Jazz in Europe: Networking and Negotiating Identities 9781501346583, 9781501346613, 9781501346606

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Researching jazz in Europe today
2 Challenges for European jazz networking
3 Current strategies
4 Giving voice to ground players
Conclusions
References
Index

Citation preview

Jazz in Europe

ii

Jazz in Europe Networking and Negotiating Identities José Dias

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK   BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc   First published in the United States of America 2019   Copyright © José Dias, 2019   For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. x constitute an extension of this copyright page.   Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover photograph: Maciej Obara at Casa da Música, Porto, 2012, © Rita Castro.   All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.   Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.   Whilst every effort has been made to locate copyright holders the publishers would be grateful to hear from any person(s) not here acknowledged.   A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.   ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-4658-3     ePDF: 978-1-5013-4660-6     eBook: 978-1-5013-4659-0   Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India   To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To my wife Rita and our son Amadeo.

vi

Contents Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

viii x xi

Introduction

1

1

Researching jazz in Europe today

5

2

Challenges for European jazz networking

43

3

Current strategies

59

4

Giving voice to ground players

77

Conclusions

143

Notes 147 References 169 Index 187

Preface We have all heard the expression ‘It’s a small world’. Except, we know it is not – it is our need and ability to network that makes the world look much smaller than it really is. My interest in understanding how people who are involved in European jazz establish their connections came from my own experiences as musician and researcher. Early on, I realized how vital it is to build your own network of contacts in different areas  – performance, research, promotion, media and education – and link all those dots together into a multi-layered and dynamic organism. This book is not an attempt to theorize about networks in general – rather it focuses on a specific ecology. In its first half, I explore how specific contexts and discourses inform jazz networking in Europe, and how that process impacts the ways in which we perceive Europe and jazz. The second half gives voice to the human experience of connecting with others in order to create or to allow creativity to take place. Working on two different case studies – 12 Points, an itinerant European jazz festival based in Dublin, and Sintoma Records, a Lisbon-based DIY online record label – provided me with a sense of how notions of identity, social structure, mobility and democracy are challenged at both the global and local levels. The constant dynamics between formal and informal jazz networking makes it a fascinating subject, as quite often formality evolves from informality, to then generate further informalities. This book is also about peripheralities. Both 12 Points and Sintoma Records are peripheral initiatives from European peripheral countries, finding ways to create and promote a peripheral music in the wake of a global economic crisis. I was drawn into 12 Points mainly for what they had achieved – I had to understand how you can create a non-mainstream jazz festival in a peripheral country, featuring exclusively young and unknown talent, and make most of the jazz world in Europe notice you. Similarly, I was recruited for Sintoma Records as I was taking part in a mass rally in Lisbon against austerity measures – at the same time as many others were demonstrating in Athens and Dublin. The small DIY netlabel gathered a group of musicians who wanted to prove that you can still create and promote music in a country– like Ireland and Greece – that had

Preface

ix

just been considered toxic by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). In many respects, this book captures a multiplicity of jazz practices taking place while Europe is undergoing a range of political, economic, social and cultural transformations. The core values upon which post-war Europe was built as a safe haven for inclusion, multiculturalism and mobility, seem now threatened by recent political developments  – the closing of national borders as a response to various migrant crises, and cultural intolerance in reaction to religious extremism. In different official discourses, jazz has served as a metaphor for the European myth. At a time when that ideal seems ever more unreachable, jazz matters all the more. Bringing to the forefront those in Europe who are trying to make a difference through jazz seems to me absolutely vital. More than anything else, this book is about those men and women who are helping to shape European policies and mentalities, and doing so in an everchanging and challenging context.

Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to many friends and colleagues who have been enormously generous with their encouragement and advice. In particular, João Soeiro de Carvalho for his enthusiasm and candid criticism for many years, and Haftor Medbøe for our extensive discussions, our working collaborations and his friendship. I have been fortunate to have had extremely kind support and brilliant advice from a number of friends and scholars, including Tony Whyton, Walter van de Leur, George McKay, Christa Bruckner-Haring, Pedro Cravinho, Petter Frost Fadnes and Nicholas Gebhardt. I  am truly grateful to Kenneth Killeen and Aoife Concannon for always providing me with excellent conditions in which to develop my work at 12 Points, and I  am especially grateful to Gerry Godley for his inspirational drive and passion for jazz and knowledge. I would like to thank my friends at Sintoma Records, particularly João Firmino and Desidério Lázaro. Their vision and persistency have definitely changed the Portuguese jazz scene. They have always respected my commitment to my investigation and my music and have been more than supportive. I am deeply grateful to everyone who has been involved in this research: fellow musicians, promoters, journalists and fellow researchers – my jazz network across Europe. They have given valuable contributions to this complex process. Finally, I would like to thank my wife for her incommensurable support every step of the way – I could not have done it without her. Earlier versions of some of the material in this book have been published in academic edited volumes: ‘Dublin Calling: Challenging European centrality and peripherality through jazz’, in Paula Guerra and Pedro Costa (eds), Redefining Art Worlds in the Late Modernity (Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 2016), 69–88; and ‘Somewhere between displacement and belonging: jazz, mobility, and identity in Europe’, in Music and Human Mobility. Redefining Community in Intercultural Context 5 (Brasov: Henri Coanda Publishing House, 2016), 151–6.

Abbreviations CC

Common Creatives

CD

Compact disc

COE

Council of Europe

DIY Do-it-yourself DG EAC

Directorate-General for Education and Culture

EACEA

Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency

EBU

European Broadcasting Union

EC

European Commission

ECI

European Circuit of Interludes

ECM

Edition of Contemporary Music

EEC

Economic European Commission

EJN

Europe Jazz Network

EJO

European Jazz Orchestra

EJYO

European Jazz Youth Orchestra

EPCF

Enquête sur les Pratiques Culturelles des Français

ESMAE

Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo

ESML

Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa

EU

European Union

FJF

Finnish Jazz Federation

FTE

Full time equivalent

IMF

International Monetary Fund

Abbreviations

xii

JACC

Jazz ao Centro Clube

JATP

Jazz at the Philharmonic

JIM

Institute for Jazz and Improvised Music

KUG

University of Music and Performing Arts Graz

KWP

Konservatorium Wien University

LP

Long Play – vinyl record

NAJE

National Association of Jazz Educators

OJM

Orquestra de Jazz de Matosinhos

RC

Rhythm Changes

RIAA

Recording Industry Association of America

SPPA

Survey of Public Participation in the Arts

TECMO

Trans European Creative Music Organisers

TEEC

Treaty of the European Economic Community

TMATT

Tin Man and the Telephone

UK

United Kingdom

US

United States

Introduction

This book is the result of five years of research on how people involved in jazz practices in Europe connect. From 2011 until late 2016, I conducted fieldwork across Europe among various groups of jazz actors  – musicians, promoters, media and academics. In order to embark on this research, my first step was to question to what extent I would be able to identify a network or networks that could exemplify such connections. Once I  had established two main levels of networking  – informal and formal  – my next concern was to understand the nature of what is perceived as European jazz by its actors. Suddenly, I  found myself standing before a dauntingly vast, non-monolithic fieldwork. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once said, ‘To understand Europe you have to be a genius – or French.’1 Being neither, I sympathize with Albright’s frustration before such a complex reality. Both Europe and jazz in Europe are intricate frameworks in which different cultures, identities and negotiations coexist. In fact, one could argue that there are several ‘Europes’, where numerous kinds of jazz are being made. Both Europe and European jazz take on different meanings depending on the context in which they are being contemplated. Early in my exploratory work, the discourse on European jazz seemed often associated with the notion of a pan-European art form. Therefore, it seemed relevant to question whether the pan-European notion could result from a systematic establishment of networks within Europe throughout history. In fact, at the historical level, Europe has been conceived as a network of cities (Bohlman 2004). The splendid period of the Renaissance would not be possible without established exchange routes of products and ideas between crucial cities such as Florence, Bruges and Toledo. The Age of Discovery, which reached its peak in the sixteenth century, was made possible by the exchange of knowledge between key cities, such as Lisbon, Antwerp and Madrid. And the Industrial Revolution would not have taken place in the early nineteenth century if engineers, architects and industrialists had not travelled between Manchester, Paris and Berlin and exchanged their expertise. With these historical contexts in mind, I  began

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Jazz in Europe

questioning the relationship between the notions of ‘jazz in Europe as a network practice’ and ‘pan-European jazz’. In the political arena, the official discourse of the European Union often stresses the notion of ‘Europeanness’ as a set of fundamental abilities. Promoting open trade among member states, mobility of its citizens, multicultural peaceful coexistence, and a common European foreign policy are key aspects to that ideological trail. Moreover, these characteristics seem to ultimately inform the notion of a pan-European ideal. In this regard, my purpose was to verify whether the set of ideals that hold the notion of Europe together – particularly mobility and cultural diversity – were, or were not, being practiced on the ground by those engaged with jazz in Europe. Additionally, it became increasingly relevant to gain an understanding of to what extent jazz, as a non-European musical practice, could serve as metaphor for some of these Europeanist ideals. Furthermore, it became crucial to confront the official EU rhetoric around cultural practices  – and jazz in particular  – against the discourse of those who make it in the field. Also, the Americanization of Europe seemed to play a decisive role in understanding jazz practices there. The mutual fascination between the United States and Europe has, particularly during the twentieth century, nurtured that process. On the one hand, Europe has been largely influenced by American cultural products, of which jazz is an important part. On the other, Americans welcomed (and to some extent craved) the legitimation of jazz by European enthusiasts. Bearing these notions in mind, it seemed important to understand the different levels of dependency jazz practices in Europe demonstrated towards American jazz.2 Although certainly a tempting subject, and one yet to be researched comprehensively, and because jazz in Europe comprises such a diverse and vast reality, my work places its focus on jazz practices within Europe, and on the people who contribute for it to happen. Therefore, my second step was to identify these actors. Understanding why and how musicians create connections and collaborations, both locally and transnationally, became central to my research. Accordingly, it became relevant to examine to what extent musicians perceived mobility within Europe as part of their practice. Also, I wanted to access their processes of building narratives around their music, so that I  could challenge them with the official rhetoric surrounding European jazz. Jazz promoters play a decisive role in the way the music is presented. I needed to examine the ways in which they operate, and to understand the extent to which their activities relate to wider European cultural production and dissemination. I  also analysed the relationship between their

Introduction

3

practices on the ground and the public funding institutions. In order to do so, I focused on identifying which strategies they have been putting into practice to ensure the promotion of intra-national and inter-European jazz artists. Similarly, identifying specific current financial, political, social, and market challenges they are facing triggered a major point of departure in my research. As result, the relationships between jazz practices in Europe and cultural policies, music education, audience demographics, and the role of the media were subjected to scrutiny in this research. Over the last three decades, the music industry has undergone well-documented changes. Alongside other factors, online music dissemination has fundamentally changed the role and the status of traditional record labels in the way music is consumed today. I found that independent musicians are increasingly perceiving ‘do-it-yourself ’ (DIY) approaches as the most immediate and effective way to produce and disseminate their music. I have, therefore, observed how DIY initiatives specific to jazz are manifested. I have focused on the natures of interpersonal processes that occur, and on the kinds of social, political and aesthetic values that are negotiated within DIY jazz initiatives. In order to synthesize the strands of my research, my third step was to identify two case studies where the above-mentioned issues could be observed – one at a wider level, that would concentrate numerous actors engaged in inter-European jazz practices within a formal network – the 12 Points European Jazz Festival; another at a local level, which could provide me with close insight into a stillembryonic DIY movement within an informal network  – Sintoma Records, a Lisbon based netlabel. The data collected for this research include several interviews and recordings from debate sessions with musicians and delegates at 12 Points during three consecutive years, 2011–13, and with Sintoma Records’ members, 2013–14. At 12 Points, I  assumed the role of research delegate in the three following years (2014–16), which allowed me to develop a deeper dialogical approach and, therefore, gain a richer sense of the dynamics that take place in developing strategies and in agenda setting. As a Lisbon-born jazz musician, I  decided to join Sintoma Records, using a participant-observation methodology. I  released two albums as leader3 and became part of an informal board of consultants, which has provided me with direct and inner access to the netlabel’s operations and decision-making process. Although 12 Points and Sintoma Records are central to this research, this book is not an ethnography on one particular festival or netlabel but, rather on the different levels and ramifications of networking in Europe. As

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musician and researcher, I built my own network, which led me to expand my research beyond one particular festival, conference or association. Drawing from the momentum that in recent years has placed practice-as-research on a par with traditional ethnography, all my different roles – as performer, festival delegate and academic – were essential for my research. Most jazz researchers in Europe today are becoming, more and more, ground actors, who no longer see themselves as validating authorities in a unilateral process of transferring knowledge (Knowledge-Transfer) into non-academic sectors, but rather proactive and equal partners in a multilateral process of exchanging knowledge (Knowledge-Transfer) with other actors. The main purpose of this book is to provide readers with a closer insight into the varied and complex nuances of jazz networking in Europe, in two main segments: contextualization – comprising Chapters 1 to 3 – and ethnography – in Chapter 4. In Chapter 1, I reflect on how jazz research in Europe has significantly evolved from serving as academic authority and authenticator of American jazz to, in recent years, adopting a much more demanding multidisciplinary approach to jazz practices in Europe as a complex and diverse reality. I discuss the importance and challenges associated with conducting multisited and dialogical ethnography on such a dynamic subject. In Chapters 2 and 3 respectively, I assess the main challenges posed to those who make this music happen in Europe, and I identify their main strategies. Finally, Chapter 4 is mainly guided by the voices of musicians, promoters, educators, journalists and researchers, as they address their own concerns and express their own thoughts on cultural identity, cultural policy, formal and informal networking, performance, DIY, jazz education, promotion and dissemination. ‘Jazz’ and ‘Europe’ are two blank canvases where the different notions are projected of what jazz and Europe should or could be.

1

Researching jazz in Europe today

Introduction Europe is often represented by its political institutions as a cultural whole. However, Europe is an ever-changing and multidimensional entity. In the same way, cultural products within Europe tend to serve as complex, and at some points contradictory, representations of European and national identities. Europe seems to be much greater than the sum of its parts – an intricate and dynamic system in which each individual country signifies more than simply a piece of the European whole. Jazz is part of the cultural fabric of many European countries. From its role in music education, to cultural programming and academic research, jazz is present in various forms of cultural production in Europe and present in its official rhetoric. This exploration began to take shape when I  was trying to understand some of these associations:  the relationship between jazz and the representation of Europe; its presence across the EU official discourse; the formal and informal narratives it has conveyed; and how jazz actors in Europe  – musicians, promoters, record label executives and festival programmers – have operated within the mist of such a complex musical whole.

The new European Jazz studies Although clouded by the same complexity, European jazz studies have in recent years achieved significant results at various levels of academic research. Within the scope of historiography, academics in the international arena have presented biographical data on the musicians and promoters who pioneered jazz dissemination in Europe,1 sometimes against repressive regimes that did not favour jazz at all.2 These academics have examined the relationship between jazz and twentieth-century print media – the representation of jazz in literature,3 print and broadcast media; its presence in early radio and television broadcasting4 and

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in film.5 Academics have analysed how jazz became a symbol of (or soundtrack to) democracy,6 the exotic,7 sin,8 subversive youth movements,9 ideology,10 diplomacy,11 sophistication12 and of Europe’s Americanization.13 More recently, New European Jazz Studies14 has become increasingly attentive to transnational processes, has questioned aesthetic, geographic, social and cultural boundaries, and at the same time have communicated the need for a more interdisciplinary approach. In a seminal article, Tony Whyton (2012) has set the course for the New European Jazz Studies: ‘New European Jazz Studies should engage with national, trans-national and trans-continental exchange as a critical discourse, resisting essentialist ideologies and examining the way in which jazz cultures obtain their meaning in the function that the music has for its musicians, audiences and industry’ (378). This has been the role of the Rhythm Changes15 project, which has proved its success in filling an increasingly important gap that, by having been extended beyond its three-year program, has also become the primary forum for academic debate on jazz in Europe, with the contribution of other actors’ insights, such as those of journalists, promoters and radio hosts. In recent years, a number of interesting studies have emerged on how jazz has influenced local and national popular culture,16 how it can serve as a vehicle for transnational musical dialogues and cultural processes,17 its role on music education,18 cultural policy,19 cultural identity,20 gender21 and the music industry.22 New European Jazz Studies has encouraged dialogue with other disciplines – such as media studies, cultural studies and gender studies – and listening to the voice of jazz’s cultural actors – musicians, promoters, media and cultural programmers – as part of its wider, inclusive agenda.

‘Jazz in Europe’ versus ‘European jazz’ As a result of my personal experiences as a jazz musician, I  approached the field with the assumption that discourse does not always concur with practice. Musicians continually build and reinvent their own narratives and images by responding to institutional discourse, peer review, press and audience reception, so that their storyline will help them communicate their music, capture new audiences, achieve greater media exposure and obtain public funding. In the role of jazz academic, I  believe the phenomenon of musicians building their own narratives warrants considerable exploration. In fact, those associated with



Researching Jazz in Europe Today

7

New Jazz Studies challenge any narratives that neither question nor look beyond discourse.23 As Heli Reimann (2013) puts it, New Jazz Studies ‘generated the transformations that deconstructed established master narratives’ (9). Yet, equally interesting are the issues associated with the blurred lines between what is said and done in jazz in Europe. For instance, what exactly do we mean by ‘European jazz’? Does this term refer to a distinct sound within the greater jazz pantheon? Can a single catchall describe jazz music from such a diversity of places within the same continent, or does it rather convey social processes around a particular genre? Since answers to these questions will be explored later in this book, the designation ‘jazz in Europe’ will be adopted, as opposed to ‘European jazz’, when addressing the various sonic and social manifestations of this genre in the European context.

Music networks and networking How do jazz actors in Europe connect? I  suggest that jazz networking in Europe is multidimensional and built from formal and informal networking interrelationships. Therefore, I  will adopt the term ‘formal jazz networking’ when referring to organizations that have their own set of regulations – including membership admission, strategic lines of action, a hierarchical organizational structure and financial support endorsed by national and European public institutions. When referring to professional and personal relationships that come from my daily practices as a jazz musician and promoter on the ground, I will adopt the term ‘informal jazz network’. At this point, I feel that I should differentiate ‘informal jazz networks’ from ‘music communities’. Henry Kingsbury (1988)24 and Bruno Nettl (1995)25 have observed two music education institutions that are characterized by hierarchal social structures. Kingsbury discusses how a classical music conservatory may be a metaphor for an extremely hierarchal society, established upon the notion of ‘talent’. Nettl observes how, within a music school, frictions occur between the students’ musical interests and the school’s canonized musical values. In both cases – for both music communities – there is a preconceived social structure and a set of values that govern that social structure. Informal jazz networks differ significantly from music communities because they do not establish themselves upon preconceived hierarchy – social or sympathetic – nor upon superimposed sets of values. Though interpersonal music- connected relationships are often,

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if not always, formed by hierarchal, social, aesthetic– and even economic  – dynamics, an informal jazz network connects individuals who are essentially assumed as equal, and as equivalent contributors to the system. Informal networks are made of interest connections, which include mainly the exchange of information. Higher levels of hierarchy are therefore attributed by peers to those who have more contacts and relationships within that area of interest – that is, in the absence of an imposed hierarchy, actors within networks create their own hierarchy based on their own criteria. As I will illustrate, the Europe Jazz Network (EJN), a formal jazz network, is considered by its peers to be more significant than any of its associates including, in the main, formal jazz networks, because EJN brings together the combined resources – what we could call the ‘capital of information’ – of all of its associates. Similarly, Ruth Finnegan (1989)26 has presented her theoretical model for a music community as result of her observation of amateur music-making in the English town of Milton Keynes. Finnegan’s concept of a music community is grounded on the premise that its members contribute to it by the sheer pleasure of making music or providing for it to be made; while the notion suggested in this book for informal jazz networking assumes that the web of relationships is woven and maintained by professional experiences and, in most cases, with commercial purposes. Like formal jazz networking, informal jazz networking comes from personal and professional relationships established on the ground. Some of the respondents to this research are former students of the Conservatory of Amsterdam and former European Jazz Youth Orchestra (EJYO) members. Quite often, most of their international sources of information about where to play and where to stay while they are on tour come from former colleagues. This is also the case with some transnational jazz ensembles that were born from these connections. For that same reason, informal jazz networking as proposed here, though made transnationally and often using virtual communication tools, differs significantly from what Andy Bennett and Richard Peterson (2004)27 describe as ‘local’, ‘trans-local’ and ‘virtual music scenes’. For these authors, a music scene is a cluster of musicians, promoters and fans who share a common interest in a musical genre or musical taste. They suggest that a ‘local music scene . . . takes place in a delimited space over a specific span of time’ (8); the ‘trans-local music scene’ connects members of local music scenes through the exchange of cultural production and parallel expressions of musical taste in other regions of the world (Straw 2006: 478), such as recordings, bands, fans and fanzines (Bennett



Researching Jazz in Europe Today

9

and Richards 2004:  8); and in ‘virtual music scenes’ its members, who rarely meet in person, communicate via chatrooms, online forums and websites (11). While the notion of ‘local music scene’ is very close to Travis Jackson’s (2012) definition of ‘jazz scene’ as a ‘socially constructed arena’ (67)28 and far from what is proposed here to define ‘jazz networking’, both ‘trans-local’ and ‘virtual’ scenes seem close to what is understood here as the networking process engaged by transnational jazz actors in Europe and their usage of virtual tools. However, in my research it is assumed that members of a jazz network perceive it primarily as a working tool to achieve greater dissemination of their music, to reach new fans and help organize their touring abroad. Building on these assumptions, my research questions the relationships between formal and informal jazz networks in Europe.

Cultural policies and formal support EU cultural policies have been absolutely decisive in informing the correlation between formal support and jazz networks in Europe. In order to understand the mechanics of jazz networking in Europe, it became crucial to scrutinize how formal support works and to question whether it fulfils the priorities that emerge from the ground practices. As we will see further ahead, developing a social network has been a very effective strategy used by jazz actors across Europe in order to interpret funding calls, devise thematic bids and capture vital institutional support. A social network is, in essence, a social structure in which a group of individuals are connected by common interest and patterns of relations (Lorrain and White 1971: 49). One of the major purposes in Harrison White’s 1970s sociological study was to examine precisely how social networks could affect, and be affected by, social norms. We can find a very similar approach in the works of Paul Berliner (1994) and Ingrid Monson (2009). Monson defines jazz as a political, social and musical practice: ‘music itself is discursive – a world of sonic interrelationships created through music making and listening practices that are part of the construction of webs of larger social and cultural meaning’ (26). Therefore, I will adopt the term ‘jazz network’ when referring to a social structure of individuals with a common interest in promoting, performing and/or consuming jazz. Such a network is built upon several layers of dynamic forces between discourse and practices, formal and informal interrelationships, independent and institutional initiatives and national and transnational

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associations. The various ways in which jazz actors connect and operate to accomplish the common goals of promoting, performing and disseminating their music are also undoubtedly informed by the economic backdrops in which they have operated and which, in turn, will influence the real impact of public funding in jazz.

Do-it-yourself as new modus operandi In recent European history, ‘do-it-yourself ’ (DIY) has been an interesting response by creative practitioners within the cultural sector to the difficult economic environments that are brought to bear by politically driven austerity measures and resultant social unrest. In fact, recent public policies encourage a greater investment in entrepreneurship and innovation  – for which DIY culture in jazz can be perceived as a good example. The increase in number and prominence of DIY netlabels and self-branding musician-led initiatives may well be a significant indicator of a paradigm shift in the music industry. Therefore, it is also essential to understand whether, in a musical tradition such as jazz, where records assume a canonizing role,29 digital music might have a central role in defining the way musicians and audiences relate to recorded music and canon. As we will see from the responses from different young musicians, many have flagged new changes to the relationships between musicians and their audiences. For some, the digital era provides meaningful alternatives to traditional visual representations and audio cataloguing of jazz  – the heritage of iconographic jazz LP and CD covers30 – such as the uploading of promotional videos and the profusion of musician and band websites. However, there is also a generalized notion that new promotional avenues such as these only add new variables to an already-saturated equation of present-day music dissemination worldwide. This feeling was very close to the one I  had while conducting this multisited ethnography.

