yoshi's
jazz club
By Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, June
1, 2007
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco
Chronicle
When Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland released its
much-anticipated 10-year anniversary CD last month, local
jazz aficionados were outraged that no African American
musicians were included. The tension grew days later when
the Bay Area's jazz community learned that the Berkeley
Downtown Jazz Festival had invited only six African
American musicians to perform at the five-day event in
August. Together, the two revelations upset musicians,
club owners and fans, some of whom say racism is at play
in the local jazz scene.
Anna DeLeon, owner of Anna's Jazz Island in Berkeley,
complained to organizers when she learned who was
scheduled to play at her club during the festival.
"There were 17 musicians in four bands, and none
were black," said DeLeon. "It is hard for me to
imagine how this could happen, how they could not
notice." Word spread quickly as people voiced
outrage via e-mail over a problem many said had been
simmering for a long time. Jazz professionals met to plan
a response. Club owners and musicians went on Doug
Edwards' "Music of the World" show on KPFA-FM
on May 19. A week later, Susan Muscarella, who books the
jazz festival and runs Berkeley's Jazzschool, appeared on
the same show to respond. Muscarella says the situation
is being overblown. She said she hasn't finished booking
the festival but has so far confirmed four African
American acts, and it was coincidence that none would
perform at Anna's.
Last year, 30 percent of festival performers were black,
she said. "These allegations are outrageous,"
Muscarella said. "Diversity has always been at the
top of my list. I hold African American heritage in high
esteem. But I do choose quality and not ethnicity
alone." Many artists said that holding black
heritage in high esteem is not the point. Inviting six
African American artists to a major jazz event that
includes dozens of performers and excluding black artists
from a selection of 10 performances at the East Bay's
most prominent jazz venue is simply unacceptable, they
said. "It is like going to a Chinese restaurant and
there are no Chinese people," said Howard Wiley, a
local saxophonist.
"It is very disheartening and sad, especially from
Yoshi's, which calls itself the premiere jazz venue of
the Bay Area. "I mean, we are dealing with jazz and
blues, not Hungarian folk music or the invention of
computer programs." Jazz grew out of the African
American experience, and many historians call it the most
significant contribution from the United States to the
music world. Well-known jazz artists, festival organizers
and academics say the two incidents show how African
Americans are being squeezed out of the art form more
broadly.
"This is stemming from a much larger dynamic with
regard to jazz and what is becoming a legitimized and
institutionalized lack of inclusion of African
Americans," said Glen Pearson, a music instructor at
the College of Alameda and a full-time musician.
"Jazz was once looked at as inferior music from an
inferior culture, and now it has become embraced socially
and academically, so there has been some
revisionism." Pearson said some music critics
believe the African American roots of jazz and its black
contributors are sometimes featured too heavily in
education and portrayals of jazz, such as in Ken Burns'
television documentary series.
There were complaints that the PBS series,
"Jazz," focused too much on African Americans,
Pearson said. "I am comfortable saying that every
significant white contributor to jazz studied from
someone of African American descent," Pearson said.
"So for a world-class jazz venue to not include an
African American performer in a 10-year tribute is just
so sideways." Over the years, countless prominent
African Americans have performed at Yoshi's, including
Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, Howard Wiley, Abbey
Lincoln, Mulgrew Miller, Terence Blanchard, Marcus
Shelby, McCoy Tyner, Shirley Horn and Elvin Jones. Peter
Williams, Yoshi's artistic director, said the exclusion
was an oversight and that the club does not have the
right to record all the performers that appear there.
"We apologize to anyone who feels slighted by
the omission of African American artists on this project,
as that was never our intention," he wrote in an
e-mail to concerned supporters. "This compilation CD
was meant to celebrate a milestone for us in the Bay Area
and not necessarily meant to be a representation of all
the artists and music styles ever played at our
club." DeLeon said she and others angry about the CD
do not suspect that Yoshi's conspired to leave out
African Americans; they are upset it happened without
anyone noticing. "The Bay Area is a jazz mecca,
considered one of the top three or four markets in the
country, so for its premiere venue to leave out African
American artists is amazing," said Herve Ernest,
executive director of SF Noir, an arts and culture
organization that highlights African American
contributions, and a co-founder of the North Beach Jazz
Festival. ">From what I have perceived and what
I've witnessed, there is a certain whitewashing of jazz
both locally and nationally," Ernest said. "I
think it is done from a marketing standpoint and is a
response to the largely white audiences that patronize an
establishment."
Ernest said one of the reasons he founded SF Noir was
that he noticed the jazz festival audiences were 90
percent white, and he wanted to try to appeal to a more
diverse crowd and put a stronger focus on black
contributions to the art. "It really gets me upset
that people like Norah Jones (who is white and East
Indian) get pushed through with heavy marketing when
there are dozens of African American female jazz
vocalists who, in my opinion, are 10 times better,"
he said. "I'm not sure if the exclusion is intended
or an honest overlook, but we created jazz and we are
still playing it, so we should not be overlooked."
Local jazz artists said they see the discussion as
positive in that it is offering a chance to address an
issue that has been stewing for some time. A desire to
organize has been lacking, said local jazz singer Rhonda
Benin, but now a number of musicians are ready to take
action.
"It's an ongoing problem that was brought to a head
by these two events," said Raymond Nat Turner, an
Oakland-based jazz poet. "That set in motion a chain
of e-mails and unleashed an energy that had been dormant
for years. "People who had not been communicating
have started talking and networking," Turner said.
At a forum at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music
last month, about 35 people discussed how better to
support black-owned venues and artists and recruiting
more African American children into the world of jazz.
"We are becoming the minority as Europeans and
Caucasians take over," Turner said. Those who
attended the forum plan to meet again Sunday to develop a
long-term strategy. "This is an African American art
form, and they are excluding the very people who created
it and continue to play it," said Benin. "It's
a travesty."
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The Equal Justice Society (www.equaljusticesociety.org)
is a national advocacy organization strategically
advancing social and racial justice through law and
public policy, communications and the arts, and alliance
building. Equal Justice Society, 220 Sansome St, 14th
Flr, San Francisco, CA 94104, Ph (415) 288-8700 [TheBlackList] The Unbearable
Whitening of Jazz Continues...
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