What is wrong with white people? October 29
Last night I was fortunate enough to get back from Pennsylvania early enough to attend a jazz concert featuring two sets of immensely talented jazz, one from Jason Moran and one from The Bad Plus, at GWU’s Lisner Auditorium. Both sets were phenomenal yet only one received a standing ovation: The Bad Plus. This was disturbing to me because 1) the musicianship of Jason Moran and his band was unparalleled, 2) Moran was the headliner (though he surprisingly played first), and 3) The Bad Plus is all white and all but one of Moran’s 8-piece band was black (95% of the audience was white).
I have all kinds of theories on why this happened. I’ll throw out one of them, but I’d really like to hear feedback from you, dear reader.
My biggest one theory is that I don’t think the audience that was there for The Bad Plus is a real “jazz” audience. The Bad Plus’ jazz cred is beyond question, but a lot of their fans know them from their covers of rock songs; i.e., people that wouldn’t normally listen to jazz. They don’t appreciate that without the Monks and Coltranes and Parkers of the world we wouldn’t have The Bad Plus. The same is seen in pop music too. Justin Timberlake is hailed for essentially sounding like a black man; Elvis is the “king of rock and roll,” even though that music was invented by the likes of Little Richard and other black musicians. Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones gain massive fame by basing most of their music on blues progressions and riffs developed decades before by black pioneers. (NOTE: I’m not indicating the white artists here; they almost universally acknowledge the debt they owe to black musicians before them. I am indicting white audiences and critics though.)
So, it begs the question: What is wrong with white people that so many of us seemingly don’t give credit to the originators of the music we love? Moreover, why do we seem to not even care about what came before? Is it just a problem with white people, or do all music fans need a history lesson? (Also, to what degree is this indicative of people’s ignorance of history in general?)
These are massive, open-ended questions for a reason. The time is yours, please comment. I just want to open a dialog on these kinds of things.