Multisited ethnography in jazz At points during my research, I  felt like the main character in Jacques Tati’s movie Playtime.31 While in a travel agency in Paris, an American tourist casts her eye over promotional posters inviting people to visit some of the most



Researching Jazz in Europe Today

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popular cities in the world. However, she soon realizes every poster consists of a picture featuring an identical building – a building exactly like the one in which she is currently standing – the only difference being the names of the various cities on offer. Similarly, when interviewing jazz musicians from and in different European countries, their answers to my questions were markedly similar, whether they were from Scandinavian, Central-European or a Mediterranean country. This has led me to reflect on the challenges that arise when mapping ethnography in Europe on a non–European-originated musical genre, like jazz. Early in my research, I came to the conclusion that in order to understand the various manifestations of jazz in Europe, it would be necessary to do so through multisited ethnography. As Mark-Anthony Falzon puts it, ‘the local has a long pedigree in ethnographic methodology’ (2009:  5). In traditional ethnography, whenever the question was posed as to whether studying a confined communal system could lead to a narrow perspective on broader social processes, villages were assumed as good microcosmic examples of larger social and political structures and perfect laboratories for anthropological study (Geertz 1973:  22–3). But in the late-twentieth century these justifications began to look frail before the increasing awareness of the problematic relationship between conducting local ethnography and the study of connections between places. And, in fact, George E.  Marcus’s (1995) ground-breaking introduction of multisited ethnography definitively changed the way in which new ethnography approached its case studies32. Marcus suggests that the study of the social phenomena that transcend a single site can no longer depend on the old methodology of comparing and contextualizing local social structures in order to understand the ‘world system’. He observes that contemporary societies are invariably set in wider wholes and, inevitably, within these wholes ‘people, information, goods, and ideas are in a constant state of displacement  – it is, indeed, the ease of displacement that makes the whole possible’ (Falzon 2009:  5). Multisited ethnography consists in following people, connections, associations and relationships across space. This approach to ethnography ‘is many things, among them the study of human groups in motion. That motion is thought to be more than international; it is transnational’ (Mintz 1998: 117).33 Europe has developed through history as a constant flow of people and cultural products. In fact, Bohlman (2004) reminds us of how these continuous interchanges have largely helped to provide Europe with a sense of cultural wholeness and identity (34). Indeed, the difficulties associated

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with an ethnomusicological examination of Europe ‘as a single global region distinguished by cultural unity or a unified history’ are amongst the main reasons why, in the mid-twentieth century, ethnomusicology ‘turned away from Europe’ (xviii).34 As we have seen, conducting any study on jazz networking in contemporary Europe as a transnational cultural and social process through multisited ethnography also contributes to a paradigm shift within academia that is already in motion.

Delimiting space, time and perspectives Bearing these notions in mind, there were a number of issues that required answers. The first one dealt with the apparently conflicting idea that in order to do multisited analysis one must select specific locations. What should be the quantitative limits to conducting multisited ethnography on what is a transnational phenomenon by nature:  jazz networking in Europe? To what extent does the researcher have the authority to define such limits? To solve these issues, one should take into account that the researcher’s decision to choose specific locations cannot be arbitrary. We could all be tempted to immediately point out what seems to be an obvious vulnerability in Marcus’s theory: it may appear to suggest that ‘following’ people would mean to physically and endlessly engage in that quest arbitrarily. Furthermore, by doing so, one would basically continue to practice ethnography in the traditional way, thus losing our object’s interconnectedness within a broader whole. But as Matei Candea (2007) argues, ‘making the cut’ is a self-critical methodological decision that one ‘reflects upon and takes responsibility for’ (174). Therefore, my decision to choose the 12 Points European Jazz Festival as one privileged case study among others was made with the awareness of the limitations of an itinerant one-week event. But precisely those limits of both space and time became parameters to the fieldwork that were imposed by the fieldwork itself. The second question was linked to Geertz’s (1973) notion of ‘depth’. No doubt ‘thick description’ is one of ethnography’s best tools. If our object is constantly in motion or spatially dispersed, how can the researcher access data in depth? How can the researcher escape become inevitably a participant-observant who, like the object, is dispersed? How can he or she avoid the stigma of what Clifford (1992) calls ‘fieldwork as travel experience’? But the reality is that both singlesited and multisited ethnography have their limitations. Perhaps, as Falzon



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(2009) suggests, the main difference between these two approaches is language – the first deals with ‘containing’, the second with ‘extending’. Then again, in the end, they ‘both are partial, because they both have their self-imposed limits’ (13). The decision to follow 12 Points, an itinerant festival, for five consecutive years was largely informed by the awareness of those limits. Another possible choice would be to conduct an ethnographic study on a single festival edition. I  would then assume it as an ephemeral gathering and would limit myself to observing those particular actors at that particular time. But I needed to look beyond the momentary and follow persistent elements that might reveal constant characteristics in formal and informal jazz networking. Also, only through the observations of several editions was I allowed to gather and compare a requisite variety of respondents’ discourses and musical samples. The third question was associated with the notion of perspective. Again, from Marcus’s theory alone, one could understand multisited as ‘multi-perspectivist’.35 I disagree with this understanding. If a piece of research deals with spatially noncontiguous processes, it requires that the investigation will have to diversify its site, but not its perspective. In fact, also like Falzon (ibid.), I believe multisitedness contributes to a more neutral perception of the object, for it is deprived of any spatial ‘centredness’. If I were to adopt different research perspectives depending on location and respondent, I  would fail to separate discourse from praxis  – one of the main goals in my research. I believe this objective was accomplished mainly because I  pursued Tim Rice’s (2007b) model of ‘three dimensions of musical experience’. As a subject-centred musical ethnography, my research juxtaposed three dimensions of each subject (or respondent): time, location and musical metaphors. In other words, the process of collecting and analysing the discourses produced by respondents had to take into consideration the context in which it was produced – where and when it was made, and which musical metaphors were a result from that particular time and place.

‘Locality’ versus ‘glocality’ In fact, finding differentiating factors became a key concern of mine. Like the American tourist in Tati’s movie, when entering different jazz clubs and attending jazz concerts across Europe, I could often forget which country I was in. From Hot Clube in Lisbon, to Jamboree Jazz Club in Barcelona, the Unterfahrt in Munich or La Fontaine in Copenhagen, we can see the same iconographic

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elements:  print-memory from previous local jazz festivals, pictures of jazz musicians, and even the display of old trumpets or saxophones on the wall. When combined, these elements nurture a narrative and convey a very precise message:  you are in a jazz club. Apart from the local dialect featured on the flyers lying on the tables, almost everything else loses its locality. That jazz club could be anywhere else in Europe, if not anywhere else in the world and even maybe at any time in modern history. In most cases, those iconic elements and narratives seem to be used as ways to legitimize a place’s jazz authenticity; and as result of that, local features appear to be constantly blurred by global communicational codes. According to Marc Augé’s (1995) theory of ‘non-place’36, ‘the distinction between places and non-places derives from the opposition between place and space’ (79)  – space is considered an abstract setting that is transformed into a place with people’s practices. While Bourdieu’s (1993) notion of modernity consists of overlapping the ephemeral and the eternal, and the past and the present as coexisting temporal modes and multiple historical rhythms, Augé’s notion of ‘supermodernity’ categorizes three forms of ‘excess’: time, space and individual (78). Indeed, the contemporary cosmopolitan life of the European is characterized by an overabundance of events, spatial intersection and individualizations of references. Every day, in the blink of an eye, in the same conversation, we deviate from a serious debate on the economic crisis to a remark on a friend’s new coat; we cross a big city while enjoying the consistency of sitting in the same car; or we make use of our mobile phone made in Thailand, while eating at an Argentinian-food restaurant in London. For Augé (2000), this overabundance of references produces ‘a feeling of discomfort, of crisis, which is linked to the consciousness that each one of us can see everything and do nothing’ (7). Though perfectly aware of the waves of criticism that have discoloured Augé’s ‘non-place’ theory, I nonetheless found it relevant to question if there was a relationship between his insight on how contemporary cities hold interweaved meanings of time, space and individual, and jazz networking in Europe.

Europe – a cultural network European institutions do not coincide with the social, cultural and material realities of Europe however we might want to define them (Burgess, 2002: 469).



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Europe is, per se, a cultural network. It has developed as a constant flow of people and cultural products between different European cities, which have become, throughout history, more or less important actors of that network (Bohlman 2004). However, over time, defining Europe has proved to be an arduous task and the subject of extensive academic dispute. More than a geographical entity, Europe is – and always has been – a complex construction and an idealized projection of ‘political significance and immense symbolic weight . . . without agreed boundaries’ (Wallace 1990:  7). Rather than a peaceful harbour for religious coexistence – between northern Protestantism, southern Catholicism, the eastern Orthodox world, the Jewish diaspora, and the Islam – Europe has built its history upon tangible discrimination. Caught between its past and its present, the once ‘Old World’ that introduced and imposed itself on Africa, the Americas and Asia, has become the destination for African, South American and Asian immigrants, migrating from former imperial colonies.37 Today, European culture is composed of some 50 languages and 30–40 ethnic groups and, while trying to define the ‘self ’, Europe inevitably establishes boundaries to the ‘other’ (Tonra and Dunne 1998: 11). Subsequently, the official rhetoric around Europe as a cultural whole is also an intricate construction of thorny complexity. It is safe to say that today Europe’s cultural identity results from a long line of adjustments to an ideal set of social and political values – participatory and pluralist democracy, liberal humanism, freedom of thought, belief, speech and association. This set of values is very close to – and inspired by – the democratic model inherited from the United States.

‘Europeanness’ and European cultural identity Since Coudenhove-Kalergi’s founding of the Pan-European Movement in 1923, during the interwar period, specific variations to that set of social and political values have arisen in decisive moments of recent European history. Though the project of unifying Europe started as a programme made for the pacification and economic rehabilitation of postwar Europe, the official rhetoric of the EU has pointed increasingly towards informal and formal patterns of integration as symbols of its identity. Moreover, it has progressed towards the notion of Europe as a state of mind. European leaders have defined ‘Europeanness’ not as a set of distinct ideals, attitudes or symbols, but as ‘the will to hold together their

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fellow members’ disparate sets of values, behaviours and emblems’ (Sassatelli 2009:  47). Europe can serve as an ideal setting for the construction of what Anderson (1983) calls an ‘imagined community’, where its members may have similar interests or identity ( 72). Therefore, European cultural identity could be perceived as ‘the nameless and indefinite stance’ that derives from that precise act of will (Boylan 2006: 288).

European cultural policies and official discourse In the mid-1980s, an anecdotal episode propelled the idea that cultural policies were a priority in the European agenda. Jean Monnet, seen by many as the architect of the Economic European Commission (EEC), was reported to have said, ‘If I had to start all over again I would start with culture.’38 Shortly after, Jack Lang, French minister of culture in the early 1980s, claimed to be the one who had originated this statement.39 Reclaiming authorship over such a declaration vividly reflected the growing awareness by many European politicians at the time of the need for a policy shift in the EEC – it had to include cultural policies as an important part of its agenda. However, ‘cultural policy’ means different things according to different ideologies. Bourdieu (1993) suggests two logics of power dynamics and hierarchies (38). The first logic shapes how art is created following the principle of art for art’s sake, which rejects profit pursuit and condemns the power of cultural institutions; the second advocates the creation of art according to audiences’ expectations and to which critics and institutions impart legitimacy (40). For the latter, hierarchies are based on economic and commercial forces; for the former, those hierarchies are based on authentic free artistic expression (41). In Europe, there have been essentially two schools of thought on cultural policy, the functional and the positivistic. The first sees culture as organic; it assumes people’s informed choices will induce them to select which artistic proposals they find more interesting to interact with, as expression of their personal freedom. This view is closer to Anglo-Saxon countries and indicates a great confidence in market forces, where each individual can freely choose and demand in the face of wide supply. The opposing view perceives culture as part of public policy and service. For it to be accessible to as many people as possible, culture must be administrated by the government. This is well illustrated



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in the past few years by the line of cultural policy in Southern European and Scandinavian countries (Tonra and Dunne 1998:  5), and very close to what Giddens (1998) refers to as ‘third-way’ policies, which encourage social policies that will enable equal opportunities and access to culture and education for every citizen. The tensions between these two schools of thought within the EU have hampered the negotiations for a common European cultural policy. There is no mention of the word ‘culture’ in the 1957 Rome Treaty40  – thus assuming that cultural policies would be conducted under national competence, either in the hands of the marketplace or national governments. However, the involvement of European organizations in cultural policies developed from the very start, with the foundation of the Council of Europe (COE) in 1949.41 In fact, culture would become the core of the COE’s activities. In 1954, the European Cultural Convention was signed with the intent to ‘foster among the nationals of all members . . . the study of the languages, history and civilization of the others and of the civilization which is common to them all’. In 1984 the European Community (EC) launched the programme A People’s Europe, which institutionalized symbols of European identity – the twelve-star flag, Beethoven’s Ode an die Freude as anthem, and the burgundy EC citizen passport. But it was only through the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 that the beginning of a common European cultural policy was formalized. It stated that ‘the Union shall promote the development of cultural, educational and scientific research[;]‌ . . . it shall exercise concurrent competence in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity’.42 The move towards the notion of a multicultural Europe as result of the incorporation of other European countries, not only from central and Northern Europe, was manifested in the 2000 EU’s motto unity in diversity. This kind of policymaking encouraged the emergence of new actors in the cultural sector. The institutional top-to-bottom process enabled, promoted and supported new kinds of initiatives from below, as long as they conformed to the official rhetoric. The Spanish Presidency of the European Union is making a real effort regarding cultural events. One of the most remarkable is the Eurojazz Festival 2010, which aim is to relate the language of jazz with the cultural identity of Europe . . . The original philosophy of this festival highlights the uniqueness of this musical genre that is nourished by meetings and exchanges, ebbs and flows, just like the people of Europe.43 (Spanish EU Presidency, 2010)

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Jazz in Europe Some are English, others are not. Some are very young, others are too. Their music is a pain, others’ is too. Just a way like any other to kick off Jazz es Primavera at San Juan Evangelista, and a festival, this Eurojazz 2010, which someone managed to pull out of his sleeve with EU money (which means, from all of us).44 (Chema García Martínez, Cuadernos de Jazz, 2010)

As we can see from the two quotes above, the institutionalized discourse associated with European cultural products enjoyed different kinds of receptions. Sometimes those cultural products are not perceived by audiences as ‘authentic’. The music critic in the second quote seems eager to denounce what he thinks is a poor use of public funding. Apparently, the ‘European jazz’ festival in question, promoted as an exemplary display of ‘cultural identity of Europe’, ‘meetings and exchanges, ebbs and flows’, is seen here as somewhat fraudulent. As we have seen throughout this chapter, there appears to be an official European discourse concerning jazz. Further ahead in this book we will see which ideological principles establish this discourse; if it is purely generated from within the European institutions, or also anchored on external political and sociological models; and what types of negotiations occur in that process.

Jazz in and from Europe – the Americanization debate America has always been appealing to Europeans. Since the first settlers’ reports began arriving in Europe, their accounts fed the desire of the ‘Old World’ for this ‘New World’. As Richard Pells (1977) describes it: In truth, there was never a moment when the Old World and the New were not politically and culturally intertwined, or at odds of what each meant to the other. From the instant the first British settlers landed in Massachusetts and Virginia, Americans began telling their story proudly and loudly to the Europeans they had left behind. And Europe listened with a mixture of awe and bemusement, fascination and envy, empathy and exasperation. No American longings for disentanglement and isolation, no European feelings of unease and distrust, prevented people on both continents from indulging in a persistent and not together healthy obsession with one another. (2)

But from the beginning of the twentieth century – not least due to the growing exposure to American culture through imported film, literature and records – Europe would ultimately embrace the myth of America as the paragon of modern democracy:



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American cultural centres and Exchange programs, Hollywood and the novels of Ernest Hemingway, Abstract Expressionism in painting, jazz and rock music, and a multitude of conferences, magazines, lecture tours, exhibitions, and events staged by the Congress for Cultural Freedom insured that Europe, which formerly had held a mythic notion of America, was flooded with images – concrete if not always realistic – of the American way of life and the American model of democracy. (Alexander Stephan 2007: 1–2)

Post–Second World War ‘new Europe’ In its 2004 edition, the Berlinale Film Festival screened a curious set of rediscovered short documentary films from the late 1940s and early 1950s. They were part of an extensive film program produced as part of the Marshall Plan and designed to promote a new beginning for postwar Europe. The benefits of free trade, international cooperation, democratic (re)education, tolerance for multi-ethnic societies, multilingualism and the promise of the new ‘United States of Europe’ were translated into audiovisual narratives featuring boys and girls from all over Europe, symbolizing the future generation according to American democratic ideas. These films, alongside radio and advertising, were crucial elements of a mass-media ‘propaganda for democracy’, which used recurrent re-enactments of economic success stories attributed to Marshall Plan aid (Mehring 2012: 2). By making use of young people as actors to introduce the ‘new Europe’, the European Reconstruction Program – the official name for the Marshall Plan – redefined Europe as ‘young Europe’ (2). Ironically, ‘new’ and ‘young’ seem to have been the European’s chosen adjectives to define the mythic notion of America, as David Ellwood (2012) writes. The adjective ‘new’ was everywhere, . . . in the arts, in literature, in science, technology and medicine, in fashion. New means modern, modernity is novelty and the new sense of life in the world. After its remarkable victory over the Old Catholic Empire of Spain in 1898, to Europeans nothing in the world looked newer than the United States of America, to Americans nothing looked younger. (21)

If, from its early reception in Europe, jazz has been embraced as a symbol of the exotic (Gioia 1989) and elevated by Europeans to ‘serious music’ during the interwar period (Prouty 2010), in the post–Second World War period the desire for consuming American cultural products increased even more.

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American cultural icons in Europe However, over the course of time, Europeans seem to have gradually incorporated American cultural symbols and products as their own and abstracted them from many of their American idiosyncrasies. Denise Dunne and Ben Tonra (1998) observe how American cultural icons in Europe today are ‘essentially value neutral’, perceived as ‘icons of a global youth culture’ (13). After years of restriction, finally being able to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola in post-dictatorship 1975 Portugal, or wearing a pair of Levi’s in 1991’s post-USSR Poland were seen as liberating acts against repressive regimes. Today, these and other quintessentially American products are utterly implanted in those countries’ and Europe’s popular cultures. Europeans not only seem to incorporate such products as their own, they also appear to adjust those products’ function and response to better suit their own ways of life whenever it is felt to be at risk from ‘cocacolafication’. When Eurodisney was established at Marne-la-Vallée, in the outskirts of Paris in 1992, French intellectuals denounced it as an example of ‘cultural American imperialism’ and called it ‘cultural Chernobyl’ (Forgacs 1992: 361). Also, French labour unions revolted against what they considered to be puritanical American ethical restrictions – a set of regulations and limitations for Eurodisney workers’ concerning the wearing of makeup, facial hair, tattoos and jewellery, as well as a total ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol. Such restrictions are illegal under French law, and the government was forced to intervene, soon enough causing them to be withdrawn. Of course, the European response to jazz cannot be placed at the same level of importance as the symbolism Europeans attribute to consuming Coke, wearing jeans or drinking beer at Eurodisney. But throughout the twentieth century, jazz has been predominantly presented and perceived as an American art form, and – as is the case with Coke, jeans and Eurodisney – a symbol of American popular culture. The profusion of Hollywood’s 1930s and 1940s musical films often featuring jazz musicians; the dissemination of V-discs by American troops in the Second World War across liberated European countries; the exile to Europe of many prominent American jazz musicians; and even the French ‘Nouvelle Vague’s’ mystification of American popular culture references taking jazz as its constant soundtrack, were only a few from a wide range of contributions to the notion of cultural imperialism.



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Jazz as a symbol of American democracy and of its frictions In the United States, jazz’s narrative as an American art form has been one built upon conflict from the outset and to some extent it prevails so today. The history of jazz in the United States has been shaped and reshaped by racial, social, economic and aesthetic frictions. Haftor Medbøe (2013) has brilliantly summarized this process: Jazz is by nature a music borne of and sustained by collision and conflict, its genre-identity both defined and challenged by the diversity of ethnicities, musical disciplines and aesthetic and socio-political driving forces of its makers. Issues of race, social class and identity are intertwined in the music’s history, with struggle imposed both from within and without. These struggles manifest in intra-community, factional and personal frictions, and in jazz’s inter-cultural dialogues. The community that claims guardianship of the genre’s heritage and authenticity exists between states of essentialist protectionism and the economic reliance on wider cultural acceptance and commercial proliferation. (21–22)

African-American writers  – from pioneers Langston Hughes (1902–1967) and Ralph Ellison (1914–1994), to contemporaries Nathaniel Mackey (b.1947), Yusef Komunyakaa (b.1947) or Stanley Crouch (b.1945) – have claimed jazz as an essentially African-American art form. Most of such claims have been made in response to the narratives established by the predominantly white music industry that has controlled almost every aspect of jazz dissemination. As Frank Kofsky (1998) puts it: To quote Archie Shepp ‘You own the music and we make it’. Presumably it is unnecessary to specify to whom the you and we refer. In any case, it is whites who, with very minor exceptions, do indeed own the major economic institutions of the jazz world  – the booking agencies, recording companies, nightclubs, festivals, magazines, radio stations, and so on. Blacks in the main own nothing but their own talent. (28)

Though ‘issues of racial distinction and division remain central to the jazz discourse’ (Medbø 2013:  17), in American society they are aspects of larger frictions that include social stratum, identity, ideology and even aesthetic conceptions. The partition between black and white in American jazz has one of its best examples in trombonist George E.  Lewis’s essay Improvised Music After 1950s:  Afrological and Eurological Perspectives (1996). Here Lewis sets a

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clear distinction between the ‘African and African-American cultural and social history’ and the ‘generally venerated stream of European cultural, social, and intellectual history – the ‘Western tradition’’ (216) as opposite ways to approach musical improvisation, structure and composition: the ‘Afrological’ versus the ‘Eurological’. The schism between ‘the you and us’ is not only racial, but also social  – where the you (whites) are assumed to be socially and economically superior. When writer Stanley Crouch was accused of ‘purging the jazz vocabulary of many of its European-inflected elements’ (Gioia 2011:  389),45 what was at issue was primarily the assertion of a particular cultural identity and guardianship over jazz. Like trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’s much-criticized indifference to the role of European musicians in jazz’s history, Crouch’s ‘purging’ must be understood as a quite radical way to reclaim guardianship over jazz as part of the African-American identity. For both Marsalis and Crouch, jazz equals African-American culture. Moreover, having established this, jazz can be taken as a metaphor for the crucially defining role of African Americans and other ethnic minorities in the history of the United States. During the 2004 US presidential election, Kabir Sehgal, a first-generation Indo-American raised in Atlanta, took a very active role campaigning for John Kerry while, at the same time, he was playing bass for Wynton Marsalis. From this experience, Sehgal wrote Jazzocracy (2008), in which he advocates that jazz is the perfect metaphor for the American democracy model. Throughout the essay, Sehgal criticizes what he considers to be the young Indo- and AfricanAmericans’ lack of interest in their own cultural history. He proposes the creation of a ‘new American mythology’ – the (re)attachment of young people to jazz music and its history, assuming it as the symbol of a multicultural and dialoguing society. For that, he establishes a curious parallel between jazz music and the founding principles of the American democracy: I don’t think it’s an accident that jazz emerged as America’s first indigenous art form. It may seem a stretch, but I believe that jazz music shares the sustained conversational nature of democracy that began in the inkwells of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison. You could say that the designers of jazz unknowingly bestowed the music with democratic properties and ideas of equality, structure, improvisation, and liberty, but it’s probably more intellectually accurate to say that the malleable nature of jazz allows later thinkers to frame it as musical democracy. (xvi–xvii)

It seems clear that there is also friction between an American-centric and a Eurocentric desire to lay claim to the official jazz narrative. Partially, that



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fact may be associated with America’s expansionist nature and its particular perception of what globalization is. George McKay (2005), in his introductory chapter to Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain reports that, at a jazz conference in New Orleans in 2000, English jazz musician Graham Collier stated that as ‘a European, and a confirmed cynic, here in America globalization usually means invading somewhere’ (12). In taking this position, Collier condemns what he feels has been a monolithic constructed narrative on jazz dissemination, which tends to see ‘jazz as an export culture’ (5).

