A few days ago in The Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout laid out the bad news. In the last Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, an ongoing project of the National Endowment for the Arts, jazz underwent a significant loss of audience, and a further “graying” of the audience as well. Teachout summarizes:
“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.
These numbers indicate that the audience for jazz in America is both aging and shrinking at an alarming rate. What I find no less revealing, though, is that the median age of the jazz audience is now comparable to the ages for attendees of live performances of classical music (49 in 2008 vs. 40 in 1982), opera (48 in 2008 vs. 43 in 1982), nonmusical plays (47 in 2008 vs. 39 in 1982) and ballet (46 in 2008 vs. 37 in 1982). In 1982, by contrast, jazz fans were much younger than their high-culture counterparts.”
That last term, “high culture,” helps explain the decline, Teachout believes. Up until the 1960s, he says, jazz was a popular art form, with its best practitioners happy to be regarded as entertainers as well as artists. But by the 1970s, jazz had evolved into “a sophisticated art music.” It required listeners to accept challenge and complexity and musical learning. Jazz musicians cultivated an air of seriousness. In a word, the music lost its fun.
I don’t know enough about the current scene to agree or disagree. In my amateur knowledge, however, I think that the transition years, 1945 to 1965, mark one of the watershed moments of American creativity, and they won’t be repeated. Jazz wasn’t a high-culture genre, but it did produce a scattering of performances that rise to high art status, and if we want to introduce a rising generation to the music, canon formation will have to happen. (You can’t get young people interested in old art without adding to it the trait of “greatness.”)
Here are 10 picks, most of which are familiar, in no particular order:
-----"All Blues,” Miles Davis
-----"My Funny Valentine,” Mile Davis (the live version from ’64, with George Coleman on tenor)
-----"My Favorite Things,” John Coltrane (Elvin Jones once said Coltrane made them run through 50 takes before accepting this one)
-----"Mysterioso,” Thelonious Monk (the 1948 recording with Milt Jackson)
-----"Blue 7,” Sonny Rollins
-----"One for Daddy-O,” Cannonball Adderley
-----"Haitian Fight Song,” Charles Mingus
-----"Spiritual,” John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy (the first night’s version during the 1961 Village Vanguard run)
-----"Tanya,” Dexter Gordon (composed by Donald Byrd)
-----"Just Friends,” Charlie Parker
-----"Maiden Voyage,” Herbie Hancock
