Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Is Jazz Dead?

No, it fust smells funny.
~Frank Zappa



Alarming News:

Can Jazz Be Saved?

The audience for America’s great art form is withering away

By TERRY TEACHOUT (AUGUST 9, 2009, Wall Street Journal)

New York
In 1987, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring jazz to be “a rare and valuable national treasure.” Nowadays the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis is taught in public schools, heard on TV commercials and performed at prestigious venues such as New York’s Lincoln Center, which even runs its own nightclub, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.
Here’s the catch: Nobody’s listening.
No, it’s not quite that bad—but it’s no longer possible for head-in-the-sand types to pretend that the great American art form is economically healthy or that its future looks anything other than bleak.

The bad news came from the National Endowment for the Arts’ latest Survey of ­Public Participation in the Arts, the fourth to be conducted by the NEA (in participation with the U.S. Census Bureau) since 1982. These are the findings that made jazz musicians sit up and take ­notice:
• In 2002, the year of the last survey, 10.8% of adult Americans attended at least one jazz performance. In 2008, that figure fell to 7.8%.
• Not only is the audience for jazz shrinking, but it’s growing older—fast. The median age of adults in America who attended a live jazz performance in 2008 was 46. In 1982 it was 29.
• Older people are also much less likely to attend jazz performances today than they were a few years ago. The percentage of Americans between the ages of 45 and 54 who attended a live jazz performance in 2008 was 9.8%. In 2002, it was 13.9%. That’s a 30% drop in attendance.
• Even among ­college-educated adults, the audience for live jazz has shrunk significantly, to 14.9% in 2008 from 19.4% in 1982.

 

5 comments:

Babel blog said...

Interesting comments. But is it purely to do with jazz or is it to do with music in general? Also, while that might be the case in USA, my experience sitting in a jazz club in London is slightly different. Younger and more enthusiastic audiences, I am pleased to say. Though the problem over recorded music persists.

jazz said...

Jazz combines a fusion of influences, musical traditions and many instruments, which makes this genre unique.

Sax on the Web said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Harri Rautiainen said...

Thanks for your comments, Babel and jazz.

Along the history of jazz there have been new developments and experiments that have revived jazz. Hopefully that will take place in the future, too.

Anonymous said...

This is fifty percent entertaining. But then once more I'm very high right now