The European legitimation of American jazz On the other hand, the European legitimation of jazz as a Western art form has been very appealing to some Americans. Marshall Stearns’s (1956) The Story of Jazz was primarily aimed to establish a clear division between jazz and other genres that were posing a growing threat at the time  – especially Rock and Roll. Carefully detaching himself from the polemical approaches of Rudi Blesh (1946)46 and Sidney Finkelstein (1948),47 which ignored jazz’s contemporary developments, Stearns’s work was perhaps the first attempt to create a cohesive jazz narrative that bonded all of the stylistic trends that had emerged up to that point. The fact that Stearns was an historian, an outsider to the academic world of music, may have contributed to validating his conception of jazz as ‘America’s Classical Music’ (Prouty 2010: 21). His approach is heavily rooted in creating a time path for the development of jazz that is very close to the canon of Western classical music. For Stearns, the legitimating value of jazz lay in this broad developmental course, which paralleled that of the Western canon. Like classical music, jazz could trace its history through a logical progression of stylistic development; this was why jazz had to be taken seriously (21). Drawing from previous works in jazz history, Stearns creates a consensus narrative that combines Blesh’s revivalist perspective with Barry Ulanov’s (1952)48 emphasis on modern developments. By advocating an inclusive view of jazz, Stearns’s main concern was to create a solid narrative that could tame the commercial rise of Rock and Roll and replicate in jazz the broad consensus surrounding Western classical music – the status of ‘serious music’. By the 1950s and 1960s, other bestselling works have reinforced that same perspective and helped establish jazz’s official history – some in the form of academic textbooks, including Joachim Berendt’s (1952) The Jazz Book; Andre Hodeir’s (1956) Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence; Paul

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Tanner and Maurice Gerow’s (1964) A Study of Jazz; and Gunther Schuller’s (1968) Early Jazz: Its Roots and Early Development. Indeed, European authors have not only subscribed to the ‘official narrative’, as Berendt and Hodeir did, they have also contributed largely to its creation. During the interwar period, essays such as Robert Goffin’s (1932) Aux Frontières du Jazz, Hugues Panassié’s (1934) Le Jazz Hot and Charles Delaunay’s (1936) Hot Discography embodied the birth of jazz criticism and historiography. In the preface to the first American edition of Goffin’s (1944) Jazz: From the Congo to the Metropolitan, Arnold Gingrich49 wrote categorically: ‘Robert Goffin was the first serious man of letters to take jazz seriously enough to devote a book to it’ (ix). Goffin himself seemed very self-confident when he wrote, ‘Il serait prétentieux de dire que j’ai découvert le jazz, mais peut-être puis-je revendiquer d’avoir été le premier à m’en préoccuper critiquement’ (Droixhe 2007:  2). Yannick Séité50 went even further:  ‘De sangfroid, il me semble juste d’exprimer la chose ainsi: si c’est l’Amérique qui a créé le jazz, c’est l’Europe qui l’a inventé, c’est la Belgique qui était en pointe dans cette invention et c’est Goffin le premier parmi les Belges’ (ibid.). The distinction between ‘creating’ and ‘inventing’ seems to denounce a Eurocentric vision of music criticism. It seems to declare that only European criticism could legitimize jazz as ‘serious’ music by ‘taking jazz seriously enough’. This European presumption, which is well illustrated in titles such as Delaunay’s (1946) La Véritable Musique de Jazz, was very well received in America. In the early twentieth century, at a time in Western history when the United States was still struggling for worldwide recognition, the legitimation of jazz by Europe, the secular centre of Western culture, allowed Americans to look at a genuinely American cultural product on a par with other art forms from the Old Continent. After the Second World War, that legitimation became dyed-in-the-wool by a series of occurrences that definitively established the American jazz narrative in Europe. One of the most significant examples was Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) tour in Europe from 1952 to 1959. The JATP was partially intended to promote bebop at a time when it was being vigorously criticized by jazz revivalists. Granz not only presented bebop musicians to Europe, he promoted New York jazz as a symbol of the American myth: of exceptionalism, of outstanding individual artistic skill and, as Nicholas Gebhardt (2001) suggests, of the ‘progressivism of the American exceptionalist ideology’ (77) and the ‘liberal capitalist’ (27) dynamics of the metropolis. Bebop became central to the narrative and practice of jazz in Europe as a representation of modern America’s ideological foundations:  US expansionism, its national cultural



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autonomy and the promoting of New  York as the ultimate embodiment of modern metropolitan creativeness (Gennari 1991; Stowe 1994; DeVeaux 1997; Gebhardt 2001; McGee 2011). Kristin McGee (2011) suggests that jazz’s reception in Europe also implied the importing of the American jazz narrative: academic jazz programmes were included in several European conservatories’ curricula; its music-education models were adopted; American jazz anecdotes were disseminated among European jazz musicians and fans; and the American jazz festival template was imitated across numerous European cities. Simply put, Europe embraced the American jazz canon. Ultimately, this established the way in which Europe jazz networking took shape in the twentieth century. Also, after the Second World War European musicians began to perform at international jazz festivals in Europe, side-by-side with American jazz stars. Apart from prompting European jazz musicians to discover a greater sense of autonomy in the music, events like these helped to create the idea that Europe had not only legitimized American jazz, but had made it global. However, both these conceptions – American-centric and Eurocentric – have been increasingly questioned by some scholars, the premise being that if jazz is a construction made through practice and social processes, it cannot be perceived as a hermetic music phenomenon. As Bruce Johnson (2002) writes, The jazz diaspora is thus a case-study of the negotiation between local cultural practices and global cultural processes, between culture and mass mediations. In such negotiations, diaspora is the condition of the music’s existence and character. Jazz was not ‘invented’ and then exported. It was invented in the process of being disseminated. As both idea and practice, jazz came into being through negotiation with the vehicles of its dissemination, and with conditions it encountered in any given location. The complexities of diasporic reinvention are not simply the outcome of which particular versions of jazz were exported. The conditions that these exports encountered reconfigured the music and its meanings even further. (39)

In other words, once jazz is performed, recorded, studied and researched, and its dissemination negotiated worldwide, it is also constructed globally and, therefore. it should be considered a global music product. Johnson’s drawing attention to the importance of the negotiations between local/global, cultural practices/processes, culture/mediations stresses what seems to be a crucial point in that construction – jazz is created in numerous ways, depending on the number of variable outcomes from those negotiations.

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Pan-European ‘something’ The construction of identity as a form of self-understanding through music is accomplished when identities need to be or are being changed. Music helps that process by changing itself, or better by being changed by the musicians who want to participate in the construction of new identities (self-understandings) and the symbolic presentation or representation of that self-understanding to others so that others’ understandings of the group can change as well. (Tim Rice 2007a: 26–27) I think that for jazz in Europe today . . . events like 12 Points help create a sort of cohesion . . . a Pan-European ‘something’. (Marcus O’Dair, interview, Porto, Feb. 18, 2012)

In contrast to American jazz musicians, most European jazz musicians I interviewed think of themselves as free from the weight of the jazz tradition. However, at the same time, when asked to elaborate on why they chose to play jazz, they often engaged in a discourse very close to the American narrative, justifying their choice through their assertion that jazz is a symbol of multiculturalism, proactive democracy, and struggle for the individual voice. This seemingly ambivalent discourse – and puzzling, at first – between rejecting a parallel with the ‘other’ while adopting his narrative is ultimately the core of theories developed around the notion of identity from authors such as Jacques Derrida, Stuart Hall and Simon Frith. Derrida’s (1982) principle of ‘constitutive outside’ establishes that it is impossible to draw an absolute distinction between interior and exterior – every identity is irremediably affected by its exterior. In a markedly similar approach, for Hall (1996) identity is built through the relation to the ‘other’ – the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks and to what it does not want to be. While elaborating on the reasons for their choices to play jazz – as Europeans – the musicians abovementioned may have done precisely that:  they rejected jazz as their musical tradition but have taken its idealized narrative – thus projecting their own ideal of what jazz should or might be. In fact, as Frith (1996) argues, ‘an identity is always already an ideal, what we would like to be, not what we are’ (121–3). And for European jazz musicians, in the face of a musical genre that is traditionally assumed as not their own, jazz may work as a white canvas on which they impose their own narrative on musical identity. The fact that events like 12 Points, as BBC radio reporter Marcus O’Dair puts it, ‘help[s]‌create a sort of cohesion’, places that ‘cohesion’ in the realm of



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possibility. That act of will would result in a pan-European something, which by definition we can assume as beyond the realm of fact, or as an ideal. Of course, both Frith’s theorization around identity and Hall’s conceptualization of the ‘other’ raise some issues. Though Frith’s argument that ‘anti-essentialism is a necessary part of musical experience’ (122) appears to be quite indisputable, he seems to contradict himself by stating that ‘music, whether teenybop for young female fans or jazz or rap for African-Americans . . . symbolizes and offers the immediate experience of collective identity’ (121); which is a notion very close to essentialism. And when Hall argues that the relation with the ‘other’ is the central aspect to the process of building identity, he seems to forget that this process is multilateral – that is, the ‘other’ is not an impermeable set of features but one that also builds his identity dynamically through his relationship with ‘others’.

Constructing a European (jazz) identity Nevertheless, within the context of my research, I find it imperative to stress the idea that identity is a dynamic process constructed both internally and externally. Similarly, I maintain that it is crucial to assume that the establishing of an official jazz narrative may be a key element to that process. Jazz’s official narrative has been largely built by establishing differences and finding similarities between jazz and other music genres. Moreover, the narrative on and around music verbalizes social and political ideals, thus providing music its meanings. The European jazz narrative is deeply rooted in its historical reception of American jazz and the appropriation of its anecdotes and styles and its glorification of individualism  – simply put, the European jazz narrative is deeply rooted in absorbing the American liberal capitalist metropolitan ideology. Any official narrative is the construction of a myth, which may or may not concur with practice. It is a goal, constantly under construction – as is the case with the myth of Europe. As Tim Rice (2007a) argues, the construction of identity is a ‘form of self-understanding’ that is ‘accomplished when identities are being changed’ (26). Perhaps jazz actors tend to construct their discourses around their métier as a form of better understanding it and defining their role within it. Europe’s identity, as Bohlman (2004) debates, is ever changing. Maybe jazz actors in Europe create narratives around what jazz in Europe is by projecting their idealized notion of what Europe should be.

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While we have established the idea that there seems to be a discourse around jazz in Europe that straddles two ideological models – American expansionism and pan-European construction – in this process it now becomes imperative to understand the role of European institutions regarding jazz; if there is, in fact, an official European rhetoric surrounding jazz; and if actors purely create their narratives or interpret those narratives as well.

The academic discourse meets the political Beyond institutional agency there is also the role of an increasing number of active subjects – networks, associations, individuals – that call themselves Europeans, drawing on institutions for symbolic (and often economic) resources and legitimation, but also acting as interpreters of their narratives. (Sassatelli 2009: 20)

The academic world has also grappled in the past with the narrative of Europe. The historian Hartmut Kaelble (2005) categorizes two periods when social sciences have built differing discourses on contemporary Europe: the first, from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s, and the second, from that point on. In the 1950s and early 1960s, keen to provide legitimation to the emergence of European institutions, scholars engaged in linear interpretations of what ‘European’ meant as an ideal. By juxtaposing this meaning alongside the various historical and fictional narratives around ‘Europe’, academics provided validation for the enlargement of European institutions. Today, because the narratives around Europe can no longer be built at will, but instead need to be equated with ground practices, the debate on Europe has become ‘multidisciplinary and increasingly established within academic curricula’ (Sassatelli 2009: 24). As we have seen in this chapter, New Jazz Studies have spearheaded an important change to this line of research. One of its primary goals is precisely to look beyond discourse and narrative, from both institutional and ground actors. What happens, then, in the world of jazz in Europe today? How do European jazz actors relate to the official rhetoric around jazz?

The EU, ‘jazz’ and its ideological meanings Based on the answers from the respondents in my research  – as will later be presented in greater detail – most jazz actors today talk of Europe more as an



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ideal than a reality. To illustrate this argument, we will look into a set of examples of how the official EU discourse often makes use of jazz as metaphor according to very specific political agendas. In 2004 the European Parliament together with the European Council issued Directive 2004/38/EC, which granted EU citizens the right to work and reside freely within member states.51 Three years later, when the implementation of that directive was on the agenda, the EU Cultural Programme for 2007–13 established three main objectives: ‘transnational mobility of cultural players’; ‘transnational circulation of artistic and cultural works and products’; and ‘intercultural dialogue and exchanges’.52 Shortly afterwards, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) issued the programme’s official brochure,53 introducing some of the projects that had been granted financial support. One of those was EJN, whose descriptive information made very convincing links between ‘jazz’ and ‘mobility’ inside Europe. In fact, the whole notion of jazz networking across European states is very close to the programme’s motto and the brochure’s title:  Crossing Borders  – Connecting People (2007). ‘The World of Jazz’ was described here as an embodiment of Europe’s ‘mixing and cross-fertilization of cultures’, and of ‘the positive impact of migration patterns on Europe’s culture’. Towards the end, the short text concluded that ‘the positive experience of jazz encouraged a more widely held appreciation of the enriching impact of migration on European culture in general’ (32). Jazz also has a place in national official discourse. When Belgium assumed the EU rotating presidency in 2010,54 its official cultural programme emphasized some national contributions to European and world cultures. The Inside the Belgium Presidency of the EU official guide highlights two of those contributions: first, ‘Belgian Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in the 1840s’; and, second, Belgian ‘Guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt was the pioneer of European jazz in the 1930s’.55 Nine years earlier, in October 2001, also under a Belgian presidency of the EU, the conference Music in Europe56 had taken place. European Voice57 published a special report on the event, featuring an interview with Richard Miller, the Belgium minister for the arts. More than the minister’s humorous narrative on how music is present in his daily routine, the reporter’s stereotyped projection on Belgium’s ‘credentials’ to promote a European debate on music can be seen as an interesting verbalization of a Eurocentric conception of world culture and – in this case – a European nation’s contribution to American jazz.

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Jazz in Europe Be-suited Belgian minister for sounds Richard Miller is the ideal man to kickstart the debate on whether, where and how the Union should support music in the same way as it helps film and television. ‘Whenever I write a speech or an article, I must put on a CD first; then after 10 or 15 minutes I must turn it off, or I want to dance,’ says the Charleroi-born organiser of Saturday’s Music in Europe conference in Brussels. And before anyone grumbles at Belgium’s ‘boring’ credentials for holding such an event, ask yourself where Charlie Parker or John Coltrane would have been without Adolph Sax, the Belgian who invented the saxophone? (Chapman, European Voice, Oct. 11, 2001)

Also, during a European rotating presidency  – the Lithuanian presidency of the EU, in 2013 – a jazz event joining ‘young German and Lithuanian jazz musicians’ was intended to promote ‘the national musical characteristics’ of those two countries. In this ‘gala concert’ in Vilnius, Lithuanian jazz musician KyOstutis Vaiginis was awarded the Europamusicale Music Prize 2013, as motivation to ‘maintain the musical tradition of his native land’. The European Cultural Foundation EUROPAMUSICALE is holding a gala concert to mark the beginning of the EU-Presidency of Lithuania on 12 July 2013 in the National Philharmonic Hall, Lithuania. The artistic concept is entitled ‘Next Generation’:  it presents compositions by young German and Lithuanian jazz musicians, performed by the German State Jazz Orchestra with jazz saxophonist KyOstutis Vaiginis from Lithuania. The concert represents a musical greeting from Germany to Lithuania and is an expression of the good neighbourly relationship between the two countries. With this concert, the foundation aims to emphasise how Europe’s future lies in the hands of young people, and how promoting the national musical characteristics of each and every country is essential. The inaugural EUROPAMUSICALE Music Prize 2013 will be awarded to KyOstutis Vaiginis. Vaiginis is one of the most outstanding saxophonists and jazz composers of Lithuania’s younger generation, who enriches the richness of Lithuania’s musical creativity. We hope that the prize will provide an additional stimulus to nourish and maintain the musical tradition of his native land and to champion its musical diversity. (PR Newswire Europe, July 12, 2013)58

In Rome, in December 2003, the two-day Festival Jazz Mitteleuropeo took place to welcome future EU member states  – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Poland.59 Organized by the Austrian Foreign Ministry, the event featured jazz ensembles from those countries and was intended to display ‘the jazz scene in the future EU member states’ as ‘an illustration of the cultural dimension of the New Europe’.



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Jazz of the very finest will be on offer during the two-day ‘Festival Jazz Mitteleuropeo’ in Rome. Within the framework of the Central European Cultural Platform, the initiative launched by Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria in spring 2001 to promote closer cooperation in the field of foreign cultural policy, an international jazz festival to mark the Italian Presidency of the European Council will be held at Rome’s Alpheus Jazz Club on 9 and 10 December 2003. Top jazz ensembles from Poland [‘Kuba Stankiewicz Chopin Songbook’], Slovakia [‘Bartos-Jakabcic’], Slovenia [‘Samo Salamon Ornethology Quartet’], the Czech Republic [‘Visit of Music’], Hungary [‘Mihály Borbély Quartet B’] and Austria [‘N-Way’, ‘Gelee Royal’], along with the ‘Central European Jazz Connection’, an ensemble consisting of musicians from the Platform’s six member countries, will take their audience on a voyage of discovery through the various musical currents of the jazz scene in the future EU member states, thus giving an impression of the cultural dimension of the New Europe. (Austrian Foreign Ministry webpage, Dec. 9, 2003)60

In 2014, two years after the EU–Philippines Partnership and Cooperation Agreement had been signed,61 the EU delegation to the Philippines62 promoted the Euro-Pinoy Jazz Concerts in Manila.63 Here, the official rhetoric made a strong use of ‘jazz’ as a good metaphor for the EU image outside Europe. The comments produced by the European official representatives in Manila about those concerts showed a solid intention to promote Europe as a beacon of culture  – Patrick Deyvant, director of the Alliance Française de Manille, stated ‘the EU is also about culture. Culture is the sense of our being’.64 At the same time, ‘jazz’ seemed to offer a good example of cooperation between the EU and the Philippines. Concerning the jam session between European and Filipino musicians after the concert, Guy Ledoux, the EU ambassador, wrote ‘one can hardly think of a better metaphor for what can be the future of EU-Philippine relations’.65 In fact, those jam sessions in particular appeared to display the terms in which that cooperation should work:  Petra Raymond, the Goethe-Institut Philippinen director, argued that ‘jazz is ideal for this cross-cultural collaboration because it has more space and freedom for interaction’.66 The event seems to have demonstrated how ‘jazz’ can provide a more fruitful relationship than those delivered by economic and political associations  – in the words of EU delegation to the Philippines’ political counsellor, Julian Vassallo: ‘while political and economic ties are crucial in our relationship . . . it is events like this that creates ties that last and upon which new relationships, new enterprises, and new endeavours are built’.67

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In all of these examples, the official discourse uses ‘jazz’ as an idealized notion that can channel distinctive  – and, in some cases, contradictory  – ideological messages: it can be as much a symbol of national cultural heritage, as of Europeanist policies, or of international trading partnerships. EU official institutions not only construct different narratives around ‘jazz’ at will, but they also interpret those narratives according to their agenda. ‘Jazz’ is just a small part of an immense jigsaw of assembled narratives that promote an ideal. And ‘jazz’, as an ideal, legitimizes and authenticates national and European-constructed idiosyncrasies: an inherent engagement to culture; a natural talent to generate economic relations; a long history that certifies its ability to sustain long-term external alliances and domestic policies.

The EU and European jazz actors And it is precisely this last point that seems to be the key aspect in understanding the relationship between European cultural policies and jazz actors: sustainability. The financial support that the EU provides to jazz actors could be divided into two categories. The first takes place, in the medium and long-term, through the financial support of European jazz organizations that see their activities covered by the EU financing framework programs.68 Examples include the Europe Jazz Network and Swinging Europe. The second category occurs through sporadic and ad hoc funding to jazz events that are associated with European institutional initiatives, such as jazz concerts promoted within the cultural programs of the European Cities of Culture and the rotating presidencies of the European Union. Jazz in Europe is thereby present in European cultural policies in two ways:  in projects funded in the long term and in sporadic events. Therefore, understanding the criteria that decide the allocation of EU short- and longterm funding to European jazz organizations will enable us to better assess the relationship between the manner in which those organizations were created and their sustainability. And for that, we will briefly take a closer look into how EJN developed in the last few years.

Formal and informal jazz networking – the EJN It is worth noting here that the activities of advocacy networks in fact go beyond advocacy to encompass a broader representative role. Indeed, the current



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Programme Guide foresees networks adopting aims relating to networking and structured dialogue, as well as advocacy, and all the advocacy networks reviewed provided important services ‘internally’ to its membership as well as representing them ‘externally’ to policymakers and others. For example, the Europe Jazz Network has prioritized the organization of opportunities for artists, organizers and audiences from different countries to meet and communicate, as well as an annual research programme . . . Given this breadth of activities, it may be appropriate to redefine advocacy networks as ‘networks’ in future (Rampton and McCoshen 2010: 96).69 Europe has a profusion of local, national and transnational jazz networks. Many of these work in collaboration with the Europe Jazz Network  – a transEuropean umbrella organization with around 120 members70 and which includes national and non-national organizations – venues, associations and festivals. The EJN was created in 1987 by Filippo Bianchi71 in his determination to connect with other jazz promoters, and to collaborate in the organization of tours and festivals. This iconic Italian jazz promoter became interested in the potential of what was at the time still an emerging and promising tool for virtual communication – the World Wide Web. Starting mainly with Italian promoters,72 EJN was thought to be, at first, a virtual platform for sharing data and resources amongst European jazz musicians, festivals, clubs and agencies. By the mid-1990s, around twenty associates, including members from several European countries, had joined the network. By the end of the decade, with the rapid development of the organization, EJN had reached a wider circle of associates and attained increasing visibility. In a recent interview,73 Bianchi (Martinelli 2012) recalled the events leading up to the conception of EJN as follows: I had a number of friends in the continent who shared similar views. I invited them to a meeting in Ravenna between 13–15 September 1986 and proposed to form an association and start an electronic network to make our cooperation more effective. Our ambitions were not all that great – basically the idea was to create a platform to support music that was innovative and interesting, but not backed by the major record industry nor by public institutions. (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 3–4)

Advocacy According to Bianchi, EJN was designed as an advocacy network right from the start. One of its focal points was to generate visibility to emerging musicians

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who were otherwise unable to compete with others  – especially musicians from America – through support from public institutions and the promotional structures of major recording labels. Huub van Riel (2012), EJN’s president from 1989 to 1999, argues that at the time the European jazz market was still much more oriented towards American jazz, which led the then-board to accept North American members. But instead of simply aiming to promote European jazz musicians, the network perceived itself as a potential European cultural policymaker, with a precise interpretation of what jazz in Europe represented, as Riel stated. I myself never felt at home with the ‘jazz moved to Europe’ thinking which I found just as embarrassing as silly. Many of the great bands and projects these days are mixed American and European anyway. EJN’s obvious interest and involvement in European cultural policies need not be in the way of a broader view. Let’s look at the ‘Europe’ in EJN as we look at the ‘jazz’. (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 5)

In that sense, EJN not only advocated wider exposure for jazz that did not come from the United States; it stood by their members’ fundamental understanding of what jazz in Europe was. This detachment from the hegemony of American jazz became, in Bianchi’s words, the main reason for EJN to take part in EU’s cultural policies: When EJN started, the words ‘jazz’ and ‘improvisation’ did not appear in any document of the EU dealing with cultural policy – the old argument being that jazz was born in the US and thus it’s an American only art form which is akin to saying theatre was born in Greece and thus it’s a Greek only art form! Today we have a steady relationship with the EU and have developed into one of the largest and tightest cultural associations worldwide. (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 4)

The final 2010 report on the implementation of the Culture Program 2007–13 (2010)74 regards the EJN as a network that fosters internal and external dialogue. It perceives this organization as an ‘advocacy network’. In fact, the report goes so far as to recommend “it may be appropriate to redefine advocacy networks as ‘networks’ in future” (96), thereby suggesting that all EU supported networks are, or should be, advocacy agencies.



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Negotiating principles Indeed, advocacy acts as a significant factor. However, we will now see how this perspective may appear somewhat simplistic as we look into other dynamics that were important to EJN’s sustainability. A  complex network such as EJN, which gathers members from different countries with their experiences and perceptions, could not have been sustained by advocacy alone. Those different member’s perspectives and interpretations had to be negotiated and accepted into the network’s value structure. Bianchi admits having felt some inclination towards Jack Lang’s protectionist cultural policies in the late 1980s and describes the debate that occurred among EJN’s members around the idea of adopting a similar policy: In those times Jack Lang was the French Cultural Minister and he was promoting something like a ‘reasonably protectionist’ policy to balance the overwhelming power of the American cultural industry. Things like guaranteed quotas of European production in television programmes. I  thought it made sense and at some point proposed to adopt similar policies within EJN. Huub van Riel and Pierre Losio replied that the idea of boundaries and limits was very much against the spirit of jazz and that in general any restriction applied to cultural activity sounded narrow minded. They were obviously right. (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 4)

Although aware of American domination in the music industry, EJN members decided that in the future the organization would not function as a protectionist network for European jazz musicians. The network’s codes of practice were negotiated from internal debate and informed by a multifaceted knowledge of the field. Therefore, in addition to advocacy, EJN’s sustainability seems also to have derived from its ability to negotiate its governing principles. These principles were not only applied when formulating the criteria for promotional action. Also when considering new memberships, Giambatista Tofoni (2012), EJN’s president from 1999 to 2001, designated quality and aesthetic coherence as prevailing factors: ‘The EJN, in the beginning, accepted American and Israeli members, but when accepting new members, we were very strict in terms of the quality of the programmes . . . and a certain aesthetic coherence was appreciated’ (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 6).

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Though rather vague on the exact nature of the ‘quality’ and ‘coherence’ elements imposed, Tofoni nonetheless indicated that the selection criteria were based on qualitative and aesthetic codes.

Financial support, sustainability and exposure Though these factors – advocacy, a negotiated set of principles, and quality and aesthetic codes  – seem to have been determinant to EJN’s sustainability:  one cannot ignore the impact of financial support. In fact, to gain access to financial support the EJN, based in Italy until 2001, moved its base to France. According to Bianchi (2012), in the face of Berlusconi’s re-election as Italian prime minister and the resultant worry that the government would continue a policy that ‘didn’t seem an ideal environment for an advanced cultural experience’, he was introduced by Armand Meignan75 to ‘someone from the French Cultural Ministry who promised to guarantee some funds if EJN would move to France’. Attracting funding and expansion seem to have been two interdependent and concurrent factors – on the one hand, obtaining funding allowed the network to expand; on the other, its expansion brought more financial backing. As Tofoni (2012) recalls: Important things occurred at this time . . . EJN was funded for Kaleidoscope 99  – the first time that the funds were not related to concert activities but to the network itself . . . The Europe Jazz Odyssey (EJO) project has to be seen as a turning point. The Norwegians Lars Mossefinn76 and Bo Grönningsæter77 did a great job expanding the network in Northern Europe, and EJO provided adequate funding to do all the work required. (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 6)

The same kind of correlation seems to occur between funding and exposure. Again Tofoni (2012) explains how producing events associated with EU initiatives gave EJN a privileged exposure and consequently made it more appealing to European financial support; at the same time, EU funding allowed EJN to generate more activities and publicize them on a larger scale: In the year 2000 I was running, in collaboration with Sandra [Constantini]78 and Filippo [Bianchi], a large scale project in Bologna, Cultural Capital of Culture that year, involving residences by musicians from across Europe79 . . . It was, in effect, an EJN showcase and illustrated the sort of projects that we could and were



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doing together as a network . . . We were becoming more and more ‘attractive’ as an organization, however, to be honest, in business terms we could have got a lot more out of it. In those days we were ready to be a point of reference for the whole musical world, but the reality is that we are ‘cultural people’, not ‘business people’. (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 6)

Tofoni’s last remark accentuates the relative distance that the network strives to maintain from the financial element. By defining its members as ‘cultural people’, rather than ‘business people’, the former director of EJN establishes clear detachment from the commercial mindset. Following this logic, funds operate only as the necessary means for achieving a specific cultural policy. In fact, EJN states that it ‘had always been run by voluntary officials who were members of its Board of Directors’,80 and only in 2007, when it was granted EC funding, ‘the EJN Board was able, for the first time, to employ part-time staff – a Project Manager and an Information Co-ordinator’.81 EJN’s history has been defined by ‘voluntary assistance’, and in some cases ‘partnership co-funding’ ‘given to EJN by members and their funding partners’.82 In 2009, EJN ‘employed 859 full time equivalent (FTE) staff ’, and its members ‘were supported by 399 voluntary board members and an additional 4,956 volunteers’ (Goh 2011: vii). In a memoir written by Lars Mossefinn83 on Bo Grönningsæter’s life and his role as jazz promoter, shortly after his friend and colleague passed away, he stresses the idea that EJN is detached from ‘business people’ and that it perceives EU’s official bodies as somewhat hermetic institutions. According to Mossefinn (2012), in the period from 2002 to 2007, when Grönningsæter served as secretary general for EJN, he steered ‘the organization to get back on its feet financially’. Mossefinn praises Grönningsæter’s ability to attract new partnerships to EJN, and to assist more recent member organizations. To illustrate this last attribute, Mossefinn relates the following episode: ‘Bo is one of few who can decipher the application form from the EU – a skill that came in handy when he helped Gerry Godley with getting Union support for the talent launch of the innovative 12 Points Festival’ (All About Jazz, 2012). As we have seen, EJN’s sustainability is based on a number of principles combined with a set of dynamic processes that take place between the network’s members. Its sustainability comes from acting primarily as an advocacy agency; from internally negotiating its aesthetic and quality codes; from fighting to provide exposure to their activities and associates; from promoting association amongst national and international jazz organizations; from collaborating in order to get subsidy; and from using subsidy to feed back into all of its activities.

