By Billy Mitchell
The collapse of the L.A. Jazz Festival should not be looked at simply as a case of poor organization or inexperienced production. Those failures were certainly part of the problem, and musicians, vendors, and others paid the price. But the fiasco exposed something much larger: the jazz infrastructure in Los Angeles has become increasingly fragile.
Declining media coverage, limited radio support for local artists, shrinking audiences, economic pressures on live entertainment, and a lack of coordinated business development have all contributed to the problem. If we focus only on who mismanaged one festival, we miss the more important question: How did we allow the business and support system surrounding jazz in Los Angeles to become this weak?
One factor rarely discussed is the disappearance of jazz listings from newspapers. For decades, those listings connected musicians, clubs, and audiences. They told people where the music was and who was playing. By 2008, after years of cutbacks, the Los Angeles Times had largely eliminated the regular jazz listings and dedicated jazz coverage that once appeared in its Calendar section. Jazz lost more than publicity. It lost one of the basic tools that helped create and maintain an audience.
Jazz critics also tend to devote more attention to legendary artists and musicians coming from outside the community than to talented musicians working here in Los Angeles. More serious coverage of strong local artists would build their credibility, attract audiences, and strengthen the local jazz market.
The same problem exists in jazz radio. Local artists receive limited airplay while programming is dominated by established national artists. KJazz promotes local concerts and broadcasts local performers, but there is no readily available public accounting of how much of its regular playlist is devoted to Los Angeles-based artists.
If audiences rarely hear local musicians, how are they supposed to know who they are or want to see them perform? Radio should help create interest in the musicians working in its own community.
The pipeline that once developed both musicians and audiences has also weakened. Technology has made recording and distributing music easier than ever, but fewer institutions are nurturing instrumental performance and participation in live music. At the same time, decades of cuts to school music programs, particularly in urban communities, reduced or eliminated music education in many California schools. Many young people lost the opportunity to be introduced to instruments, ensembles, and the kind of musical training that often led naturally to jazz.
Then there is the economy. For many people, attending live music has simply become expensive. Rising living costs and limited disposable income make a night at a jazz club harder to justify. Musicians alone cannot solve that problem. It must be approached from a business standpoint through better pricing, promotion, sponsorship, partnerships, and other strategies that make live jazz accessible to audiences and financially sustainable.
A healthy jazz scene is an ecosystem. Radio introduces audiences to local musicians. Writers and critics give those musicians visibility and credibility. Clubs and venues give them a place to perform. Schools develop the next generation of musicians and listeners. Presenters and promoters build audiences, while businesses, sponsors, and community organizations provide financial support.
Each part supports the other. When one disappears, the entire system becomes weaker.
Los Angeles does not have a shortage of talented jazz musicians. What it lacks is a strong, coordinated system for introducing those musicians to audiences, developing that audience, and building a sustainable business around the music.
If jazz is going to remain a living and growing art form, we cannot be satisfied with simply celebrating its history. We have to invest in its present.
Jazz does not need another memorial. It needs a marketplace.
Billy Mitchell is a musician, producer, writer, and author of the textbook The Gigging Musician (Backbeat/Bloomsbury Publishing), and Founder/Director of the Watts-Willowbrook Music Academy and Youth Orchestra. His career spans performance, recording, music production, education, and the business of jazz.