of jazz as a spiritually liberating force for a community in struggle can serve as a model for the rest of the world: “That’s what the music is about anyway. That’s why it’s loved around the world. That’s why I say in its true essence Jazz is a music of the spirit.”8
Robin D G Kelley

http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/is...ooklynJazz.htm

Ahmed asked me to point you to this article, which was rejected by the NYTimes

[Pete C]

Wynton's all-black game up at Lincoln Center

[Ahmed Abdullah]

Paul B. : Our efforts in Brooklyn are not directed against anyone but are pro African American and we really believe in a win/win philosophy which mean that we are not going to win at anyone else's expense. That also means that we don't have to put you down to win even though your comments would lead one to to want to react on a very negative plane. We are not in competition with anyone and certainly the musicians playing in Park Slope and Williamsburg, be they white, black, or asian, deserve respect. Many of the musicians who play there are students of the New School and I teach there as do many of the musicians who play in Central Brooklyn.

The major point which some people on the list got is that there really should have been two articles. One concerning Jazz in the Brooklyn sections of Park Slope and Williamsburg and another concerning the Renaissance in Central Brooklyn. That Renaissance, by the way, goes under the name Jazz: A Music of the Spirit. The writer of the article, Nate Chinen, understood the point and apologized. I hope you get it also Paul B. If not, still, I still wish you love.
One Love
Ahmed Abdullah

[Lois Gilbert]

Paul B - Ahmed responded to you before I had a chance. But I have to tell you, this is not a rant and it is not an innocous story in the NY Times. It's actually extraordinarily important and the very fact that you make a statement and comparison of Wynton's All Black game, well my friend it shows your colors....

Ahmed's and others' premise is not to discount what is going on in Park Slope and the other neighborhoods cited by Nate, but to draw attention to what the real history is and where the roots lie as well as the vibrant jazz scene going on in Brooklyn in other areas -- that is all inclusive and not deemed to just a select area. It is a big deal and it's important to correct the inaccuracies, and not allow negligence to seep in its own stew.

[Ahmed Abdullah]

This is what we sent out to reporters:


In addressing the mis-appropriation of our culture in the article written by Nate Chinen in the Friday, May 26th issue of the NY Times it is necessary to have a better understanding of what we’re doing in Central Brooklyn and how it can be called a Renaissance. You see in truth if the writer had written two articles, one about the clubs and musicians in Park Slope and Williamsburg and called it Jazz in Brooklyn and another one about Central Brooklyn that spoke to the Renaissance of Jazz: A Music of the Spirit, theoretically there would not have a been a problem. I say theoretically because in truth there can always be a problem when someone else tells your story. But the point is that the two areas tell a very different tale about the music. So the question that you’re probably asking is what is the difference? In today’s world there should be no question about the fact that Jazz is an artform created by African Americans however Jazz: A Music of the Spirit is a cultural, philosophical, socio-political, spiritual and economic way of defining our music. The ability to identify the music that comes from African-American as Jazz: A Music of the Spirit represents a 21st century shift in our thinking about our culture. And that is very very important.

The name Jazz: Music of the Spirit has to do with what this music is essentially all about. It is a Music that was given to African people in America to cope with and rise above acts rendered against us that would make us feel as if we were less than human. It’s a special music that could only have been developed by a people who were in need of some Divine intervention. Wherever we found ourselves we created this music. However our ancestors were so involved in the creation of the music and coping with various factors of life as Africans in America that they didn’t have time or the means to change the name imposed on them. So the name Jazz was given to the music by people in positions of power. The word Jazz has come to mean many different things to many people. The important point is that it wasn’t our name to begin with yet it has been used for a century to describe the art form African Americans created. We likened the word Jazz to the word Negro that was given to Africans in America to hide our true origins. Many of the well-respected thinkers in the music had issues with the word Jazz since it is music of self-determination and the name speaks to an imposition, which of course is the antithesis of self-determination.

Our efforts in targeting and specifically appealing to an African American and African Caribbean audience in Brooklyn is unprecedented in the history of the music. Our audience has been a very important factor in this new definition of our music. In the early days of the music we had no choice (because of legalized apartheid) except to have our music in our communities but over the last 30 years, having Jazz in communities of color has not been common. This is a very important point to understand as a reason for what we have seen in recent times as a cooption of our music. The music has continued to be performed in white owned venues in predominantly white or bohemian areas such as the Village in Manhattan or the Upper Westside of Manhattan. Now we’re told in Park Slope and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, certainly removed from its roots. Another factor that has been of major importance over the last thirty years is the fact that Jazz is now being taught in the colleges. It has been institutionalized. However, in the 1980s with the cut back in Education (namely music programs in Black communities) from the Reagan Administration there was a subsequent creation of a new culture called Rap/Hip Hop. Twenty-six years into that culture has demonstrated some startling results, one of which is a dumbing down of the sensibilities in Black and Latino communities. Education has not been looked at as a form of advancement as it was but as something to be avoided. So who gets to college to learn about Jazz? And where is Jazz in the Black communities so that young Black people can access it?