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Transversal networking EJN’s seven ‘key areas of work for 2013’84 showed us how those dynamics were organized: ‘Mobility of artists’;85 ‘Audience mobility’;86 ‘Education’;87 ‘Advocacy’;88 ‘Networking’;89 ‘Research’;90 and ‘Information and communication’.91 Three of these seven areas stand out as priority areas:  ‘Advocacy’, ‘Networking’, and ‘Information and communication’. This data suggests that promotion is a cornerstone of EJN activity. It is worth noting that, for the EJN; ‘networking’ is just one amongst its other key activities. However, as we take a deeper look into the other priority areas, we find that they all function as part of networking. For example, one of the advocacy actions consists of engaging in dialogue with ‘other cultural networks in Europe’; while some ‘Information and communication’ actions include creating a ‘working group on media’ to establish a ‘European data base’, and ‘improving communication and information services to members’.92

Knowing the ground In 2011, EJN issued the results from its research programme Strength in Numbers  – A  Study of Europe Jazz Network,93 led by Fiona Goh (2011) and compiled in collaboration with the Rhythm Changes team. It required all of EJN’s seventy-four members at the time to complete an online survey ‘asking for quantitative and qualitative data about their organizations, including internal questions about finances, staffing, events and audiences as well as about the external operating environment for jazz in their country. This was followed up by a qualitative research process with selected members to illustrate innovative projects being undertaken by EJN members, often in creative partnerships across Europe’ (vii). From seven case studies,94 the 112-page document gives us an exhaustive assembly of data, including organizations’ profiles, activities, staff and volunteers; finances and economic impacts; audiences and memberships; music-export strategies; mobility funding; and advocacy and research. With this study, EJN tries not only to connect with actors on the ground – its members – and academia, but also shows a vivid interest in growth and sustainability derived from a very in-depth understanding of the ground practices.



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Probably the most interesting fact in EJN’s history and its involvement in EU’s cultural policies is that the set of principles it advocates alongside its actions come from ground practices. Its discourse is informed directly by its members’ local and transnational activities, needs, commitments, experiences and expectations. Therefore, EJN can be seen as a formal jazz network built from the bottom up. Indeed, what the 2010 EU Report95 stresses as decisive in EJN’s sustainability is the network’s ability to generate a structured dialogue amongst its members – to ‘internally’, and from the result of that negotiation, engage in efficient ‘external’ policymaking. In other words, as a formal jazz network, EJN has its own set of regulations – including membership admission and lines of action; a hierarchical organizational structure; and financial support through European public institutions; but, in reality, it was built from, and to some extent prevails as, a professional and personal set of transnational relationships that come from daily practices in promoting jazz on the ground. Its role in contemporary European cultural policies is deeply rooted in its members’ experiences and interpretations of their ground practices. Its discourse was not politically driven, but built through a process of interpreting jazz in Europe on the ground, negotiating strategies and working to find ways to cooperate transnationally in order to promote it more efficiently.

A network of networks From 1987 onwards, EJN has grown exponentially and, in September 2018, its membership included 126 organizations in 36 countries. Its expansion took a determinant step in 2004 when TECMO (Trans European Creative Music Organisers), a smaller network, merged with EJN. In fact, we can describe EJN as a network of networks; since each one of its members is itself a network. For instance, the Danish-based organization Swinging Europe, though not created at first to be a network, but rather a trans-European big band, was built from an informal jazz network, and is now constituted as a formal jazz network: On a train ride to Copenhagen Birgit Vinge96 looked at Erik Moseholm97 and said the words which DSI Swinging Europe was build [sic] upon: ‘Let’s create something!’ The conversation soon blossomed and before they reached the airport the deal was made. Birgit Vinge would raise the money if Erik Moseholm

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Jazz in Europe would bring the ideas. The plan was to gather young musicians from all over Europe and give them a place in an exclusive big band. First year was 1996 and the project was named BIMWO – Brande International Music Workshop. The success of the project lit up the motivation and most of the following year Birgit Vinge was found in hall ways [sic] in Bruxelles [sic] where she was trying to raise further funding from the EU.98 (Swinging Europe website)

Its two main projects so far  – the European Jazz Orchestra (EJO) and the European Jazz Youth Orchestra (EJYO) – were meant to function as a display of young jazz musicians and conductors around Europe. When EBU was attached to the project, Swinging Europe began promoting itself as “a worldwide network . . . responsible for choosing the best musicians to play in European Jazz Orchestra”.99 Recently, the organization developed networking projects, such as the European Circuit of Interludes (ECI),100 DSI Swinging Europe in Asia,101 MoorJazz,102 and Reunion.103 Although a member, Swinging Europe, differs from the EJN in delivering a discourse that is very close to the EU’s official narrative. The relative distance from the business mindset observed in EJN’s discourse is not present here. At some point, when introducing ECI, Swinging Europe stated: The desired outcome of this pan-European circuit is to help create a sustainable future for emerging talents working with music trends, audience development, and other fields in the music industry. This will be done by building bridges between the platform members and the emerging talents in the fields of music and entrepreneurship . . . ECI contributes to this ambition by re-thinking and re-engaging existing cultural circuits and including them in a platform that through the benefit of being multidisciplinary will reach out for new perceptions on how emerging talents may be supported into a sustainable career. Music breaks down barriers and helps us to comprehend a pan-European narrative through its global language. Music provides a personal relationship to the wholeness through emotions, experiences, exclusivity and engagement . . . the new narratives for a new Europe formulated by José Manuel Durão Barroso ‘. . . I  think we need, in the beginning of the 21st century, namely for the new generation that is not so much identified with this narrative of Europe, to continue to tell the story of Europe’.104 (Swinging Europe website)

Networks like EJN are built upon several layers of other networks that may have different constructed narratives on the similar themes:  in this case, Swinging Europe’s discourse around Europe is somewhat dissimilar from EJN’s.



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Consequently, there are also different dynamics in the relationship between these networks and public cultural policies.

An informal network in its essence We have seen how informal jazz networks have a significant importance in the establishment of formal jazz networks such as EJN and Swinging Europe. Indeed, both those formal jazz networks were created from already established informal networks  – professional and personal relationships that come from daily practices as a jazz musician and/or promoter on the ground. Informal networking depends mainly on interpersonal relationships, where different personal empathy levels and degrees of professional interest are determinant factors. Because of these relationships and interests, formal jazz networks inevitably promote informal networking. Furthermore, as we have seen, formal and informal networks intertwine in several layers: 12 Points is a good example of how a festival can bring together formal and various occurrences of informal networking. Although it is essentially a formal jazz network, 12 Points was born from, and is motivated by, informal networking. The festival has a very tight connection to ground practices. Its itinerant nature and the debates that it fosters amongst musicians, promoters, cultural programmers, journalists and other cultural players over the course of the four-day event, help keeping such close connections with the terrain and amongst its actors. At the same time, by placing local and transnational European networks side by side, exchanging experiences and debating common issues, 12 Points gives us a perspective upon which correlations and variances occur between the local and the global. Moreover, it shows us how local networks, rather than global networks, have unique dynamics that are linked to distinct geopolitical, cultural, social and economic factors.

Local and global jazz networking The local is increasingly affected by the global:  Partly as a result of this increasing movement of cultural texts, but also because of other, wider factors, cultural identities are increasingly complex . . . Many texts are now based not on the interests, concerns and culture of particular nations, but on those of a

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As Hasmondhalgh stresses, an increasing amount of academic work has been done on transnational culture in recent years. As observed earlier, scholarly research also has its trends. After decades of focusing on local music heritages, some ethnomusicologists have felt the need to change that paradigm, instead perceiving musical phenomena as the results of ‘wider’ and ‘increasingly complex’ cultural-identity factors (Appadurai 1996; Nettl 2005). Furthermore, as part of a European new jazz studies research area, this examination aims to scrutinize how, where and when the dialogues between the local and the global take place. That is to say:  in order to understand global formal and informal jazz networking in Europe, it is crucial that we consider the importance of local networks. At a local level, organizations such as Manchester’s The Noise Upstairs or Portugal’s Jazz ao Centro Clube, consolidate resources through collaboration in order to boost the opportunities of jazz musicians from the respective cities, not only locally, but also nationally and internationally. Nearly always, these local networks begin as informal networks. But after some years of sustainable operation, they often turn into formal networks, supported by local, national and/or European funding. Such transformation confirms the concept of how formal networks are nevertheless informal by nature. Therefore, though they are economically dependent on formal institutions, their decision-making operates within the logic of an ideologically and economically independent association. Whereas local and national institutional cultural programming was historically dictated from top to bottom, in recent times locally grounded associations such as jazz networks have become significant actors in the cultural life of European cities.

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Challenges for European jazz networking

Introduction Jazz struggles as ever before to find its place within the wider spectrum of the European cultural offer, to attract funding, sponsorships and new audiences, to gain print and broadcast media exposure and to cope with the changes brought about by the Internet in the music industry. All of these appear to be concurrent factors that establish an interdependent set of challenges that jazz in Europe has to face in the present time. Digital dissemination has reshaped the music industry. New players became part of the equation. If, on the one hand, the digital era seemed to have democratized access to recording, producing and disseminating, on the other, the industry appears to be showing signs that it still has the upper hand and may regain control of revenues. Also, in Europe, nationalist movements challenge the Europeanist ideals of integration and mobility. Brexit, closed borders and refugee crises have reshaped the political landscape and will undoubtedly have an impact on the way Europeans perceive themselves and others. Jazz is practiced through negotiation – on and off stage. It will be interesting to see the future role of jazz, and the meanings it might assume, in this context.

Audiences’ demographics Mapping the jazz audience seems to have been always problematic. In Europe, only a few scattered reports on jazz’s audience demographics have followed Mike Paxton’s (1990)1 seminal study in the last thirty years. A  comprehensive trans-European study in this field has yet to be undertaken. Probably the two documents closest to delivering such an attempt are the research report conducted for EJN by Fiona Goh (2011)2 and the Statistical Overviews by the Rhythm Changes team (Whyton and Bruckner-Haring 2013).3 In Goh’s report, respondents to the survey (EJN members) provided audiences’ quantitative data

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(number of attendees). However, they were able to deliver only scant information on audience demographics (age, gender, location), thus showing how little national and non-national jazz organizations (festivals and venues) know about who attends jazz events or, if they do know, how little effort they invest on formalizing the information. All of the fifty-two respondents to Goh’s study knew how many people had attended, but none of the seven national organizations could provide any additional data on their audiences and only nine out of fortyone festival and venues respondents were able to do so. The Rhythm Changes Statistic Overviews shows that the level of knowledge on jazz audiences is still far from comprehensive, and that it varies from country to country.4 Also, data collected for this document are mainly taken from reports that are not specifically focused on jazz audiences but on general cultural consumption and primarily conducted by national agencies. As is the case in other fields of research on jazz in Europe, the level of knowledge and research on jazz audiences varies from country to country. The UK seems to have conducted a more consistent work in this area, while countries such as France, Austria and the Netherlands are only able to collect limited information on jazz audiences from cultural-consumption national surveys. In other countries such as Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Spain and Greece there are no studies published in this specific area.

In numbers Interestingly, for jazz audiences, ‘there is some evidence of greater expansion and diversity’, and though smaller than those for classical music, they ‘are apparently rising’ (Riley and Laing 2006: 24). Goh (2011) estimates that in 2009 ‘EJN members attracted an audience of 4.4 million to their events, including 2.1 million at free events’ (37). The Rhythm Changes Overviews shows that the percentage of jazz attendees over the total population in each country can vary from 5 per cent in Scotland to 20 per cent in Austria (Whyton and Bruckner-Haring 2013).5

Age and gender For some years jazz audiences were thought, and reported to be, younger than those for classical music (Oakes 2003). However, the majority of the reports (again, scarce and scattered) and the ground actors’ inputs on jazz demographics



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challenge that perception. Studies conducted in the UK6 show that the average age of jazz festival attenders is between 45 and 64, a segment that represents roughly 50 per cent of the jazz market. The vast majority of promoters and musicians I interviewed confirms these data. Although a few exceptions show otherwise7 or perhaps deliver data in a somewhat biased way,8 jazz promoters seem to struggle against challenges familiar to their classical music counterparts: the average age of the typical classical music audience has increased twice as fast as that of the population as a whole (Kolb 2002: 14). Also, although jazz is often perceived as a male-dominated industry (Monson 1995), according to studies cited above, the gender profile of current jazz attendees indicate but a slight male majority, close to a fifty–fifty split.9

Musical taste, social and cultural backgrounds Over the last forty years, extensive research has been conducted on how patterns of cultural consumption and lifestyle preferences are crucial to establishing and sustaining social and identity-group distinctions;10 to producing and reproducing social symbols and meanings;11 and to strengthening social divisions, such as education and musical taste.12 The Bourdieusian trend within European arts research advocates that art consumption and ‘cultural capital’ strengthens group identity not only by sharing cultural objects and tastes but also by excluding other groups (Bourdieu 1984). On the other side of the Atlantic, researchers such as Richard Peterson13 contradict this perception by suggesting that ‘highbrow’ consumers are ‘omnivorous’:  that is, high-status individuals tend to be more eclectic in their cultural tastes. Similarly, within the arena of this academic dispute, the definitions of highbrow (high-class), middlebrow (middle-class) and lowbrow (low-class) cultural consumers differ slightly between French and American theorists. According to Angèle Christin (2010), this is due to the way each of those countries perceives its cultural policies: France is pictured as the country of highbrow culture, characterized by a population of distinguished connoisseurs and elitist cultural institutions backed up by the French State through a centralized ‘politique culturelle.’ The United States appears as the land of mass culture, a large cultural market driven by popular culture, where boundaries between highbrow and popular culture no longer exist for an eclectic and tolerant audience. (3)

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In a study conducted by the same author, by cross-analysing data on musical tastes from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts 2002 (SPPA 2002) made in the United States, and the Enquête sur les Pratiques Culturelles des Français 2008 (EPCF 2008)  made in France, findings show that in both countries highbrow respondents are omnivorous. On both sides of the Atlantic, extensive academic research and official national surveys have increasingly suggested that musical exclusiveness decreases with higher education.14 Adults with higher education tend to listen mainly to classical music and jazz, but consume other music genres as well. Similarly, those studies indicate a strong tendency by frequent attendees of one performing art form to display interest and investment in other performing arts. The combined findings of demographic research done in the UK in the last twenty years15 points consistently to the same jazz audience’s profile: attendees are mainly high educated and with a strong bias to upper socio-economic groups.16

How jazz is perceived, consumed and mediatized Steve Oakes (2010) suggests two broad categories of jazz fans:  hybrid (‘those buying traditional/mainstream jazz CDs who may also buy modern jazz CDs’) and modern (‘that do not buy traditional/mainstream jazz CDs’) (111). As in preceding and succeeding studies, correspondences are made between these categories and ideological trends.17 Concurrently in those studies, ‘risktakers’/‘liberals’ seem to have a tendency to invest in more challenging musical events and records, while ‘conservative’ fans prefer a more predictable and ‘traditional’ musical offering. However, the way jazz is perceived by audiences raises increasing difficulties in mapping it within the overall European cultural consumption. On the one hand, classifying jazz as highbrow, middlebrow or lowbrow seems to be problematic (Peterson and Kern 1996). While lowbrow and middlebrow music is often promoted through the media, highbrow music is mainly diffused by the educational system (Oakes 2010: 118). For Peterson and Kern (ibid.), jazz should not be categorized within either of those clusters ‘because while its roots are clearly lowbrow, it is now taught in conservatories of music as highbrow, and largely consumed as middlebrow’ (901). On the other hand, the majority of jazz patrons are classified as being omnivorous cultural consumers who show tendencies to search for crossovers between several music genres.18



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Most of the promoters and musicians interviewed for this research confirm these apprehensions:  ‘Promoters and enthusiasts also express concern about maintaining artistic integrity at a time when commercially marketed jazz is dominated by “crossover” artists:  drawing in new audiences by these means brings the risk of inherent artistic constraints in promoting the composition and performance of music that is easier to decode and understand, but less intellectually and artistically credible’ (Oakes 2003: 167).

‘Jazz’ – a broad umbrella The word ‘jazz’ seems to be used today as an extremely broad umbrella, one which covers many different sub-genres and musical crossovers. The way audiences perceive jazz is concurrent to their expectations before attending a jazz event, which can go from informal background music to cutting-edge experimental music.19 According to McIntyre (2001), these ‘polarised images of jazz’ can lead potential attendees to reject it, because they will often focus on the extreme manifestations of the music and perceive it as ‘not for them’ (25). The overly broad notion of jazz may also be the cause of additional difficulties in obtaining funding and sponsorship. On the one hand, the fact that jazz has become such a broad term seems to deliver positive repercussions. Promoters and agencies have increasingly adopted a wide-ranging definition of jazz (positioning it alongside and amongst blues, world music, folk, electronica, etc.), hoping to attract an ever more-diverse audience. Lisbon’s Out Jazz has been repeatedly criticized, particularly by jazz musicians, for featuring mainly crossover artists. Similar reactions have taken place across Europe. In the UK, the Love Supreme festival, named after John Coltrane’s 1964 A Love Supreme album, is often accused of heresy by jazz artists and fans. On the other hand, however, the overly broad notion of jazz may have negative impacts. Placing jazz within an extensive and diversified musical umbrella may serve to confuse potential audiences and sponsors, if only because they do not know exactly what they are investing in.

Jazz and European media coverage This dilemma is also present in the manifold ways in which jazz is covered by the media. In addition to receiving different amounts of coverage in several

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European countries, jazz seems to occupy a space between the specialized magazines, residual criticism in generalist newspapers, the late-night radio show, and the special-interest television cable channels dedicated to classical music and world music. In the last decade, major European jazz magazines – such as the French Jazz Magazine,20 the British Jazzwise,21 or the historical Polish Jazz Forum22 – have had to deal with the same setbacks as the rest of the print media. The decrease in sales have led them to increase their investment in online formats that are difficult to sustain while facing direct competition with enthusiast-led platforms, such as www.allaboutjazz.com, and the burgeoning presence of personal blogs dedicated to the publicizing of local concerts and record releases. This democratization – or anarchization – of the jazz press has blurred the boundaries between jazz pundits and amateur jazz enthusiasts. On the one hand, the blogger exists to close the gap between readers and lesserknown artists; on the other, the authenticating role once played by the authority of the jazz press has been considerably diminished. In European public television broadcasting, jazz has for a number of years been almost absent and, instead, been relegated to cable channels devoted to a mixed package of classical music, world music and jazz, such as Frenchbased Mezzo.23 Radio, however, has endured as an important jazz gatekeeper throughout Europe. Again, although with considerable discrepancies in levels of coverage by different countries’ radio stations, jazz radio shows still exist across Europe. Stuart Nicholson’s (2009) The BBC – Public Sector Radio, Jazz Policy and Structure in the Digital Age points to the German case as an exceptional example of jazz-radio coverage. Each German region has its own radio station, each with a jazz producer; three stations have their own big bands and, combined, they broadcast more European than American jazz by privileging their local jazz scenes. The nine public broadcasting stations, plus DLF and DKultur, combine to air ‘about 300 hours of jazz per month’ (42). However, one can hardly agree with Nicholson when he generalizes about public broadcasting in Europe, suggesting that it ‘has both a policy and a strategy in place for the support of their national jazz scene’ (ibid.). In fact, Nicholson’s report seems clearly biased and intended to lobby BBC Radio for more jazz coverage. Indeed, public radio in Sweden, Finland, Austria and Switzerland also support local jazz scenes, local musicians and young musicians by broadcasting live concerts regularly, sometimes in collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). However, in other European countries such as France, which has a very lively jazz scene, when asked about the presence of jazz on French radio, Frank Ténot24



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stated flatly that jazz was sufficiently present on the radio through a private station exclusively dedicated to jazz in Lyon (Fréquence Jazz) and daily nineteen minutes in a public jazz station, FIP Radio France (Legrand and Pernin 2004). This situation is very similar to that of other countries such as Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, where the place of jazz in public radio is often limited to very few weekly programs. Many within the jazz sector(s) have expressed their concerns over the scarcity of jazz in print and broadcast media, fearing that in being overlooked by the media, jazz will also be neglected by potential consumers, funders and sponsors. The most common reason given for this scarcity is the fact that jazz is systematically perceived as occupying a space somewhere between popular and ‘serious’ music. Again, these difficulties in positioning jazz can also hinder its positioning within the programming schedules of public radio and television stations and effective inclusion in print and online media. Also, radio is one of the less used media by younger consumers. The notion of investing in radio as a privileged vehicle for the dissemination of jazz may reflect an outdated perception of the market which may, in a way, be linked to the fact that, in Europe, the average age of jazz promoters and gatekeepers has increased considerably. On the other hand, both jazz and classical music accounts for a residual percentage of global record sales. Public radio usually responds to demographically framed research. Bearing these facts in mind, it would only be fair to question if jazz and classical music should in fact be more present in public radio. Furthermore, most public-radio networks in Europe have an exclusive station dedicated to classical music and not to jazz. If the criteria for justifying public-radio broadcasting of classical music goes beyond its commercial importance and popularity among listeners, it would also be fair to question the criteria and the reason why jazz is not contemplated.

Polarized images: Free jazz and jazz for free Another recurring concern in the jazz sector deals with the fact that many consumers are unaccustomed to paying for live jazz. The profusion of live events that offer jazz for free may, in fact, serve to lower its status. Instead, considerable investment in ticketed jazz concerts might, by contrast, increase the perception of its value. Nonetheless, considering the fact that audiences are typically presented with a polarized image of jazz, placing it into more formalized and

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monetized settings could contribute to the perception of jazz as a kind of music that is hermetic and difficult to appreciate. This predicament is, unsurprisingly, more pronounced in countries where the consequences of the economic crisis have been felt most. From the interviews I conducted in Portugal and Ireland, promoters and musicians emphasized how the choice between paying and not paying to attend a jazz event is decisive for audiences in both countries. A quandary is set up between having and not having audiences at all. In such a climate, public support is even more crucial, but at the same time is increasingly difficult to obtain due to financial constraints. Effective responses to the difficulties faced by the jazz sector could be provided by a well-organized network with well-articulated strategies. However  – and remembering that there are different realities within Europe in this field25  – many of the respondents feel that only recently has the sector been performing such an upgrade. Poor presentation by artists, obsolete promotional templates, outdated models of communicating with the audiences, diminishing numbers of high-profile artists and limited lobbying power are some of the self-criticism typically made by those on the ground. Nevertheless, within the sector, the need for a more business-like mindset is one of the notions that pose more friction.26

Jazz at the heart of the Western music tradition Public funding has become increasingly scarce after the latest economic downturn. Again, although the crisis was transversal to all European countries, its outcomes and the levels of funding restrictions to the arts vary markedly from country to country. Also, regardless of the current economic crisis, each European country has, over time, developed unique ways to deal with music funding. Most jazz promoters I interviewed claimed that jazz has been financially undermined when compared to institutional support afforded to classical music, opera and, increasingly, folk music. By observing the percentage data on the distribution of public funds to classical music and jazz in several European countries, one can instantly notice a crying disproportion. The ratio can range from 25 per cent for jazz and 75 per cent for classical music in Germany27 down to 5 per cent for jazz and 95 per cent for classical music in Austria and Wales (Tony Whyton and Bruckner-Haring 2013). As an obfuscating factor, jazz is often positioned within a set of other musical genres (blues, pop, rock, folk, etc.). Therefore, we can assume that the real percentage allocated to jazz might be even smaller



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than at first suggested. Again, when comparing the percentages of classical and jazz record sales – approximately 3 per cent for jazz and 5 per cent for classical music in the UK and Germany28 – the discrepancy of funding between these two genres is even more pronounced. Across Europe, EJN has played an important role in providing its associates some assistance when applying for EU funding and access to national funding intended for transnational events, such as those supported by the Goethe Institute. Still, these data also confirm the perception by most promoters and musicians that jazz is considered somewhat marginal to the arts infrastructure (Payne 2001: 11) and to music education (Riley and Lang 2006:  26), and is often dependent on local initiatives of individuals and organizations (Burland and Pitts 2013: 125). However, such disparities alone do not represent the level of economic support that public sectors in each individual country provide to jazz. While in the Iberian countries the public sector especially invests  – in addition to mostly classical music – in genres regarded as national heritage (Fado and Flamenco), leaving jazz relegated to a limited amount of very occasional and regional support; in Norway jazz is considered well-funded compared to many other European countries[;]‌ . . . jazz funding is organised through a whole range of funding agencies . . . Musicians applying for project-support (touring, recording, travel etc.), have the option of applying to a total of four main national organizations . . . in addition to various other agencies and organizations, covering everything from support for musical equipment, artist salary, touring support, and recordings, to festivals, promotion and marketing. The yearly public funding towards Norwegian jazz is somewhere between 70 and 100 million NOK. (Fadnes 2013: 51)

The marked discrepancy between these two examples could perhaps be explained by the lack of efficient, well-articulated jazz associations in Portugal and Spain compared to those of Norwegian counterparts. In these two countries – although far more pronounced in the Portuguese case – jazz is still seen by the public sector as a niche market and a ‘cottage industry’, which endures largely thanks to the initiative of jazz enthusiasts (individuals or associations) and the good will of some local policy-makers. Musicians and promoters all around Europe seem to agree that ‘funding attracts more funding’ (Bezenac 2013: 11) and that the ability to organize and lobby effectively seems to play a crucial role in that equation; moreover, they feel a sector that wields such apparently insignificant influence over cultural policy-makers has little chance of bringing together public support and sponsorship.

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Jazz festivals as a brand of European cities The Umeå International Jazz Festival in Norway is a good example of how sponsorship can work in articulation with public funding. The festival is 50 per cent financed by sponsors and 50 per cent by city funds. Lennart Strömbäck, the festival’s director and project manager, believes the solid relationship with the municipality (through strong lobbying) and its integration within EJN has led to a successful network of ‘collaborations’ (sponsorship): The brand of the festival is strong, and it is a door opener for finding new sponsor contracts. An alternative way of sponsoring is to get project financial support from the European Union. This has been done previously and there have been collaborations with other countries. In order to make the festival happen, the municipality finances around half of the event, and then sponsors and revenue cover the rest. The other sponsors are VästerbottensKuriren and NorrlandsOperan. Other than that, we have collaborated with Rikskonserter, a governmentally funded music foundation, and received funding from them. (Tornmarck and Wikstrom 2013: 40)

Indeed, sponsorship is currently seen as one of the most powerful ways of connecting commercial brands to target markets (Grey and Skildum-Reid 2014) and it is considered as the most popular marketing communication tool used by companies (Hutabarat and Gayatri 2014). The fact that jazz promoters in the main consider themselves ‘not business people’ and that jazz agencies and organizations show some resistance to their work being perceived as having a business mindset results in a friction between them and sponsors. According to branding expert Jean-Noël Kapferer, ‘just posting one’s logo on the front door is not enough’ (2004: 104). He stresses the importance of organizations thinking of themselves as brands (‘living the brand’) through brand alignment. Branding consists of creating an appealing lifestyle that one gives the target audience access to, and of installing ‘sets of relationships’ between services and consumers; it is a form of marketing practice intended to link products and services with cultural meanings through the use of narratives (Hearn 2008: 199). In Lisbon, the Out Jazz festival – a free outdoor event, which takes place every Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon from early May to mid-September – is fully financed through sponsorship. Using an aggressive branding strategy, Out Jazz has fashioned such a lifestyle and, as a result, has become very successful in attracting sponsors. These include health-food brands and eco-friendly products



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(such as low-fat ice-creams, low-alcohol beers, hybrid cars, etc.). Out Jazz has created the narrative that it is fun and healthy to go on a picnic with your friends and family and enjoy Lisbon’s picturesque settings while listening to live jazz followed by a DJ set. In 2013, the number of attendees reached 120,000 across the five months. Out Jazz also produces videos featuring concertgoers enjoying the festival experience, videos that are then posted on YouTube and Facebook, thus feeding public interest around the event and promoting it through its own audience’s response. Today, word of mouth and electronic word of mouth have become the main promotional strategies of the festival. Out Jazz is promoted by the audience to the audience, in what could be described as a self-sustained marketing orientation. In 2001, according to the How to Develop Audiences for Jazz report (McIntyre), social networks were not identified by audiences as one of the information sources for jazz events29 (16). Ten years later, the Jazz Audiences in Scotland report suggested that the jazz sector could be ‘missing out on the opportunities represented by online channels’ (SJF 2011:  9). Jazz promotion seems to lag behind in the use of online promotional channels, when compared to other music genres. On the one hand, that could be explained by the fact that the average age of producers is increasing and that they therefore appear to favour the use of promotional channels from two decades ago – printed media, brochures and billboards. On the other, though musicians seem to increasingly make use of social networks to promote themselves, they rarely do so within a consolidated strategic communication plan. While there seems to be significant advancement in the musical training of new jazz musicians, this upgrade has not been mirrored in other sectors of the industry, such as promoters. Young aspiring jazz musicians increasingly invest in formal training delivered by conservatories across Europe and the United States. This investment has resulted in an increasing number of jazz musicians holding MA or PhD degrees in musical performance. The large majority of promoters, on the other hand, did not undertake any formal training in areas associated with their professional activity, such as marketing and management.

The role of jazz education Unlike promoters, aspiring jazz musicians throughout Europe have, especially from the late-1990s, had increasing opportunities to pursue academic training

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and to engage in both national and transnational networking. This has been achieved mostly through exchange programmes and almost exclusively in higher-education institutions. Jazz education in Europe has been the stage for very interesting attempts to challenge established jazz-education models and introduce innovative pedagogical strategies.

The American jazz education canon To some extent, European jazz education still seems to show a marked dependency on the American jazz-education canon. One of the most explicit cases is perhaps the ‘New  York comes to Groningen’ programme in Holland, which has taken place since 2001 and consists of a number of selected American jazz stars teaching at Prince Claus Conservatoire during a one-week, rotating programme, twice a year. However, most of the respondents to my research who attended the Conservatory of Amsterdam stressed how the fact that they were encouraged to incorporate musical elements from their own countries in their final master’s program recitals had a positive impact on their learning experiences and subsequent careers. Furthermore, also in an interview for this research, when asked about this issue, Gerry Godley replied that ‘in [the Norwegian conservatory of] Trondheim they’ve already ripped the Real Book apart’; in an expressive reference to that institution’s investment in pursuing methodological options different from the American jazz-education canon. As in the United States, jazz education in Europe would take decades to become legitimized within academia (Marquis 1998: 117) and would result as ‘essentially a product of the 1970s’ (Bash and Kuzmich 1985:  14).30 Sporadic experimental efforts were made since the early twentieth century in some European countries such as Germany, where ‘the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt began offering instruction in jazz in January 1928’ (Rasula 2004: 16). However, only from the mid-1960s until the 1990s, jazz education would definitely become part of the academic curricula in Europe, and especially in central and northern countries. Also, in a way similar to the experience of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, European higher-education institutions would show some hesitation in assuming the denomination ‘jazz’ for courses where it was taught, opting instead for other appellations, such as ‘rhythmic music’ or ‘light music’ – which are still used today in countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands.



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Establishing European jazz education Formal jazz training was first established in some European higher-education institutions in the 1960s, particularly in Austria and the UK. These pioneer endeavours were instrumental to sustaining relevant, creative and diversified national jazz scenes in both those countries. In Austria, in 1965, the jazz institute of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) was established, followed in 1968 by the jazz department of the Konservatorium Wien University (KWP). A  decade later, in 1989, Christoph Cech31 founded the Institute for Jazz and Improvized Music (JIM) at the Anton Bruckner University. Today, these three art universities grant both performance-track and pedagogical bachelor’s and master’s degrees in jazz studies (BrucknerHaring 2013: 25–6). In the UK, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Scottish Youth Jazz Orchestra and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and City of Leeds College of Music32 started formal jazz education in the 1960s (Whyton 2010: 137). According to Tony Whyton’s survey conducted in 2009, ‘even if absent from the title of programmes, jazz features in over 50 per cent of all University level music courses’ (137), with specialist undergraduate and postgraduate jazz courses offered by seven conservatories33 and three universities34 (Bezenac 2013: 6). The same process took place in the 1980s in Norway and Denmark, which – particularly in Norway – came to contribute greatly what is commonly categorized the ‘Nordic tone’. In Norway, since the conservatory of Trondheim35 established an experimental jazz performance course in 1979,36 all the other conservatories in the country – some of them now university departments – started to embrace formal jazz education among their programmes. These include the Norwegian Academy of Music,37 from 1984; the conservatory of Kristiansand,38 from 1991; the University of Stavanger,39 from 1994; the University of Tromsø,40 from 2000; and the University of Bergen,41 since 2003. In Denmark, since the foundation of the Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium42 in Copenhagen in 1986 by Erik Moseholm,43 both conservatories44 and universities45 have included formal jazz training in their musicology46 programmes. Peripheral European countries, such as Portugal and Spain, bachelor’s and master’s jazz performance courses were established only the mid-2000s in some arts and humanities courses (in Portugal) and conservatories (in Spain). In Portugal, over just a decade later, four higher-education institutions established jazz performance courses to address the lack of provision in this sector: Escola

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Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo (ESMAE), Porto, in 2006; Universidade de Évora in 2007; Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (ESML) in 2007; and Universidade Lusíada47 in 2009 (Dias 2010: 76).

The pros and cons of European jazz education as a potential network From the early 2000s, many aspiring young jazz musicians from peripheral European countries, such as Greece and Portugal, began seeking highereducation jazz training in conservatories across the Netherlands  – which quickly became one of the most respected European countries offering studies in jazz. In 2009, close to 40 per cent of jazz students in the Netherlands were from other European countries. Many young musicians who have studied abroad emphasize how exchange programmes allowed them to build and be a part of trans-European musicians’ networks. Exchange programmes are often regarded as not only excellent educational and artistic experiences, but also an opportunity to develop networks with other musicians and make contacts with promoters. Besides educational status, respondents have also mentioned that some European countries, such as the Netherlands, were often favoured for their geographical location and for allowing cheap and fast mobility between neighbouring countries. Exchange programmes in conservatories across Europe have been essential for the establishment of transnational collaborations amongst European jazz students. Some successful trans-European jazz bands, such as Tin Man & The Telephone,48 or DIY jazz netlabels, such as Portuguese Sintoma Records,49 were established by alumni from Dutch conservatories. Many young musicians perceived studying jazz abroad as a rite of passage. This concept introduces an interesting angle on how young musicians today perceive their process of building a professional career. For them, mobility is a fundamental part of their professional and personal development. Studying and living abroad are perceived as decisive life experiences that can enable easier access to a wider labour market and, therefore, to wider prospects of success. However, once arrived in that market, many quickly realize the dimension of the competition they now have to face. That competition has been raised up to both trans-generational and trans-European levels – trans-generational, because older musicians have already settled in their own place within the industry, and



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trans-European, because mobility is now commonplace. Chris Washburne describes this occurrence with reference to the Danish case in the 1990s: From the early 1990s, many other European local jazz scenes experienced a similar growth in young aspiring musicians, a trend that ramped up interEuropean competition for gigs across the Continent. Competition was further increased across the 1990s by the formation of the European Union, which enabled the freedom of movement, goods, services, and capital between member states, and thus greatly facilitated inter-European touring for jazz musicians. Like their E.U.  peers, Danish musicians experienced unprecedented access to venues across Europe. However, such developments also meant that Danish jazz musicians now had to compete with a larger number of foreign acts for gigs at home. (Washburne 2010: 122–3)

Investment in jazz education in Europe is part of a wider commitment by the EU to music and arts education. As demand for these courses increased over the past two decades, jazz education flourished across European academic curricula. Most of the musicians and promoters interviewed for this research claimed that, as a result, young graduate musicians are flooding the market, thereby diminishing considerably the chances for both newcomers and household artists to succeed. At the same time, some regret the fact that an increasing number of older musicians have had to seek financial security in teaching and, in many cases, have stopped performing altogether, therefore depriving audiences and younger musicians the chance to watch them play at the peak of their technical skills.

The dangers of perpetuation within the educational system For many musicians, a job in the educational system is perceived as a safe haven, a steady career and a regular salary. The market cannot accommodate the growing number of graduated musicians, and some of them enter the education system as part-time lecturers, never to leave. This occurrence may pose a new paradigm in European jazz education. To some extent, the system may be entering a vicious circle, from which it may prove difficult to escape. In the UK, 58 per cent of jazz musicians are professionally involved in some form of teaching. However, ‘employment in the education sector’ accounts for only ‘21 per cent of an average jazz musician’s total income’. This situation

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may be explained by the fact that ‘the majority of jazz musicians working in formal education settings are employed on part time contracts, either on a fractional basis or as visiting hourly paid staff ’ (Bezenac 2013: 3), or even on the contentious zero-hours contract, which offers no long-term security and no pension provision. It would be fair to question the extent to which the security afforded by a career in music education might prove to be a misconception.

What current jazz education in Europe has to offer? Jazz education in Europe may not be coping with an increasingly mediatized and globalized music industry. Jazz in Europe has been faced with profound challenges in recent years:  audience demographics; the way audiences relate to and consume music; the way music is promoted; the way musicians and promoters relate; and what potential sponsors and public support expect from musicians. Most interview respondents – both musicians and promoters – think that academia may be lagging behind in providing a pedagogy that adequately prepares young musicians to face the realities of the commercial arena. Most European jazz-education institutions have tried – however unsuccessfully – to respond to changes. In an era where the musician is typically required to act as his or her own agent, promoter, producer and press relations officer, whilst keeping up to speed with emerging recording, performance and dissemination technologies, many institutions, unsurprisingly, struggle to keep their curricula current. Alongside studies in practical musicianship there is an unquestionable need for a broader approach that includes networking, communication and ‘real world’ integration. Although many institutions acknowledge these industry demands, most struggle to keep abreast of which skills might best be fostered to prepare a graduate jazz musician for a sustainable career in what is, and always has been, such a challenging and competitive industry. (Medbøe and Dias 2014: 7)

Young European musicians today are part of a generation to whom physical mobility within Europe is commonplace, and one that has grown up in a digitalized world. However, both musicians and promoters interviewed have stressed that knowing how to use digital technology at a professional level – in producing, promoting and disseminating music – requires specific training and a deep knowledge of the market.

3

Current strategies

Introduction In order to address current challenges, many jazz actors in Europe are following various strategies, which consist mainly of developing alternatives to the traditional structures of public support and the music industry. These strategies go beyond the examples presented here. The ones that follow were those referred to most by interview respondents. All, however, emphasize a disconnection – either voluntary or involuntary – between those who make music today and the traditional agents of mediation. With the advent of the digital revolution and the exponential growth of accessibility to web content, relationships between musicians and audiences have changed. In the last two decades, the music industry seemed powerless before its continuous loss of profits. At the same time, it appeared to fail in finding effective strategies against its lack of control over parallel music dissemination (Medbø and Dias 2014). Jazz, as a niche market, has suffered the consequences of such ineptness. The ineffectiveness of old models of monetization has led to an increase of market niches that have little or no access to mass dissemination mechanisms. The role once played by the ‘big three’1 in terms of legitimizing new talent has been replaced by the likes of jury members in television talent shows. The monetization has moved from unit sales to telephone charges. There is still money being made in the music industry, but not as it used to be done. The new model challenges even more the viability of niche markets. However, in response, some jazz musicians in Europe have turned to their creativity and to the potential of online communications in order to connect with their audiences. Also, they appear to be recovering some operating methods that had been abandoned by the music industry, such as revaluing records as collectible objects and direct and personalized communication with the audiences. On the other hand, the optimism that heralded digital technologies and Internet accessibility seems to have been

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somewhat tempered by the limitations inherent to self-made production and the hyper-abundance of cultural outputs that now flood an unregulated market.

DIY in Jazz – (no) mediation Jazz musicians in Europe appear to be increasingly engaging in individual and collective DIY initiatives, that is, not mediated by official national or European institutions, nor by major recording labels. Such initiatives have materialized in emerging transnational ensembles, their subsequent recordings, international touring and collaborative promotion of bands across borders. At the institutional and formal levels, some national and EU organizations declare interest in investing in promoting transnational citizenship and pan-European common cultural identity by supporting jazz initiatives. On the ground, and at the informal level, musicians are developing ways to play live, record, selfpromote and promote their peers. Through a variety of informal cooperative efforts, they aim to overcome, by their own means, the often-difficult access to institutional support. The apparent disconnect between the EU’s official discourse on equal access to its cultural policies and the experiences of actors on the ground have led many musicians to discard the mediation of public institutions and the traditional ‘middleman’ of the music industry. These initiatives seem to rely deeply on a widely held optimism towards the possibilities afforded by digital technologies and Internet communication. Also, such activities seem to demonstrate that the actors involved are confident that their own abilities will enable them to achieve their goals solely through their own human, financial and communication resources. In addition, the void left by institutional mediation appears to amplify the role of volunteer work done by enthusiasts, which results in a less hierarchical and more participatory social system.

DIY ethos: Activism and ‘getting on with it’ DIY ethics have long been present in popular music production and promotion. DIY culture and practices have had particular visibility and potency in academic works related to punk and post-punk music in the UK (McKay 1998; Hesmondhalgh 1999). Hesmondhalgh described post-punk DIY culture as a



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‘democratic system media’, where collective participation and free access were key factors. This ‘democratic system media’ resulted in greater collaboration, in more equitable social reward and status and in wider aesthetic diversity and innovation. McKay, on the other hand, accentuates the reactive nature of DIY punk culture during the Thatcher years: ‘[T]‌here is a tremendous emphasis in DIY Culture laid on actually doing something in the social or political realm’ (4). However, ‘DIY is also an identifiable trait in many other music cultures’ and seems to be a ‘recognisable signifier of ‘bottom-up’ activities of communitybased enterprises’ (Baker and Huber 2013). In jazz – an erstwhile mainstream music genre where challenging social and aesthetic standards has played a decisive role across history (Berliner 1994), extensive examples of DIY initiatives can be found.2 In fact, most answers given by the respondents to this research who have engaged in DIY initiatives – that is to say, all of the musicians – can be aligned with some of the descriptions made by Hesmondhalgh and McKay. For most of them – whether engaging in formal networking, self-promotion, or helping to promote others – DIY initiatives are seen as activist and pluralist ways of participating in their own music production and dissemination, and that of others. But, above all, DIY initiatives are perceived as the most effective way of ‘getting on with it’, in the face of commercial and cultural circles that are increasingly difficult to access.

DIY spheres: Cultural, social and affective Nevertheless, in the process of ‘getting on with it’, several interdependent spheres seem to play a crucial role.3 Especially in DIY music collectives, the characteristics of the interrelationships amongst their members seem to define DIY ethos as a cultural and social phenomenon. These characteristics seem to be grounded in blurring hierarchical barriers, in valuing participation and making the communication between musicians and audiences more direct. DIY music collectives emerge from the inherent desire to produce cultural responses to, and to be part of, an active community. As such, they create strong and effective ties between their members and their communities. Probably the most obvious sphere at play is the cultural sphere. DIY jazz collectives exist essentially to enable musical creation and its dissemination. As a result, their work – even when DIY actors position themselves outside traditional markets – is a contribution to cultural production as a whole. At the same time,

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by facilitating a more direct communication between musicians and audiences, they bring their audiences closer to cultural production. Also, by carrying out this set of actions, all the actors involved – including musicians, volunteers and audiences – experience cultural production as part of their daily experiences. Although the cultural sphere  – cultural production and its experience  – may be perceived to be the primary reason for engaging in DIY activity, the social sphere also appears to have a crucial role. Actors involved in DIY initiatives build a collective identity – a sense of ‘safety in numbers’ and ‘critical mass’ – around the mission of producing and disseminating music. Etienne Wenger’s (1998) notion of ‘community of practice’ captures the processes through which people form social relationships with others who are engaged in a similar endeavour:  ‘Communities of practice are groups of people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour . . . groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly’ (Wenger 2006: np). The social sphere of DIY collectives may be assumed as the set of benefits and pleasures gained from being engaged in that particular social experience (Baker and Huber 2013). Consequently, DIY initiatives not only promote a collective identity around their membership, but they also constitute a social experience of sharing affinities amongst its members and those with whom they interact. By sharing common tastes and a common mission, members of a DIY collective also pool the knowledge and the skills that will allow them to perform their operation more effectively. Therefore, DIY collectives also constitute shared learning experiences (Wenger 1998), which reinforce emotional bonds between members and towards their individual and collective initiatives. In fact, the affective sphere seems to represent a relevant role in DIY collectives. Most of those interviewed expressed their ‘love for the cause’ as the main reason for their ‘selfless work’. Most of their answers supported the notion that their personal fulfilments derived mainly from their understanding that they were working ‘for the sake of music’.

Informal networking Informal networking4 is a concept often associated with knowledge sharing (Pyka 1997, 2000; McDermott and O’Dell 2001; Ponds, Oort and Frenken 2010). In fact, knowledge exchange appears not to be simply one of the characteristics of informal networks, but their main capital. According to Michael Schwartz and



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Christoph Hornych (2010), informal networks deliver multiple opportunities ‘to organize the transfer of information, knowledge and technology between actors’ (3). In the same line of thought, Jewels and others (2003) assume that informal networks are ‘relationships developed between individuals built over time and used as complementary knowledge sharing alternatives to an organization’s formal strategy’ (5–6). On the one hand, informal networks can afford the individual ‘social capital’ (Bourdieu 1983) while, on the other, they can function as ‘strategies of community empowerment’ (Gilchrist 1998).

Self-promoting and promoting others The benefits individuals can achieve through networking are the core of the ‘social capital’ theory, developed by Bourdieu (1983). ‘Social capital’ is the set of resources that stem from the affiliation to a network. Individuals can make use of their social capital to achieve personal objectives (Bourdieu, 1983; Burt, 1992; Portes, 1998). Moreover, that set of resources is assembled in order to ‘facilitate certain actions of actors . . . Like other forms of capital, social capital is productive, making possible the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible’ (Coleman 1988: 98). By building their own informal networks, individual artists can (and aim to) achieve a significant wealth of information and other useful resources for their self-promotion. In my research, all the musicians interviewed had assembled their own informal networks, and they regarded them as their main capital of information and resources that could facilitate various forms of self-promotion:  becoming acquainted with festival promoters, contacting club owners, music critics and venue programmers directly, negotiating affordable (or free) accommodations while touring and so forth. Informal networking seems crucial to the autonomy of jazz musicians. Contextual factors  – such as easier accessibility to communication and mobility within Europe largely facilitated by budget airlines – constitute major contributions to that autonomy. As a result, and because they are ignored by a dwindling industry, most musicians opt for self-promotion. Most respondents highlighted the fact that by taking on a portfolio of roles – composer, performer, agent, promoter and so forth – that autonomy also amplifies their freedom to make aesthetic and career options. Knowledge exchange is clearly a multilateral process. We may characterize informal networking as a form of organization between individuals, which is an alternative to formalized structures. According

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to Alison Gilchrist (1998):  ‘Informal networks allow different identities and interests to inter-connect where more formalized structures might attempt to generate a unified homogeneity. Relationships between individuals carry the lifeblood of organization  – trust, loyalty, mutuality and understanding’ (82). Gilchrist (1998) focuses on the communitarian aspects of informal networking and suggests that, by employing their skills, experience and imagination to support individuals, members of an informal network cultivate a ‘collective commitment’ and develop ‘strategies of community empowerment’ – the surplus value of informal networking is the fact that interpersonal relationships can lead to collective action (75). In most of the interviews for my research, the notion of empathy amongst those finding it difficult to access public support and exposure to new audiences in order to promote their music is omnipresent. Such empathy seems to nourish the desire for informal networking which, in the case of jazz musicians in Europe, extends worldwide.

Informal social capital across Europe Studies show that ‘informal social capital’  – informal networking  – seems to assume varying levels of significance across European countries (Harding 1997; Swan et al. 2000; Tunzelmann 2004; Pichler and Wallace 2007; Dobovšek and Meško 2008; Suvarierol 2009). Florian Pichler and Claire Wallace (2007) have grouped regions in Europe5 according to two criteria:  whether informal networking is ‘complementary’ or a ‘substitute’ to formal networking:  ‘The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands had the highest levels of all forms of social capital. In the South and East Europe informal social capital was more important, but while in the South this was mainly in the form of family support, in the East informal support outside the family was also important’ (423). Responses to my research, however, indicate that amongst jazz musicians  – regardless of country of origin – informal networking relevance levels remained similar across Europe.