Well Jazz 966 started bringing Jazz back to Black Brooklyn in 1990; Sistas’Place started in 1995 and the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium became an umbrella for many Jazz organization in 1999 producing its first Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival in the year 2000. The great thing about the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium is that it developed a relationship with the oldest institutions in the Black community--the Black churches

At Sistas’ Place, in the early days, in our effort to reach our Brooklyn Black base audience, we initiated Conversations with musicians as a means of getting the personal narrative that is so important to the artists and the community from which the artist comes from. The term Jazz: Music of the Spirit in part comes from those conversations and the need to name what we have created so that we can claim it.


When we started our 10th season at Sistas’ Place in September 2005, we had the premonition that what we had done the previous year was going to get the attention of the white press because it was so fantastic and unprecedented that it couldn’t be ignored. We also knew that historically when the white press comes to critique what we have it will be distorted in some way. We were therefore prepared when this article came out on Friday, May 26 because of the work we’ve been doing and knew that we had to stay our course but at the same time respond to the insult of misappropriation and the attempt to minimize our efforts.


What we did in our 2004-2005 season was to organize mini tours to a couple of countries for five projects and we called it from Brooklyn to Milan. Along the way we had stops in Orange, New Jersey at Cecil’s in the series run by Slim Washington and the Black Telephone Worker’s for Justice. We had stops at Sweet Rhythm in Manhattan run by James Browne. When we finished those projects in 2005 we knew we had to name what we were doing in Brooklyn and we called it Jazz: A Music of the Spirit and we began writing a thesis around this phenomenon. In September 2005, Louis Reyes Rivera invited us to use his show on WBAI, (Perspective) as a mean of further developing the thesis and so we invited people like Monique Ngozi Nri, Akua Dixon, Larry Ridley, Salim Washington, Robin D.G Kelley, Viola Plummer, Atiba Kwabena, major thinkers on the subject. We did five show. Lots of thought, care and energy went into re-naming this music Jazz: A Music of the Spirit because it’s been with us for a century and it is part of our legacy as African Americans.


We knew the white press was coming because they have continually distorted the music’s history to name Paul Whiteman the King of Jazz, Benny Goodman the King of Swing, to find a white Miles Davis in Chet Baker, etc, etc., etc, This is the legacy of apartheid America. We therefore found people who we could say represented Jazz: A Music of the Spirit so there could be no doubt about what and who we were talking about and we decided upon Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Sun Ra and Betty Carter. After identifying the artist we could mine their lives (which had been completed) for criteria that we could use to identify the music. We came up with seven factors/criteria.

So with expectancy in our hearts we took steps to own this music that we were naming anew. By January, 2006 we had decided that the next step in ownership was to record the music. So we met with a recording engineer/musicians Andrei Strobert and developed a plan to record 5 projects at Sistas’ Place in April 2006. Andrei Strobert already had a record label and a studio that he had built in his house. In January, the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium adopted Jazz: A Music of the Spirit as the theme for its annual festival. We were on a roll. It has to be said that while we speak three representatives from the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium are on their way to South Africa where a relationship has begun with a Festival in that country that will hopefully have major influence and connections to where we want to go with this music.



Then by the middle of February Andrei Strobert mysteriously died.

This Music of the Spirit being what it is we found another engineer in the person of Greg Buford who came right in and recorded the projects for us. Greg however did not have a record label. Bill Hudson videoed the concerts.

The process of recording made us understand that we needed to develop a production company so Jazz: A Music of the Spirit Productions came into being. Our next step is to incorporate this production company so that we can do other work around this music namely; to produce concerts that represent Jazz: A Music of the Spirit; to document and archive the personal narratives of the many artists who perform this music; to develop a record label and distribution outlets; to develop audiences within the local African American communities around the country; to develop a curriculum for the music that can taught in the public schools; to develop writers and publications to deal with the music; and of course to have a presence in our communities around the music.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Unfortunately Ahmed, your second paragraph is what confuses me. What are you trying to say?

It seems like you're trying to say that Africans invented the music but whites (people of power?) named it. Blacks in Brooklyn are trying to rename it "A Music of the Spirit"? Is that what you're trying to say?

I'm sorry to say, it reads very much like someone who's got skin color foremost in their mind.