Technological revolutions in the recording industry In the second half of the twentieth century, the recording industry represented the most significant part of the music industry (Williamson and Cloonan 2007),



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which also comprised music publishing and live performance business (Hull 2004; Wikström 2009); that is, the recording industry was only a part of the music industry, and records were one of at least three ways of communicating with audiences. During the first four decades following Thomas Edison’s 1877 discovery of the technology to store sound, only a handful of companies controlled patents in the recording industry. This fact had allowed them to concentrate power and to focus strongly on technology, which they believed ‘was more important than the musical content of the records’ (Tschmuck 2006). Investing intensely on technology would prove to be an astute strategy: when phonographic patents expired in 1924, the vulnerability of shellac records and the difficulties associated with transporting them prevented small companies and individual artists from creating large distribution networks (Peterson 1990). The introduction in the late 1940s of vinyl records – more durable and easier to transport – and the success of radio broadcasting in the 1950s offered unprecedented opportunities for small record companies and independent artists; however, recording studio time and reproduction technologies were unaffordable for most independent musicians and labels (Galuszka 2012a). The expansion of independent music scenes in the late 1970s and 1980s was largely due to increased accessibility to music production technologies. Technological progress  – the introduction of cassette tapes and CDs  – and cheaper recording equipment were determinant factors to easier access to professional recording studios (Rowe 1985; Goodwin 2006; Galuszka 2012b). Although self-releasing music was now more affordable, wider distribution was still limited to the major companies (2012). By the mid-nineties, the digital revolution – on both physical (CDs and DVDs) and virtual formats (mp3, mp4, FLAC, etc.), in addition to the developments in music dissemination online and a greater accessibility to home recording software  – led to the decline of the traditional recording industry and to the rise of online music sales and the emergence of netlabels.

Making records in the Digital Age Recording studios have been assumed to be ‘urban spaces’ where ‘intimate relationships with music’ occur and affective bonds are created between human actors (musicians, studio engineers, producers), its consumption (broadcasters, audiences) and non-human actors (recording technologies, acoustic spaces, city

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landscapes) (Gibson 2005). In addition, recording studios have been perceived as particular spaces  – ‘socio-technical spaces’  – where a set of diversified assets (space, time, technology, expertise and emotional labour) are combined (Leyshon 2009). In jazz, specific recording studios and sound engineers have helped defining distinctive sonic representations of record labels, local scenes, musicians and aesthetic movements – the work of engineer Rudy Van Gelder at Englewood Cliffs studios in New Jersey during the 1950s and 1960s largely defined the sound of leading American jazz labels such as Blue Note and Impulse! Records; Jan Erik Kongshaug’s work at Talent Studios (later Rainbow Studios), as well as Manfred Eicher’s conception of sound, and other contributors such as Martin Wieland, James Farber and Stefano Armerio, played a crucial role in setting a sonic representation of an important segment of European jazz and of a kind of music that confronted the boundaries between jazz, folk and classical music (Kahn 2002; Ake 2007; Lake and Griffiths 2007; Williams 2009; Enwezor and Mueller 2013). With the advent of digital recording technology, those ‘earlier meanings’ of recording studios, and the dynamics of musical labour, have been challenged (Gibson 2005).

Accessibility and merging roles The main factor for this paradigm shift in the recording industry has been the accessibility enabled by digital technology. Technologies previously controlled by record labels have gradually become more easily accessible to musicians (Galuszka 2012b). Digital recording technology has become affordable for the common user (musicians, sound recording enthusiasts) and substantially easier to operate. In my research, when asked about their recording processes, approximately a third of the respondents listed a set of skills they consider sufficient to make their own recordings, which were mainly self-taught. Very few were offered introductory classes to digital sound technology throughout their academic training. The other two thirds believe that both sound studios and qualified sound engineers are indispensable, and for that reason dismissing them would compromise the quality of the final product. Conversely, all respondents have stressed how recording production costs have fallen considerably in recent years, which have allowed them – whether through selfmade recordings or using a traditional recording studio structure – to increase their production.



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As previously mentioned, the digital revolution that occurred in the last twenty years was by no means the first to take place in the music industry. Nevertheless, digital technology has conveyed the simplification of means of production, the reduction of equipment size and, perhaps its main added value, the virtual possibility of one individual being able to operate the entire music production process – from writing and performing to recording and disseminating: The appetite for contact between artist and consumer and vice versa appears to be increasing. The establishment industries of the last century and those of the current, in effect, kept both parties apart while relying on another set of industries, print and broadcast, to bridge that gap. Now, the promoter is often also a record label owner and blogging pundit (while also being the bass player in someone else’s band). Roles are merging and the enthusiast-entrepreneur is coming to the fore. Most jazz musicians today manage their own publicity and image, book their own tours, communicate directly with their audiences, and sell their own music, at gigs and from their laptop. (Medbøe and Dias 2014)

The arbitrating and legitimizing roles once performed exclusively by the recording industry have become increasingly deflated. This fact has challenged decisive notions that had been established throughout jazz’s history. Before the digital revolution, the recording industry had the authority to approve which musicians were worthy of being perpetuated on record. To be recorded then was perceived by musicians and audiences as an ascent to a higher level in the jazz canon (Medbøe and Dias 2014). Greater access to digital technology, however, has enabled musicians to become autonomous and, therefore, free from the recording industry’s verdict on who should and should not be recorded. As a result, in addition to having the necessary tools to record and disseminate their own music, musicians also gained the authority to judge whether or not to do so, when and how.

Self-releasing – ‘putting it out there’ above breaking-even In most cases self-releasing comes as a response to the fact that most records released by traditional record labels do not break even, and recording artists rarely earn any royalties from their record labels (Albini 1993; Passman 2000). Estimates show that only between 3 and 10 per cent of records released recoup the money invested in their production, promotion and distribution (Leyshon

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et al. 2005). Although signing a recording contract with major record labels can bring artists some benefits, such as access to mass media, promotional support, retail stores, and the possibility of working in top level recording studios (Galuszka 2012a), self-releasing is perceived as having the potential of allowing a closer communication with fans. In addition, as described by Amy Spencer (2008), whose study focused on several small DIY record labels in the UK and in the United States – and also as verified in my research – for musicians, earning money is not as important as being independent from the mainstream media and music business. However, it should be noted that self-releasing, for most interviewees, was the only way of actually putting a record out. Repeated lack of profit in the recording industry has led traditional labels to invest mainly in musicians already established in the market. Particularly in jazz, already a niche market and where the notion of canon is crucial, investing in new talent unknown to the public is foregone in favour of reissuing historical albums (Cuscuna 2005) – a practice not at all new in jazz, for in the late 1970s some authors criticized severely what they thought was a discrepancy between the profusion of new musicians and the recurrence of reissuing old jazz albums (Kofsky 1977; Evans 1979). During my research, from all of the forty-eight bands participating in 12 Points from 2011 to 2014, none had been released under a traditional record label, only about a third had been released by a small independent label and all of the rest had self-released their albums.

Netlabels – reinventing the musician-audiences’ relationship Netlabels are platforms for online distribution and promotion of music released for free under Creative Commons6 or similar licenses, and are mainly created by aspiring artists who want to self-release their work unmediated by a traditional record company (Galuszka 2012a). In 2004, a study conducted by Björn Hartmann7 listed around 160 active netlabels. In 2012, Patryk Galuszka (2012b) identified 650.8 Interestingly, according to the very few studies conducted in this field, most netlabels are European and represent roughly 70 per cent of total occurrences around the globe (Timmers 2005; Galuszka 2012b). Jazz represents around 20 per cent of netlabel releases, and according to my research only two netlabels release exclusively jazz:  ‘001 Records Netlabel’ from Chile, and ‘Sintoma Records’ from Portugal.9



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While in the 1970s and 1980s self-financed artists had to organize the distribution of tangible products  – CDs, LPs, and cassettes  – with the help of record labels or external distributors, currently, with virtual music formats and online dissemination, that dependency no longer exists: market power and access to new technologies are no longer concentrated in the hands of a few companies (Hesmondhalgh 1997). Netlabels have introduced the notion of free culture in the music industry: free music online exists within the logics of a present-day ‘gift economy’ (Hyde 1979) or ‘sharing economy’ (Lessig 2004). Such notions may contribute to straightening the relationships between musicians and consumers. As Bram Timmers (2005) suggests: ‘Netlabels are a protest sign against the overcommercialized music industry where money talks, and against the decreasing public sphere. They turn the spotlight on important music that was ignored by the commercial four (i.e., four large companies owning 90 per cent of the industry), and put the artists again both in control and in touch with their listeners’ (9). Moreover, netlabels may not only challenge the concept of ‘listeners’ by ‘transforming consumers into users’ (Timmers 2005: 14); they also challenge the ways in which culture production and consumption are perceived. Regarding this matter, Yochai Benkler (2003) has introduced the notion of ‘networked information economy’ – ‘an economy of information, knowledge, and culture that flow through society over a ubiquitous, decentralized network’ (1246). According to Benkler, this new kind of economy enables nonmarket models of production to increase their presence alongside the more traditional models and diversify ways of organizing production rather than replacing one with the other (1247). Within the logic of this new model, the recipient becomes part of the production process. Already in 1997, Pierre Levy predicted an emergency of ‘knowledge communities’ where, ‘The distinctions between authors and readers, producers and spectators, creators and interpretations will blend to form a reading-writing continuum, which will extend from the machine and network designers to the ultimate recipient, each helping to sustain the activities of the others.’ (121) Drawing on Levi’s model, Henry Jenkins (2002) proposes the notion of ‘participatory culture’, which consists of the intersection of three trends:  new tools and technologies (enabling consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate media content), DIY media production (Do It Yourself: bottom-up grassroots production) and economic trends favouring the horizontally integrated media conglomerates allowing images and ideas to flow across multiple media channels. The way music is produced, disseminated and

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consumed seems to be dramatically changing. The importance once attributed to music possession seems to have been increasingly replaced by the context in which music is experienced and accessed (Porter 2010). Netlabels enhance that paradigm shift:  with no commercial transaction, musicians and listeners share the music; with the possibility, in some cases, of contributing financially through crowd funding services or donation, audiences participate in the production process; by sharing or posting download links with others, fans help disseminating the music; and by making part of the different stages of the whole process, audiences experience being part of a music movement or scene. At the same time, netlabels can function as ‘community catalysts’, by providing musicians a platform for presentation both online and live, and by connecting protagonists and supporting network building (Michels 2009).

Re-packaging – re-valuing records as tangible objects In the age of digital music, tangible artefacts associated with music reproduction and consumption began assuming a new cultural and emotional importance for consumers (McCourt 2005; Hayes 2006; Styvén 2007; Magaudda 2011; Bartmanski 2013). Overwhelmed by the virtualization of music contents, audiences felt the need to rekindle their physical relationship with musical objects  – from vinyl records, cassette tapes and analogue sound systems to record sleeves, original album liner notes or concert tickets signed by the artists. In fact, live performances continue to give musicians the most direct point of sale and contact with their audiences: Many performers choose to man the post-gig CD and merchandise stall personally, giving their fans the opportunity to interact in the reassuring knowledge that merchandise purchased has been touched by the hand of the artist. With the general decline in recorded music sales, many artists have adapted by offering a variety of extra-musical merchandise to monetise their touring operations, ranging from the t-shirt, poster, to personalised trinketry. The limited edition, often hand-numbered, album is also popular with fans. It bestows a sense of uniqueness and rarity on product that is most often otherwise, in its simplest terms, nothing more than a copy of a master recording made up of zeros and ones. Homemade covers, from hand drawn, to hand stitched also serve to entice the consumer alongside individualised inserts and other forms of accompanying art and print-work. (Medbøe and Dias 2014)



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Jazz fans, most of them inherently record collectors, seem to have rekindled the demand for vinyl releases (Shuker 2004; Giddins 2004). And, to some extent, the recording industry has been increasingly receptive to that demand. Tony Whyton (2008) suggests that the abundant reissuing of ‘classic’ jazz recordings, bonus tracks and master editions helps feeding the ‘consumer desire for the ‘authentic’ experience’ (158). Limited editions, in particular, seek to offer fans the added value of rarity. Recent examples range from more conventional releases, such as Swedish Mats Aleklint Quartet’s homonymous LP (Moserobie 2013),10 Norwegian band Atomic There’s a Hole in the Mountain (Jazzland 2013)11 and Portuguese Clean Feed label vinyl release of Sao Paulo/Chicago Underground with Pharoah Sanders, Pharoah and The Underground – Primitive Jupiter (Clean Feed 2014),12 to more unconventional releases, such as Mats Gustafsson and Paal Nilssen’s I Love it When You Snore seven-inch vinyl (Weird Forest 2014),13 the 180-gram vinyl pressings of Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden’s Last Dance (ECM 2014)14 and Mats Gustafsson and Thurson Moore’s Vi Ar Alla Guds Slavar (OTOroku 2012),15 or the unit numbered rerelease box sets of Columbia and Mosaic Records.

App-albums – breaking the tenets of jazz reception In 2013, Dutch jazz trio Tin Man and the Telephone (TMATT) released their third album and what they claim to be ‘the world’s very first jazz app album’:16 ‘Appjenou?!’ It is basically a set of five tracks recorded by the trio, which can be manipulated by the users. The app allows users to turn different instruments on and off, adjust separate volumes, and even choose and combine different solo takes – from a total of three pre-recorded per instrument/per track. In addition, the app can also be used during live performances. Audience members are encouraged to download the app, keep their cell phones on during shows and interact with each other and with the musicians. A  ‘remote control function’ allows users to chat with each other during performances, while their virtual conversations are being projected on a screen behind the band who, at the same time, improvises according to the different moods and contents of those conversations. The app features other options, which are also projected on screen during shows, such as throwing virtual tomatoes or bras at the band according to the likes for what is being played at the moment, choosing and isolating one of the band members to take a solo, and selecting one of the following five options: ‘theme’, ‘piano solo’, ‘bass solo’, ‘drum solo’ or ‘please stop! I hate jazz’.

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Although the trio was already known for exploring multimedia features in their concerts, the ‘Appjenou?!’ app album reaches beyond that and challenges the tenets of jazz reception, both on record and live. Not only does it allow the public to interact and shape the music that is being played – thus becoming an active part of the performance and of the creative musical process – it breaks traditional behavioural codes at a jazz concert, especially when it takes place at a formal or semi-formal venue. TMATT’s music could be defined as a crossover between mainstream jazz and free improvisation, with plenty of humorous elements. Technology does not overlap the musical content: they are both part of the same musical product that seems to have been designed to communicate more effectively with the audience. As such, TMATT use many of the strategies previously listed in this chapter: by selling music and merchandise online and in concerts, by using an aggressive and immediate communication strategy with audiences through their website and live, by self-releasing their records (Roem Records), and, perhaps most importantly, by creating contexts in which their music is experienced by listeners, users and spectators.

Backlashes – trying to break through the noise The optimism generated by the unprecedented accessibility of digital technologies frequently collides with the difficulties most musicians find in disseminating their music. As a result of the digital revolution, the traditional structure of the music industry has changed, been reduced drastically or, in some cases, has become obsolete and further unapproachable for those musicians who crave access to it. At a point where the music industry still seems to be trying to understand how to ride the digital-revolution wave or, in some cases, stubbornly trying to fit the old operating models into a new era of musical reception (Kusek and Leonhard 2005), many musicians see self-made production as the only way to continue producing records (Medbøe and Dias 2014). Despite their efforts to play the various roles of the complex structure of traditional labels, many musicians feel they are not qualified to perform tasks which they were never trained for. And, although they occasionally succeed in negotiating partnerships with communication professionals  – photographers, filmmakers, web designers and so forth – they feel they are competing at a distinct disadvantage both against the industry and the overabundance of Internet content. For listeners, the Internet has become a ‘site of noise and chaos’ (Beer



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2005). For aspiring musicians, the ‘noise of creative ambitions’ (Kretschmer 2005) that thrives through the Internet has posed a central paradox: though it has become easier to record, it is increasingly harder to become noticed. Patrick Burkart and Tom McCourt (2003) use the allegoric term ‘Celestial Jukebox’17 – ‘the various systems whereby any text, recording, or audio-visual artefact can be made available instantaneously . . . to Internet appliances or home computers’ (1)  – in order to address the mid-nineties’ optimism towards the seemingly endless possibilities that online music dissemination would provide Internet users. To some extent, the ‘utopian dream’ of actually accessing anything online has been largely realized (Sykes 2009: 2). The much-debated Napster18 case in the mid-nineties has created an unprecedented revolution in the recording industry. As a result of the democratization (or anarchization) of online music access, the ‘Big Four’19 suddenly saw their monopoly at risk. Moreover, niche genres became equally accessible on the same p2p20 music sharing platforms and theoretically with the same level of exposure. However, and copyright infringement issues aside,21 p2p music sharing favours track-to-track downloads, where users create their own pigeonholing system, categorizing those tracks almost arbitrarily and according to their musical conception – Stan Getz’s 1962 rendition of Desafinado22 could certainly fall under such diametric categories as ‘bossa nova’, ‘classic jazz’, ‘west coast jazz’, ‘fusion music’, ‘instrumental’ or even ‘soft music’. On the other hand, through track-totrack download, p2p music sharing may challenge the jazz canon by obliterating, in many cases, the notion of music album. As Tom Sykes (2009) debates: The Celestial Jukebox prospect for small jazz labels and individual musicians and bands is that there is more scope for niche marketing, but the lack of physical packaging and the individual track nature of online music may threaten the future of the album. If this leads to the return of single tracks marketed in the way 78s were, perhaps we will witness the history of recorded jazz coming, in a way, full circle. (5)

However that might seem to us as an interesting perspective, jazz musicians in the main continue to conceive their recordings within the model of the album. In addition, not only the jazz recording industry continues to nurture this single model of communication with the consumers, but it appears to reaffirm the perpetuation of the same mediation formats between musicians and audiences, regardless of the radical changes that have taken place in the sector in recent years.

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Jazz recording industry lagging behind Many authors have discussed the fact that the jazz recording industry has been increasingly obtaining its profits from back-catalogue re-releases and endowing ever-fewer new recordings (Giddins 2004; Cuscuna 2005; Nicholson 2005; Frith 2007; Whyton 2008). In addition, the recording industry is often criticized for not being able or willing to cope with technological upgrading:  ‘Music is the only branch of the entertainment world to embrace progressively inferior technologies. Movie theatres have upgraded their experience. Video games have achieved unprecedented standards of visual quality . . . No one wants to watch TV shows on a 1964 console. But music devices sound worse than they did a half-century ago’ (Gioia 2014b), and ‘15 years after Napster, we are still in the Dark Ages of online music’ (Gioia 2014a). Some of the criticism around the idea that the recording industry is lagging behind becomes more acute when done specifically to the jazz recording industry. Shielded under the notion of serving a niche market, many traditional jazz labels continue to operate under the same models as during the 1980s and 1990s. Interestingly enough, part of that criticism falls on the same obsolete models. The demand for jazz super-stars – which were generated by the recording industry – seems to be one of the most publicized complaints: Jazz as a business is in deep trouble, despite steady sales of archival classics and various commercial uses of those same beloved records, often rendered anonymous in TV ads. How could it be otherwise? Jazz musicians have virtually no access to the machinery of capitalism, and multinationals have no patience with leisure pursuits that supply insignificant profits . . . I  am not convinced that the issue of commercial marginality cannot be effectively addressed and alleviated. But it will take a dot.com billionaire jazz lover. Such an individual could work wonders by creating a national jazz radio network or cable station; or by organizing an agency to plan and produce jazz tours, reviving the campus circuit and the kind of excitement that attended Jazz at the Philharmonic; or by erecting a national jazz temple equal to those that exist for country music and rock and roll. Barring that, a new Miles or Monk or Rollins could come along and attract as much excitement as the originals. Anything could happen. In lieu of pipe dreams, however, jazz will survive as a permanent alternative music, like the 19th-century symphonic repertory, sustaining its audience through word of mouth and a constant replenishing of the talent pool. (Giddins 2004: 603–4)



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However, other views consider the paradigm shift in the jazz industry as part of the progress that has been made in recent years. During my research, actors on the ground seemed more interested in being part of the paradigm shift than in criticizing the fact that it is happening, a view very much in line with Michael Cuscuna’s (2005) prognosis: ‘Some artists will find homes at established record labels, large and small. And if the fit is right, both parties will benefit. But I believe more new artists will create their own streams of marketing and delivering music’ (70).

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12 Points Casa da Música, Porto, February 17, 2012. The European financial crisis has reached its peak. Peripheral countries such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland struggle with a very challenging economic situation. A  group of international institutions, commonly known by Troika,1 intervene in those EU Member States which stand to be affected. In order to consolidate their debts, these countries adopt economic austerity policies outlined by Troika, that affect all sectors of society, including massive cuts in the cultural sectors. In a crowded three hundred seater room, Gerry Godley, Irish jazz promoter and director of 12 Points, welcomes the audience for the second night of concerts. We have twelve artists from twelve European countries. And we thought that we could try to get the Portuguese artists and put them on the same night as the Irish artists and then maybe we could get some Greek artists and maybe some Icelandic artists [audience laughs] and we could send a big message to Frankfurt and Washington and Brussels that the people in these countries still know how to have a good time [audience cheers loudly]. (Gerry Godley, personal communication [henceforth PC], Porto, 17 February 2012)

As mentioned earlier, this is not an ethnography of 12 Points as festival. Instead, 12 Points was taken as fieldwork where debates and networking take place. It was, indeed, the perfect setting to observe and interact with musicians, promoters, journalists and researchers, gathered in the same place during the same short period of time, reflecting and debating jazz in Europe. In that sense, 12 Points illustrates a new European jazz festival template, where live music is central, but where collaborative critical thinking is developed and assumed as fundamental. The festival offers twelve performances by young European artists, solo musicians and bands for four consecutive nights. Twelve Points operates as a showcase for young European jazz talents. Around three hundred young musicians from most

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parts of Europe apply to it every year. Twelve are chosen. Each year, a number of relevant jazz actors, or delegates, from across Europe are summoned: promoters, leaders of national and local jazz associations, representatives of national and international jazz networks, venues and festival programmers and journalists. During the four days of the festival, they are invited to debate and address some of their concerns. Since 2010, the festival has been itinerant, alternating between Dublin and other European cities: Stavanger, Norway, in 2010; Porto, Portugal, in 2012; Umea, Sweden, in 2014; San Sebastian, Spain, in 2016. In 2014, Kenneth Killeen, a former musician and jazz club owner who had been part of the 12 Points team since its inception as production manager, replaced Gerry Godley who, in turn, was appointed principal of Leeds College of Music.

The pan-European ideal On 1 May 2004, several initiatives were taking place across Europe in order to celebrate the implementation of the 2003 Treaty of Accession. The European Union welcomed ten new member states that day:  Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. In Dublin, European leaders met at the Irish Presidential Palace, the Áras an Uachtaráin, for a flagraising ceremony. In the evening, the programme included fireworks and, in Bray, a concert by Polish jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stańko at the Bray Jazz Festival. Gerry Godley was part of the Bray festival’s production team and, three years later, he would establish the 12 Points European Jazz Festival. Godley describes the early stages of this process. As a European jazz promoter, he was concerned with detaching 12 Points from American jazz predominance in European jazz festivals; as an Irish jazz promoter, he was concerned with endorsing young Irish artists who did not see many opportunities to perform at an international level. This last concern seems to have triggered a wider ambition. According to Godley, 12 Points was created as a pan-European jazz festival from the start but, most importantly, it began as an exercise in identifying young jazz artists, not only those from European countries with a strong jazz scene, but also, and in equal terms, those from peripheral European countries with less opportunity to play abroad. Twelve Points seems to have resulted from the will to disrupt the establishment within jazz festivals across Europe. At a time when Dublin no longer had a jazz festival, 12 Points seems to have been created as one that would not conform to the same model of others before it or in other parts of



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Europe. The need to search for ‘what is out there’ and scrutinize who were the new European jazz actors seems to have been crucial: In 2004, we had the Accession Treaty of the ten new member States to the European Union and I  was programming another festival. At this festival we decided to programme as many artists as we could from the new accession States, like Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus, etc, etc. And it was a very interesting exercise to identify artists, because once you step outside of the established centres of a sort of jazz business . . . and they’re very strong countries, like France and Germany, the UK, the Scandinavian countries, the central European countries . . . once you step outside of that zone, it’s not so straight forward to find out what’s happening on the peripheral countries. A few hours after the Treaty was signed into law, Tomasz Stańko was playing. He was like the first European musician to benefit from this new dispensation. So it was a really interesting exercise. And we realised that it was a lot more, that it was a very rich kind of story, that there was a lot more to discover there. We had been doing this sort of traditional big jazz festival, with big American artists and big European artists and big projects and a lot of sleepless nights. And we were experiencing some frustration around that, because we realised that financially that model was putting a big strain in the organization. We were doing this festival in the summertime, in July, and thinking this would be the best time to do it, when actually we’d be competing with the major European festivals with huge budgets, so it was actually not so good. And also on a personal and aesthetic level, I was starting to become a bit disillusioned with that whole model and spending really, really a big amount of money, working hard to raise money that I  would then handle to an agent in Boston for an American artist, who, in some cases, had done his best work forty years ago. And I couldn’t really see the developmental opportunity for young Irish artists. So I started really thinking about what could work to promote young Irish artists, and give them a good platform. And, of course, once you start thinking about that, what you can see is that if you could come up with a model that works for one peripheral European country like Ireland, then the same model will work for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Portugal, etc. So, from that we had the genesis of an idea. (Interview, Porto, 7 December 2011)

The pan-European notion seems to have been present from the start, including the choice for the festival’s name, which was inspired by the spirit of the European Song Contest. The title came from the Eurovision Song Contest. You know, when people say ‘Twelve points, douze points, dodici punti . . .’, because the actual ambition of the European Song Contest is a very positive one. The idea that Europeans would

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Jazz in Europe come together to this, for the music . . . it’s just that the music is shit [laughs], but the sentiment is a very good one. So we wanted to take a little bit of that sentiment. And also 12 points in this case would mean twelve beacons of creativity from different points of the European music. (ibid.)

Other factors seem to have contributed to that same pan-European concept:  the small scale of the festival, which can provide greater interaction between participants and greater exposure for each band; the notion of equal opportunity for young European musicians, regardless of their countries of origin; and the notion of diversity, by requiring that the festival will present participants from different countries: ‘[I]‌n brief, is a showcase festival for young European jazz ensembles, mid-twenties to their early thirties, that’s the cohort of artists we’re interested in. It’s once a year. It’s pan-European. It’s very small, only ever twelve bands, but it must be twelve bands from twelve different European countries’ (ibid.). Mostly, the concern with musicians coming from European countries that have fewer resources to promote their artists, or with no platforms that could allow them to access the international context, appears to underline the festival’s pan-European integrationist orientation. The very process of selecting the applicants, musicians and bands, seems to favour positive discrimination, and diversity above quality. Once that we take the fact that we have an open call and they have to be between their mid-twenties to their early thirties, they have to be a working group or if they’re a solo performer they have to have a body of solo work. And then we have to deal with everything that other festival does, like not end up with twelve piano trios, right? So the Festival model creates a lot of filters before we end up with the final twelve. It’s really hard to end up with a strong twelve. And they’re not always strong. And sometimes we’re bringing people because we think the experience is going to be good for their local scene. Because we’re looking for artists who as yet have no wider registration on the European scene, who might have some national awareness, but not on the international scene . . . these are artists who are not plugged into the agencies . . . so we have made a virtue of relying upon what comes into us, and the way in which people present their material. (ibid.)

The application process aims, above all, to ‘tell an honest story’, that is, to serve as showcase for the existing variety of jazz scenes across Europe. For this, and in addition, the festival draws reporters’ and former participants’ suggestions in order to access musicians with less exposure. The restraint to the motto ‘twelve



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bands from twelve different countries’ seems to ensure the festival, though mandatorily, has a sense of equal opportunities for young European musicians. We’re constantly trying to build this kind of brain trust of people who can feed in intelligence to tell us about who’s out there. We’re trying to tell an honest story every year about who’s out there. We’re not necessarily looking for the twelve best young bands in Europe, because if we were looking for the best twelve young bands, then we might end up with six bands from Norway, three bands from the UK, four from France, one from Portugal. We are constrained by this model we’ve created; we have to have twelve bands from twelve different countries. (ibid.)

Festival dynamics Data collection not only serves the selection process, but on its website the festival displays information on its participants over the years. This way the festival positions itself as an institution that provides relevant data on the emerging generation of jazz musicians in Europe. We have an open call for artists, and the Festival, in a way, is becoming an annual audit of what’s happening among emerging artists on the European scene. You can see the new 12 Points website, where we’re putting a lot of work into building a database around those artists, because we think that the Festival is becoming an interesting repository of information about who the young practitioners are. (ibid.)

In addition to its promotional and integrationist roles, the festival was designed for a number of purposes that, together, aim to offer jazz actors in Europe an exposure platform, but also a debate forum. The fact that each year the festival calls high-profile European jazz promoters for debate sessions seems to carry two important impact factors: on the one hand, the festival positions itself above others as one of the most important European debate forums for cultural policies on jazz made in Europe; on the other, the festival is not limited to bilateral dialogue with the institutions that welcome it, but it also creates a multilateral platform for dialogue among the various actors, including the media and the artists themselves. Conversations often tend to be dominated by aesthetic disagreement, taxonomy, style wars and genre wars. It’s a fascinating area of discussion, but it is also very subjective. And, in a way, that’s what defines a contemporary art form. Any

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Jazz in Europe contemporary art form will always elude some easy definition. Even though that conversation often gets agitated and divisive, as you can see often in the US, perhaps we should start to accept that that conversation is simply part of the hinterland of the art form. And if people want to talk about it, it’s fine, but it’s more like a recreational conversation, rather than a constructive conversation. So, the purpose of the agenda here is to talk about anything else besides the aesthetic framework, and to talk about the ecology in which the art form finds itself. (Gerry Godley, interview, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

Addressing concerns and negotiating meanings The issues that were debated in the festival extend to a wide variety of areas in which jazz in Europe operates:  from education, audiences, investment in cultural infrastructures, the diversity of cultural policies between the various member states of the EU, to the role of musicians, promoters and the media. According to Gerry Godley, the starting point, not only for the debates that have taken place throughout the various editions of the festival, but also for the origin of the festival itself, was to question the very concept of ‘European jazz’. At this instant, when we started, I  was also really interested in interrogating this notion of ‘European jazz’, because there’s a lot of rhetoric around that idea. I wanted to investigate that a little bit and see what it might be. We really wanted to explore what people meant by this idea of a European sound hinted against an American sound, because at that time, you know, Stuart Nicholson’s book had come out and there was a lot of this sense of a kind of a binary conflict there. So we wanted to explore a little bit what that means, and we have been exploring it. And, of course, we have some realizations about that as well, about what do we mean by European jazz. (Interview, Porto, 7 December 2011)

Subsequently, during these debates, when addressing their most persistent concerns, the participants are in fact negotiating the meanings of the concepts behind those issues. The festival was born not only out of the need to promote larger exposure to the emerging generation of jazz actors in Europe and to foster dialogue among them, it was also created as a way to question concepts, debating and negotiating them by putting them into practice. Obviously, all the issues that were addressed are intertwined. The following listing and categorization were made with the purpose of isolating each issue in order to support the analysis and interpretation process.



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Jazz consumption in Europe Jazz consumption in Europe was one the most debated subjects. Considerations around who consumes jazz and how it is consumed led to other topics, such as cultural policies, the music industry, the change in consumer habits and the way jazz education has been conducted. The fact that it was addressed primarily by the promoters may reveal a greater concern on their part. However, in interviews with the musicians, the way in which different audiences consume jazz was also explored. From their experience, Isabel Sörling and Jonathan Albrektsson, two Swedish musicians participating in the Dublin edition, have established fundamental differences between Swedish and French audiences. As young artists, they have been investing in self-promotion as a way to get exposure and attract audiences. For them, however, the fact that Swedish cultural policies favour its citizens’ free access to jazz concerts, as opposed to the French, is discouraging audiences to attend concerts with a charge for admission. According to both, independent artists are, therefore, deprived of recouping their investment and achieving wider publicity. I did an Erasmus year in France, so having those two, Sweden and France, to compare with, I can say that those two countries are very different. In Sweden citizens don’t want to pay for music anymore. Because we made the mistake to think that if people don’t come for jazz, if we’ll make free entrance then the people will come. So we created this new generation who thinks that if the music is for free it’s OK, but if it’s 10€ I  won’t come. In France, if you go to a jazz club it’s 22€ or 25€ and people pay that because it’s the standard. (Isabel Sörling, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I think that in Sweden it’s a bit of a tradition, because we have a very developed social welfare . . . like with medication and all that stuff. And because of that, the individual feels that the society takes care of him. I don’t need to do anything, and you don’t have to pay to go to the doctor, so I think they became a little bit spoiled. So they don’t want to pay to go to a concert, because they know the State is providing them money, so it lets you see it for free. (Jonathan Albrektsson, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

The pecuniary element in this case seems to be the visible side of a wider dimension:  the different kinds of relationships that audiences in Europe have established with culture and with jazz in particular. Cultural policies of each

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country have a substantial role on how audiences perceive and consume culture, and therefore on how they consume jazz. Accordingly, it can be assumed that particular cultural policies inform particular cultural habits, and that different policies shape different kinds of relationships between European audiences and jazz.

Jazz as a new cultural experience According to some of the promoters, the way people consume jazz has undergone profound changes over recent years. Like other cultural products, jazz has been increasingly perceived by audiences as part of a larger system of their cultural and life experiences. It was also discussed how audiences gradually seek, above all, new experiences, rather than feeding their devotion to niche cultural products. During the 2012 edition, Gerry Godley gave his impressions on how the festival was received in Porto. According to him, although holding a jazz festival with young unknown artists is quite a risky enterprise, he felt that 12 Points was openly welcomed by the audiences in Porto as part of the way in which they relate to the city’s cultural life, with Casa da Música being assumed as the symbolic materialization of the music’s presence in the city. In addition, Gerry elaborated on how he thinks jazz should cope with the changes in the audiences’ expectations. In his view, attending a concert passively should be gradually replaced by promoters offering jazz concerts as part of an immersive cultural experience. It’s been a different experience being here in Porto than it has been, for example, Norway. Actually I think the audiences here have been really open to what we’ve been doing. And I  must put that down to this building and this institution. Because this place obviously means an awful lot in the lives of the citizens of Porto, so if something is happening here, they approach it in a very open way. Because I  think we’re being pretty honest about the music here. We’re giving them plenty of red meat. There’s nothing easy about what we’re giving them. One of the things we’ve been doing is trying to offer the music in a slightly different way, in a way that enables more participation or engagement with the audience, because I think that the era of people – especially for younger people – paying their money and kind of coming in and putting their coat over the back of the chair, and sitting there kind of passively for an hour or two to listen to some music, I’m not so sure that that’s where the future is. So we’ve been trying to



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add more elements, whether it’s post-show discussions or rather it’s another element in the bar when it finishes, or a film, or doing some interesting in the food paying at the intermission or something . . . just different ways to make it more kind of an immersive experience for people. Because I  think that that’s the era that we live in now, where increasingly we’re conditioned to think that our cultural experiences will be more immersive, they will be more personally involving. That’s a challenge, I guess, for the music in terms of how it responds to it. (Gerry Godley, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

In Dublin, 2013, Lennart Stromback2 introduced the topic of social networks as tools for music promotion. He expressed his thoughts on how he thinks that the fact that a new generation of promoters, more than the musicians, are making use of social networks will bring a positive outcome in reaching new audiences and promoting jazz festivals as part of the people’s daily life cultural experience. On the same panel, both Nadin Deventer3 and Maati Rehor4 elaborated on how they feel jazz concerts should be part of a transverse music experience for audiences. Drawing from her experience, Nadin Deventer explained how she has been working to present jazz in other genre’s festivals, and expressed how the categorization between high and low culture has become, to her view, obsolete. Maati Rehor addressed the need to attend to the audiences’ interests. As executive director for the Finnish Jazz Federation, she expressed her association’s concern with creating a close consultation and dialogue with audiences, as part of an undergoing restructuring process. It’s hard to say if jazz musicians are trying to get into where the big audiences are, because it depends on the clubs, their approach to this new family. If they are doing the same thing as they used to do, nothing is going to happen. But I think the new generation of presenters, lots of festivals, they are changing . . . and they use lots of social media and all facilities . . . and then you will see a new audience coming. (Lennart Stromback, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I’m not a festival director, I work around the venue. I try to find ways how to support emerging artists. So I need big festivals and I need big venues. So I’m constantly thinking in terms of artistic operation and projects and trying to create ideas and trying to find ways to raise the attention of the public and the media. Sometimes it’s also a matter of generation, because I’m not thinking in terms of sectors anymore. I’m working for opera festivals and pop festivals. And if possible I try to create a win-win situation. I try to think of how to promote my projects in an opera festival, or in a pop festival. And my point is: do we as a jazz community should be like an island in between? In Germany there’s the

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Jazz in Europe high culture and the low culture, and jazz is something in between, and I hate it. I think we need to change our way of thinking. (Nadin Deventer, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012) The history of the Finnish Jazz Organisation goes back to the nineteen sixties, so a lot has happened and I  think we are facing a bigger change now, due to finances, but also due to the way people consume culture, and how this culture of digging something enthusiastically has perhaps . . . somehow, we have passed that . . . our main goal is to promote jazz and somehow promote it in every way, which means, not only helping the musicians, helping them make well in their careers and creating working opportunities for them, but also to hear and support audiences that could be interested, that are potential and already exist. I think that we are under a restructuring process at the moment and there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered. (Maati Rehor, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

European jazz promoters feel the need to rethink the relationship between those who make music, or enable it to happen, and audiences. Realising how jazz can be part of the audiences’ cultural consumption seems to constitute a crucial factor in order to develop new strategies.

Audience demographics in Europe The audiences’ morphology, however, seems to differ from country to country. If, on the one hand, the impression that jazz audiences are ageing considerably does not apply to all of Europe, on the other, across countries and age ranges, the very perception of what jazz is seems to find different meanings. From his experience as a jazz tour manager across several European countries, Bo Grønningsæter described the variety of age groups, by comparing Norwegian audiences, his country of origin, with the French:  ‘I think there are big differences in most places in Europe between the jazz audiences. For instance, I’ve been to some small jazz festivals in France, it’s mainly students in their twenties and early thirties. So it’s very difficult to put this out in a general perspective, because it varies from country to country’ (PC, Porto, 17 February 2012). Lars Winter5 and Gerry Godley have stressed the idea that audiences are ageing substantially in Denmark and Ireland, respectively. Before a predominantly ageing jazz audience and the difficulties in retaining new ones, they both feel that a new way to understand those potential new audiences needs



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to be undertaken, especially by communicating in a way in which jazz would be more appealing to them. I think that one of the problems is that the old audience that is – sorry – dying. [laughs] They were faithful to jazz and the new audience that we want to attract, they’re not going to be faithful. So we need to attract maybe five times as much audience to fill up the clubs, because if they have a bad experience with two of them, maybe it will take a year for them to come back. So that’s a big challenge. And it’s a good challenge, I think, because it forces us to look at ourselves from another angle. How are we communicating? How welcoming is jazz? (Lars Winter, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) In Ireland, where we’re working, the older cohort of the audience has pretty much abandoned us. It feels like starting all over again. It’s kind of ground zero. We’re not necessarily down by that, or pessimistic about that, quite the opposite, we’re feeling very confident about the work we’re doing in trying to engage with audiences. Because I think that there’s no doubt that the audiences are changing, the profile and the psychology of audiences is changing, and of course they’re different everywhere you go. (Gerry Godley, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

Correspondently, both Lennart Stromback and Gerry Godley have introduced the idea that behavioural codes are changing among new audiences. The director of the Umeå Jazz Festival has witnessed significant changes in the way jazz concerts are perceived by younger audiences over his years as head of the festival:  ‘I’ve been promoting the Umeå Festival for twenty years, and the music has changed over the time and the audiences. . . . Younger generations are coming and they have different perspectives of what jazz is’ (PC, Porto, 17 February 2012). Godley expressed his optimism towards the fact that some etiquettes for attending a jazz concert are still unknown to some segments of the audiences, which indirectly indicates that there are in fact newcomers at jazz events: One thing that is really interesting, and it’s been happening for a long time, is that the etiquette thing is growing, the etiquette around when to clap or not to clap at a jazz gig, for instance. And for me it’s a positive sign, because it means there’s a new audience coming who is not so familiar with the attitude and the ritual of clapping in the end. (PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

As in the live-music sector, consumer habits in the recorded music sector are undergoing disruptive changes. A parallel with classical music consumption

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was drawn: consumers seem to have lost the habit of buying records on a regular basis. However, new ways of consumption have become increasingly popular. Vinyl records have regained market value, and in this regard Gerry Godley invoked an example from European jazz: Actually, in some areas, record sales are improving. Ermanno Basso, he just made a record with Enrico Pieranunzi, and made a little experimental vinyl release and he thought ‘well, I’ll make a thousand’, and actually he sold a thousand pretty quickly, and now he’s on to his second thousand. So, you can’t actually say record sales are declining full stop, but the historical business model of selling records is finished. And then we face all of these other kind of profound questions around ageing audience demographics, what Alex Ross calls ‘the fatal X’, ‘the failure of the X generation’. He wrote this stuff about classical music in the US. What has happened to the X generation? Say for example they’re in their fifties, why they’re not buying into classical music the same way the previous generations did? (Interview, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

The acknowledgment of vast changes in audience behaviours and jazz consumption habits seems to bring consensus among the various jazz actors. Not quite as consensual, however, seems to be the discussion on what is the role of each of those jazz actors in the relationship with audiences. Although the promotional sector is widely regarded as one that has a more active role in the development of communication strategies with audiences, other sectors such as education and the media are considered to be key elements to that process.

The role of the media European jazz journalism seems to create some division among jazz actors regarding the way it communicates with its consumers. For Lars Winter, specialized jazz magazines are often unappealing to new readers because of making use of an excessive emic approach, unattainable to the potential jazz consumer. I read an article the other day, with an interview with a Danish pianist called Henrik Gunde, he just won a prize. It was a Danish jazz magazine, Jazz Special, and at one point in the interview the journalist asks him ‘So are you a musician or a jazz musician?’ And that has just made me put down the magazine. I didn’t want to read the rest, because I just feel that the more established part of the jazz



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media is really not helping to attract new audiences. If I didn’t know anything about jazz, and I would pick up Jazz Special, I have to say I wouldn’t get through this table of contents, which is not very welcoming at all. (Lars Winter, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

On the other hand, journalist Marcus O’Dair6 emphasized the differences between jazz and rock musicians. According to him, jazz musicians confine their discourse to the music, which, to his view, may sometimes repel potential jazz fans:  ‘When journalists interview jazz musicians they tend to talk about music, and when they interview rock musicians, they tend to talk about their lives’ (Marcus O’Dair, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012). The view on how engaging partnerships between promoters and the media can be largely positive for strengthening jazz scenes at both local and international levels is shared by all. Reiner Michalke7 explained how radio coverage of jazz festivals in Germany has enabled good exposure to both international musicians and the local jazz scene: ‘Another good thing is that there is a very good coverage of the festivals done by the radio stations. Lots of festivals have live transmission of concerts on the radio, and there are interviews, and special programmes. And there’s a concern with the local jazz scenes’ (PC, Dublin, 16 February 2013). Marcus O’Dair expressed his view on how Norwegian jazz has gained worldwide recognition from the investment made in creating a close relationship with the international media: ‘Because their funding is good, to be honest – and now I’m talking in particular about Norway – they are very good at getting journalists over there, and they are very good at promoting their music overseas, so people know about their scene, and they punch well above their weight for such a small country’ (Interview, Porto, 18 February 2012). The West Norway Jazz Association’s program for young journalists was given by Nina Torske as an example of that close collaboration: ‘We have to think new, and with the social media thing. The Bergen jazz club and all clubs, I suppose, in Norway are really working hard to meet that. And really most things that happen, happen in the social media. And we also have this new project, trying to get new journalists, young journalists to write about jazz’ (PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013). Similarly, according to Gerry Godley, 12 Points’ data on young musicians is assembled with recommendations made by journalists across Europe: ‘We make our open call, but we also ask journalists for recommendations, because the journalists are the people who travel all the time and go to every festival for free [laughs], so they’re good people to ask’ (Interview, Porto, 7 December 2011).

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The musician–audience relationship Undoubtedly regarded as a core issue, the relationship between artists and audiences during performances was one of the most widely covered subjects. Most understand that it is necessary to break with a specific performative tradition in jazz which, in the view of many, is passive and inexpressive. The way in which most musicians perform on stage is regarded by many as what is most responsible for the difficulties associated with attracting new audiences. The crucial role that musicians have in understanding audiences as an initial step in the process of changing performative habits and finding others that would suit the audiences’ expectations was highlighted by several promoters, such as Gerry Godley, Bo Grønningsæter and Lennart Stromback. I’m not sure which American president it was, but when he was voted outside of the Parliament he said: ‘The people has spoken, the bastards!’ [laughs] The people are speaking to us constantly about what they think about music. I think this conversation could be valuable if we don’t turn it into a kind of a binary thing where we say: ‘There’s the interest of the audience, and then there’s my interest as the artist’. Because somehow we always end up thinking that those things are in conflict with each other. (Gerry Godley, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012) It is, of course, partially our responsibility, but also musicians have bad skills to communicate and engage with an audience, no matter who they are. (Bo Grønningsæter, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012) Another aspect of the discussion about audiences versus musicians is order and disorder. Those parameters should be balanced, because when you’re bringing jazz bands to an opera festival, where everything is in order, polite, everything that’s on stage has been done for hundreds of years, if you give them some disorder, you give them a code and they can behave otherwise. But the most important thing is to meet the place where you’re going to perform. How do you create a mythical place? If you want to stretch out and reach new audiences, festivals are really the main venue. I can see that from all these years that I’ve been trying to bring the audience and to make them open minded for new kinds of music. They don’t talk about who’s playing, because they don’t know their names, but they know the festival, the brand. And musicians should sometimes give a punch in the audiences’ faces, which brings us back to order and disorder. (Lennart Stromback, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

Some of the musicians participating in 12 Points, however, use scenic elements. Such is the case of Swedish trio, Soil Collectors, who explore stage



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dramatization, costume and makeup effects during their performances. Singer Isabel Sörling emphasized the importance of engaging in verbal communication with audiences, in a way that is understandable and accessible to all; and drummer Jonathan Albrektsson talked about the awareness musicians should have of the audience and of the body language on stage. There should always be a meaning in it, a message. You see that a lot in the jazz world: ‘Oh here’s a song called 6/8’. And if the musician doesn’t know what has inspired him, how can the audience know? I think it’s really important to put a meaning and a message. Because it makes a line to the audience, showing that we care about what we are doing and that we are trying to say something. This music is not just for us; it’s for all of us. (Isabel Sörling, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I think it’s very important how you embrace the stage. I  feel that many jazz musicians don’t know how to be on a stage. They just go up there. I think that many people forgot what it is to be on a stage, basic elements of performance, like really embracing the audience and looking at them, the body language. It feels like musicians think that the importance is in the music and in just doing it. I  have worked with actors and they’re in there a hundred per cent all the time. It should be the same with jazz musicians. Being static on the stage is not helping us. Some musicians simply leave the stage in the end and forget there’s an audience there that has paid to see you. (Jonathan Albrektsson, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

Breaking with an established perception of the performative act among musicians seems to be one of the most difficult challenges to overcome. It seems to be one of the issues with a greater number of interconnections with other concerns. Jazz education is often pointed to as the main cause for the musicians’ lack of communication skills. As we shall see further on, for both promoters and musicians, no investment has been made by jazz education institutions in this particular field. The most pointed consequence is the increasing difficulty in attracting new and larger audiences.

Reaching wider audiences As happens in other areas, the effort of attracting jazz audiences is still at different stages across Europe. The historical, social, economic and cultural dimensions of each country have led jazz consumption to be carried out differently from

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country to country. The realities of each European city largely determine the way in which investment strategies are carried out in order to attract audiences for jazz. In Porto, Fernando Sousa expressed his awareness of the fact that, because Casa da Música is relatively recent and the first regular jazz offer in the city, this investment is still at a very early phase of a process that will take decades to reach its goals. On the other hand, in countries such as Finland and Norway, the process is at more advanced stages. Maati Rehor detailed how jazz in Finland begins to penetrate large-scale pop music festivals, thus reaching potential audiences that otherwise might never consume jazz. Nina Torske identified a specific age group – from thirteen to nineteen – that is less exposed to jazz, a fact that has led the West Norwegian Jazz Centre to engage in a project to attract that specific audience cluster. The main goal for Casa da Música is to create different audiences. That’s why we insist on having different kinds of jazz, including bands that play more alternative jazz, which is more difficult for the audiences. Scandinavian jazz is a good example of that. They have a very good jazz education system, they have musicians who are part of the history of jazz in Europe and they have young musicians with a very unique musical approach and they have an audience for that as well. It takes decades to create audiences. We’re pioneers. We’re just beginning. In twenty years’ time things will be different, but it is a long process. We have been increasing our audience, but it’s hard to notice that after only a few years. It’s a very demanding work and you’ll only be able to see the results after a long time. (Fernando Sousa, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) There are three types of behaviours that I see. One is that jazz has gone into other genres. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Flow Festival, which is a really, really cool urban . . . I think it started as an indie and maybe basic hip-hop festival, small scale, urban underground . . . and it evolved into this huge festival and one of the most important Finnish festivals. Some years ago, and still going strong, they’ve decided ‘OK, let’s have ten per cent jazz. Why can’t we have ten per cent jazz?’, and they had jazz bands on the headline stage. And they don’t try to sell it as anything else. It is jazz. And it belongs there, because it’s really good music. That’s it. So these jazz bands had forty thousand people in the audience that do not probably listen to jazz at home, apart from Spotify. But after those gigs, they’ll probably do, as part of the whole scheme of music that they listen to. (Maati Rehor, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) Lots of things are happening with youth also. We have this project at the West Norwegian Jazz Centre that it’s especially made for an audience between the



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ages of thirteen to nineteen, because we’re often lacking this age gap between thirteen and nineteen. So we’re trying to produce some concerts especially for this audience, where we’ll have young musicians playing for this little younger audience. (Nina Torske, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

A combination of factors seems to be crucial in attracting new audiences. The question seems not to lie only on which kind of jazz is offered and in what context, but also on the musicians. From his experience at Umeå Jazz Festival, Lennart Stromback has noticed how the gender factor can be decisive in attracting more female audience members. Nina Torske described how in some Norwegian cities jazz made by young beginner artists have been attracting young music students who are interested in new music. One thing that I  think is important . . . it must be the gender aspect of the audience. I  mean, if you’re programming female musicians, then you can see it straight away. There are new faces coming, new female musicians who play maybe rock or indie or whatever, they are coming and that’s a key aspect. (Lennart Stromback, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) What’s happening over in Bergen, in Oslo, in Stavanger, in the big cities, is that in addition to the jazz clubs and the regular places, we have this concert series coming up with musicians that are just starting their careers. It attracts new audiences again, because they’re presenting new things, new music. And they grab audiences that don’t normally come to a jazz club, but they are starting to come now, because they get into the music. And then we see all the cities that have music education, of course, they have really a young and good audience coming. (Nina Torske, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

Change seems to be wanted by most. In some parts of Europe, such as Sweden, an undergoing generational change is welcomed by some promoters such as Lennart Stromback. A change of expectations, according to Gerry Godley, would also be desirable. He has drawn attention to the fact that subsidy cuts are increasingly severe, which may lead to an unsustainable financial situation for jazz in Europe. For him, the solution should go through aspiring to play for larger audiences. There’s been a process in Sweden. The old structure is going to have to leave its old life behind. The swing clubs, the old school . . . and also the old generation of presenters. And now the Swedish Jazz Federation is moving into another direction. It’s really exciting, because they are opening up for new arrangers, presenters, and to the new generation, a new audience. (Lennart Stromback, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

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Jazz in Europe One of the things I’m concerned about is that as the economic situation gets tighter, and there’s less subsidy – and what less subsidy means is less risk taking – institutions can take less and less risk. And we’re risk takers. The situation in which the music is being exhibited or transmitted is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Gigs get smaller – they become loft gigs or kind of secret things that people communicate with each other on Facebook. And it’s really cool, and it’s cool to play in front of forty or fifty hip people who totally get what you’re doing, but how do you scale that up? How do you scale that up to five hundred people or fifteen hundred people? Because I think that economically the music is going to require that. And as the public subsidy gets squeezed tighter and tighter and tighter, the need to have this healthy relationship with the audience around the transaction becomes more and more important. In theatre and in visual arts people talk about the eight feet between the painting on the wall and the people looking at it. What’s the energy on that space? I’m interested in talking about the energy on that space, the space between you the performer and the person sitting in the auditorium, because that’s where the money is. If you’re really good at it, that’s where the money is. (Gerry Godley, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

Changes in jazz consumption are obviously associated to changes in music consumption, as part of a broader variation in the way people relate to culture. The live music sector seems to struggle with attracting and retaining new audiences. The long-established roles performed by the various actors seem to be now under discussion. The ways in which the media and artists communicate with audiences are perceived by most as crucial factors for a changing process. Poor communication skills and low ambition are pointed by promoters as some of the inadequacies that most detain musicians from reaching larger audiences. Artists’ engagement with audiences seems to be largely expected. There is consensus around the concept that jazz needs to become appealing to younger audiences. The kind of relationship that had been established with audiences in the past no longer suits the interests of a new generation of potential jazz fans. For that, jazz has to be part of an immersive cultural experience, one which is multiplied through social media and interlinked to other daily life experiences. A  generational reform in jazz promotion appears to be already happening. However, as we have seen, the way in which jazz education is conducted seems to be the key element for the kind of change that is desired by everyone, particularly in the relationship between artists and audiences and, consequently, in the way musicians conceive the performative act itself.



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Jazz education Jazz education in Europe has developed widely over the past three decades. Institutions offering higher education in jazz performance have multiplied. Some established themselves as important references in international jazz and became young talent-attraction poles. The mobility provided by Erasmus exchange programmes and the growing demand for higher education have created a new generation of musicians across Europe who are more integrated and more naturally develop collaborations with musicians from other countries. However, significant differences exist between the kinds of education each country offers, which appears to be closely linked to each country’s cultural and educational policies. Nordic countries are considered to be exemplary in the way they have developed strategies and policies that favour a close relationship between music and its citizens from an early age. Consistent policies have allowed those countries to develop pioneer curricula. By detaching themselves from the American tradition and consolidating an academic path that is substantially focused on the interests of each student, those institutions have largely contributed to the consolidation of very characteristic and eclectic jazz scenes. Still, the criticism to jazz education in Europe emphasizes two main factors: the deficiency in training the musicians’ communication and performative skills on stage, and the lack of investment in developing the students’ practical abilities, which would allow them to manage their careers.

Formal training and ‘real life’ One of the most recurrent criticisms from young musicians is that they feel that, apart from musical expertise, universities do not give them the necessary skills to succeed professionally. Jonathan Abrektsson expressed precisely that idea: ‘One thing that I  feel is missing is that when you study, you go to a university for three years, you learn how to be a good instrumentalist, but you don’t learn how to become a musician, with all that you need to earn your living’ (Interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013). On the promoters’ side, Reiner Michalke identified significant differences between the curricula of pop music and jazz courses in Germany. According to him, jazz education has not made an effort to cope with the demands of contemporary times. European jazz education is perceived as

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proving to be resistant to change and, to some extent, remains disconnected from the world outside academia. In Germany, in the conservatoires and the universities, the departments of pop music . . . forty per cent of the curricula of Pop music departments is marketing. Every student has to have his own personal computer and bring it to class. And in jazz, they keep teaching the same old ways. I think that in jazz they just quit. And there are one hundred students each year coming out of jazz schools in Germany. What are they going to do? (PC, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

The last observation seems to indicate another problem:  the adversities graduate musicians find in entering an overpopulated market. The increases of jazz educational opportunities, which obviously correspond to a growing demand, introduce new challenges to the sector.

Learning music and experiencing music In Nordic countries, such as Denmark and Norway, the change in the way jazz is presented to children already meets the paradigm shift in the way audiences relate to jazz. The concept behind the activities that are being developed for young audiences is based on the idea that more important than learning music is to practice it as part of a global experience. Bo Grønningsæter and Nina Torske confirmed that in Norway a large investment has been made in this area. Lars Winter elaborated on how Denmark has been developing initiatives toward the same effect. Kids, they don’t have a preconception. So if you play something for them that they like, they immediately respond to you. If we would put some free jazz concerts for kids, at kindergarten age, and try to indoctrinate them at a young age . . . [laughs] It’s also part of education. In Norway we have a good music school system where people can start training to be musicians or learn to play music from a very early age. (Bo Grønningsæter, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012) We have a lot of projects going on all over Norway. I think every jazz festival has a children programme. And there’s also a lot of money going into making new projects, to musicians to develop new projects, because it’s a big issue that they make high quality projects for the children. There’s also a jazz club, a children’s jazz club, which is teaching young talents, from quite small, ten years old maybe. And they really manage getting lots of talents coming out of that, and especially girls, instrumentalists. (Nina Torske, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)



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Educating children to play jazz is one thing and just get them to listen to it is another thing. We’ve been involved in children’s jazz projects for the last five years or so. It was a local initiative in Copenhagen called ‘The Children’s Jazz Club’. And now on the fifth year they’ve started editions for other Danish cities and doing summer jazz tours all over the country. This is for children from five to twelve. And also other initiatives concerned about education are starting to rise. Last Wednesday some people in Copenhagen wanted to do a series of events for pre-school children and get them to go to workshops. They’re only five-yearolds, but they’re getting to know the instruments and playing and experiencing the joy of creating and listening to music and being together around music. And these projects are starting all around Denmark. As an organization we can’t arrange for concerts at schools, because there’s another funding institution that’s doing that, but we try to support music in other ways. And also the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, we’ve done for the past three or four years a summer school programme during the Festival. I think sixty children from all over Denmark take time out of their precious summer holiday and just come to Copenhagen. The Festival doesn’t even take care of accommodation or anything, they just provide the programme and they find relatives to stay with them. When you say the words ‘children jazz’, people tend to think of people dressing up in funny clothes and red noses and goofing around. That’s not the case here at all. It’s just that the difference between children’s jazz and grownups’ jazz isn’t very big. It’s just a matter of maybe being more inviting, but it’s not clowns playing music. It’s real jazz musicians playing music that the parents want to listen to. It’s a big thing that you sort of educate the children to listen to real music and not just the music that is fun and entertaining. (Lars Winter, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

Some countries, such as Finland and Denmark, have developed a set of initiatives that enable children of various ages to have a close contact with jazz. The establishment of jazz clubs and jazz summer camps seem to have good adhesion. More than trying to increase the number of potential jazz consumers, those initiatives can play a decisive role in shaping future audiences, to whom, from very early age, jazz is part of their cultural experiences. In the view of some promoters the absolute opposite has happened in the structure of jazz higher education.

Jazz education as a business According to Gerry Godley, the exponential growth of jazz education in Europe has caused the sector to work most of all as a self-sustainable and profitable

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business. This fact may have conditioned the investment strategy for jazz in Europe, which, to his view, has been focused excessively on educational opportunities and, less desirably, on both the quality and variety of the infrastructures where jazz is presented to the public. Two things that I’ve observed that happened in Europe over the last twenty years is that much of the investment has been in the educational infrastructure around music. For example, I think in Germany you have eighteen conservatories, in Holland there are twelve. In Holland seventy per cent of the student body in the conservatories are non-Dutch. So clearly in Holland jazz education is a business. Education has become very democratic over the last twenty years; it’s been part of a great democratic process to create more educational opportunity. And jazz has kind of ridden that wave a lot. Jazz education keeps growing exponentially because if there is demand for education someone will provide it. It’s a service and it’s a profitable service. I know that when I talk to my profession colleagues, many of us are very critical about what’s happening in the pedagogy of the schools, and what’s happening around aesthetic considerations and philosophical considerations. But over the last twenty years you have this huge investment in education infrastructure which has not been matched by an investment in performance infrastructure. What is happening is that the opportunities to play are diminishing. We look at a place like the Bimhuis, in the Netherlands, and we think it’s amazing. Bimhuis is amazing! But the question we should really be asking is there should be a Bimhuis in every major city in Europe, because that’s what the performance infrastructure of the music requires. This is a big question about where the music is taking place. (PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

Investment in education versus investment in performance Most promoters struggle with the persistent inability of most musicians to communicate with audiences. They question which skills should be prioritized in jazz education. Bo Grønningsæter and Gerry Godley verbalized one of the most recurring topics: It’s always the same question:  How do today’s musicians coming out of the conservatories work with the audience? Because the musicians who started out early on playing in speakeasies and bars and making a career over twenty, thirty years, they were taught how to deal with an audience, like twenty five, thirty years ago. And you have to create audience participation. And you do that,



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I mean, rock bands do it. How do you create that sort of sense of communication with the audience? Can it be taught? Or is it natural instinct? Musicians have to know how to tell a story. Lots of people who are coming out of the jazz schools, they’re really good musicians, but they don’t tell a story! They’re just playing! And no feelings! Nothing! It breaks my heart. One guy who is not the best saxophone player in the world, Mats Gustafsson, a Swedish guy, but every time he’s playing – and it’s not nice music, not any standards – but he moves me, in a way. That’s why I like it. Not the noise and the screaming, but he can reach my heart. I think too many musicians know all the technique and all the stuff but they don’t reach the audience. (Bo Grønningsæter, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012) I think we have to keep reminding ourselves that we’re a performance art form, that all of this training and pedagogy and stuff, doesn’t exist just to create more teachers and more masters and more PhDs. It is actually to create performers. (Gerry Godley, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

It would be interesting to see the development of this discussion with the participation of representatives of the jazz-education sector. Nevertheless, the appointment of Gerry Godley to a prominent position at Leeds College of Music may indicate greater openness in jazz education to an active participation of players coming from the experience on the ground.

The educational structure and jazz promotion A closer relationship between local cultural programmers and jazz schools appears to be desired by all. Jazz schools are seen as centres of creativity and cultural vitality that should participate in the cultural life of each city. Fernando Sousa discussed how the emergence of a jazz performance degree course in his city has vitalized Porto’s cultural offer and how the partnerships developed between Casa da Música and ESMAE8 seem to have been profitable for all parties involved. Lennart Stromback, on the other hand, regretted the fact that in Umeå there is not a jazz degree course he could collaborate with. I think that things have become different since ESMAE started a few years ago. It’s all very recent and jazz education is very recent. The first graduates are only now beginning to come out of schools into the market, but they’re very committed to their playing. Some of them have performed here at Casa da Música. We’re also concerned with bringing local musicians to play here, both

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from Porto and Lisbon. And, of course, ESMAE graduates also perform here as often as possible. It’s the natural thing to do. They’re available, they’ve got really interesting projects and so they play here. Last year, we decided to dedicate all Tuesdays to young jazz musicians. They made small gigs at the Casa da Música’s restaurant, and the intention was to showcase some young jazz musicians; most of them were still undergraduate students at the time, they didn’t have any record out, and some were still performing their first compositions. We did that for a whole year and I think it worked out very well. Those concerts helped promoting them, have generated collaborations between musicians and people have grown accustomed to come here on Tuesdays and listen to jazz made by musicians who were still at an early stage of their careers. Of course ESMAE was very important also. They’ve promoted jam sessions and collaborations between their students, and some of them even recorded together. And that was brought by ESMAE to Porto, or better still, to Porto’s metropolitan area. (Fernando Sousa, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) We don’t have any education programme, and that’s a pity, because all the players are moving out when they have their study in the secondary school and they go to the colleges of musicology who are scattered all over Scandinavia. (Lennart Stromback, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

Musicians’ mobility may add a new challenge for local cultural programmers: the difficulty in retaining a regular basis of artists who they could create consistent collaborations with.

Renewing the jazz-education canon There seems to be a consensus around the need to renew the jazz-education canon in Europe. Most actors point out two Scandinavian examples, Norway and Sweden, where this regeneration has been established for decades. The conservatory of Trondheim and the University of Gothenburg were cited as specific examples where the leadership of key players has been decisive for an aesthetic renewal of jazz in Europe. The impact of educational and cultural policies for younger age groups in those countries is seen as an important basis for accomplishing that revitalization process. In addition, some of the consequences of a more democratized access to jazz education in Europe are beginning to be perceptible; in particular, the presence of female musicians seems to have increased.



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I remember Bjørn Ole Solberg, he stated very publicly, ‘At Trondheim we are burning the Real Book’, which is a very deep thing to say, because there’s this idea that the old pedagogy doesn’t work. (Gerry Godley, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I think jazz education in Trondheim started in the early eighties, and really made that possible for Norwegian musicians. That’s right, they threw away the Real Book and they almost didn’t have any papers, it was all about thinking, talking, playing. The students they had to be individuals, all of them. And nothing was wrong. Anything . . . ‘Do whatever you like it feels right for you, do that!’ I think it really made opened up musicians, already from the early eighties. (Nina Torske, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) We have to embrace the fact that the aesthetic parameters are very different in different parts of Europe, and the playing levels are very different. They really are, you know. And the reason for this has to do with upstream factors, like what’s happening in the educational system? What’s happening before high school? What happening at prime educational level? What sort of access do young people in Norway have to instrumental tuition under five years old? These are all major factors in terms of what comes out of Trondheim or Oslo or any of the other conservatories . . . In our application procedure, we started to ask much more detailed questions. We started asking musicians about their academic background, for example. It is very important to know that and to try to correlate which are the critical institutions that are creating the most interesting musicians. So, for example, Gothenburg, the university in Gothenburg has become quite popular, only over the last three or four years, it started to pop up more and more, and I think one of the reasons is Anders Jormin is now there and lots of young musicians are going, and it’s having an impact. (Gerry Godley, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) The main difference, comparing to Scandinavia, I think a lot of it comes back to funding, definitely, but also to the sort of culture that that enables to happen. People are taught there from a young age, and they’re taught very well, but they’re taught in a way that doesn’t – and this is the crucial thing – doesn’t make them all sound the same. And I don’t know quite well how they have done it, but they have. (Marcus O’Dair, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) In 12 Points we see more and more female band leaders, and that has to do with education, because the old school, sort of patriarchal way of learning the music, has now been replaced by a formal pedagogical environment, which is a much better place for a woman to be, and that’s staring to be reflected. (Gerry Godley, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

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Defining the role of jazz education within the broader context of jazz in Europe seems to be assumed as one of the most difficult challenges for all. According to what was observed in 12 Points, and within the broader context of jazz networking in Europe, the jazz-education sector seems, in most cases, to be detached from the others. Both promoters and musicians consider that jazz education methods are far from mitigating the needs they have experienced on the ground.

Music promotion and funding Europe is composed of many different economic realities. The investment each country makes in its cultural policies is obviously dependent on its economic context. While the 2008 economic crisis had an impact across all European countries, it took a toll in different ways, according to each particular economic context. However, beyond the amount of money that is injected into cultural investment, cultural policies also comply with the various ways in which each government and each society perceives culture. Music is part of that whole, and the share of funding intended for jazz is quite variable. Historical, cultural and social factors determine that variance. The discussion on this topic brings to the fore some fundamental issues, such as the sustainability of the music industry, the criteria that should govern the allocation of funding, the consequences of the economic crisis in music promotion, and the role of public institutions and jazz associations throughout the process.

Different cultural policies make different jazz scenes The sustainability of the music industry seems to come from different forms of investment. Marcus O’Dair spoke of his experience as a journalist and musician. According to him, public adherence in countries such as France and Spain allows live music to remain very active and encourages the support of the public sector. Other ways to capitalize resources were also mentioned, such as the case of Music Finland, which, as Gerry Godley said, has been exporting songwriting; and the independent investment that has been made in the production of live concerts, as an integrated business in the tourism sector of Copenhagen, as described by Lars Winter:



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I think it’s hard to talk about any country’s jazz scene. The one I know the best is the UK and it stretches from John Surman to TrioVD. The main difference, comparing to Scandinavia, I think a lot of it comes back to funding, definitely, but also to the sort of culture that that enables it to happen . . . But definitely in France, there are hundreds of jazz festivals in France. The jazz scene is embedded in the country there. I’ve had musician friends coming over from Spain or from France to London because they thought that would be a good place to be, stayed there for a bit and go ‘forget about this, I’m going back home. What’s the point of being here?’ And it’s true. I play music myself, I’ve been playing in Europe, and I have to say funding is perhaps the reason – I don’t know – the money is better, the audience is better, and the way that you’re treated is far better than it is in England, in my experience. This is not to say that there is some great promoting and great venues there but the resources that they provide for music in a lot of European countries – obviously not all – is amazing. (Marcus O’Dair, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) I remember meeting Paulina Ahokas, from Finnish Music, and I  was talking about jazz . . . and this is a woman that’s been working with Music Export, from Finland, and I said ‘What have you been doing lately?’, and she said ‘Well, I’m just back from Tokyo, because we have some songwriters over there who are ghostwriting pop songs for J-pop artists.’ And that just blew my mind, I thought, ‘You clever bastards!’ [laughs], ‘you have found a way to turn songwriting into money for someone, you are exporting your songwriting expertise.’ (Gerry Godley, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) The Copenhagen Jazz Festival gives two thousand concerts over ten days, all in Copenhagen and I think only a hundred of them are arranged by the Festival themselves. So it’s nineteen hundred concerts by independent organisers. I think last year we had a quarter of a million people attending. It’s a lot. So the Festival has a great impact on tourism in Copenhagen, and that was the kind of number we needed to continue the work. (Lars Winter, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

Who should be funded? Although Scandinavia and some Central European countries are generally seen as excellent examples of how jazz is supported, they are still under discussion on funding criteria. In the case of musicians, Isabel Sörling revealed her frustration with the difficulties she encountered when requesting institutional support for her projects. According to the singer, although Sweden provides considerable

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financial support to jazz each year, it does so to a restricted and recurrent group of musicians who are already established in the market. In Germany, Reiner Michalke struggled to get the same opportunities for jazz as the ones offered to classical music which, according to him, is disproportionately favoured by the decision-makers’ protectionist criteria. Maati Rehor described a reality similar to those two countries; in Finland, funds that are intended for jazz are eventually shared with musicians from other genres. Sweden gives a lot of money to Culture, but it’s not easy to get it. You really have to write a good application and be known by the people who decide. It’s only the top musicians who get the money in the end, so . . . now we’re starting to get a bit older, but some years ago you had projects, new projects, and you felt quite alone, because they don’t support those kind of projects. It’s hard to get in that group. (Isabel Sörling, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013) Before, we didn’t have a cultural centre. Now, because of the cultural centre, we have cultural policies. And now Cologne is the capital of jazz in Germany. And each region has its own cultural policy. But there are eighty-seven opera houses around Germany, and jazz can’t be played in opera houses, only classical music. And there’s an uneven situation between the old mentality and the new generation, and also in the amount of funding. The German government gives four million euros each year to classical music, but there’s only a one million euros prize for best music program, which is divided between jazz, pop and rock. So, there’s still an old mentality. (Reiner Michalke, PC, Dublin, 16 February 2013) What’s placed under ‘jazz’ is a big question and a big discussion. It’s very critical for our organization’s future, for example, because we have very strong voices also who say that if there is governmental funding to support jazz, it has to be just jazz. Another thing is that some musicians, of course, they want to play jazz in the more traditional way, and they would like the money, that’s the governmental money and the official money that’s going to the jazz, the jazz field, to keep it for jazz . . . the jazz field is actually the field that’s open to everything else. And we spend the jazz money in all kinds of music, while rock money goes to rock, and the pop money goes to pop. [laughs] So the jazz field should be more strict to what we use the money for. Some musicians, I feel they just spend the money for that projects that happen here and then . . . And then there’s the question of what goes under jazz. It’s one of the most critical discussions going on in Finland. Musicians that are not formally jazz . . . who have not that formal jazz education, but have other kinds of music education and then go into jazz projects. And then they feel that what they do is jazz, and why shouldn’t it be? But then there



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comes the question: who gets to decide? What is jazz? What can be called jazz? Apparently, the one thing that is not a big issue is the term jazz. (Maati Rehor, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

The statements above reveal an ongoing discussion questioning the criteria governing the allocation of funds for jazz. Apparently, in countries such as Sweden, some young musicians are omitted in favour of those already established in the market or with close connection to decision makers. The German case seems to confirm the studies showing that, in Europe, jazz support is decried in favour of classical music. The example brought from Finland indicates the possibility that jazz may function as an umbrella to musicians from other genres who seek financial support.

How did the economic crisis affect the music? The economic crisis and the increasing constraints on music support have also caused debate around the impact it may have on jazz in Europe. John Dikeman, an American saxophonist living in the Netherlands, described how in that country some musicians were forced to seek other occupations in order to support themselves. He questioned to what extent jazz subgenres associated with niche markets could be sustainable without institutional support. One of the alternatives to tackling the deficiency of funding, according to Gerry Godley, would be to produce jazz that could reach considerably larger audiences. Other promoters seem to disagree. According to Wim Wabbes, artistic director for the Handelsbeurs Concert Hall in Ghent, jazz should not be subjugated to commercial criteria, taking the chance of losing its identity. Similarly, Bo Grønningsæter stressed the idea that cultural funding is part of the European cultural tradition. Well, in Holland, you don’t see niche music, like free jazz, being supported anymore. There are literally musicians in their forties working as bakers or at grocery stores or something like that. It’s really sad! And there’s this big debate going on right now on how less support will change dramatically the aesthetics. Will free jazz die in Holland because there’s less support? (John Dikeman, PC, Dublin, 16 February 2013) How have we become defeated? Have we conditioned ourselves to think that playing to twenty people or thirty people is somehow acceptable? We’ve

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constructed a whole narrative that says it’s fine. (Gerry Godley, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012) If you have a performer in front of five hundred people you lose a lot. I think that a nice thing about jazz is that it’s small scale. I’m not so sure that we have to go to a thousand, two thousand people to make it all happen. This is music that – as Bo says – will always need some kind of support to survive. This is not commercial music. It’s not music that responds only to the demand. If we would do that we would compromise creative music so much that we would lose a lot of creativity. I don’t mind having musicians playing for fifty people. It’s sometimes better to play 20 gigs in a month where you have up to fifty people, a hundred people and eight to ten people. Jazz music is music that lifts you by playing. (Wim Wabbes, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012) Five or six years ago we had more support. The Arts in Europe, since the Middle Ages, they’ve been relying upon sponsorship in one way or the other, being it the Emperor, the Pope, the Prince, and – in our time – the Government, who’s collecting taxes. Of course now we are experiencing an international financial crisis, but this won’t last forever. I  don’t think the Arts can survive without support from some source. (Bo Grønningsæter, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

The role of public institutions and jazz associations Public institutions, arts centres and jazz associations are key players in the field. The role each of those actors plays in local, national and international cultural policy covers not only the objectives established for their specific activity but, when developed on the ground, becomes the visible face of jazz networking and public cultural service. Jazz festivals can assume deep social, cultural and political meanings. Twelve Points, according to its director, has managed to establish itself as a symbol of the Irish entrepreneurship in Europe. At the same time, its unorthodox characteristics have led to questioning settled concepts within the jazz sector and European culture. Piotr Turkiewicz, artistic director of the Jazztopad Festival, describes the extent to which music festivals in Poland are designed to be multicultural celebrations. Wim Wabbes argues about his role and his duty as a cultural agent in the city of Ghent, namely, by enabling less-known musicians’ access to the city’s cultural infrastructures, and by bringing experimental music to audiences. The Umeå Jazz Festival is also perceived by its director, Lennart Stromback, as a potential networking vehicle between young artists.



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This feeling that 12 Points is something that is conceived here, is an Irish thing, but has this impact all over Europe . . . because the proposition is a very difficult one. How do you sell . . . ? Because here comes this Irish festival, with twelve completely unknown artists, it’s going to be here for four days, and then it’s going to be gone, and it will never be back. How do you sell that? You can only sell it if you’re in a space where people are open to it. (Gerry Godley, interview, Dublin, 16 February 2013) I realised that in order for artists in my country to have those opportunities, it has to work for your artists too. At the end of the day you see that these scenes are like national silos. What happens is that young artists can very quickly rise up through their national scene, then they want to establish themselves internationally and they have to go all the way down to the bottom again, because there’s not much connectivity between countries. I have some pretty controversial views on why that is, but I think that public money has a lot to do with it, because public money creates a lot of pressure on festivals and venues to respond to the needs of their local hinterland, their local artists. So, the big stars are there to sell the tickets, but the local artists are there to justify the public money. And so every scene now has a lot of local artists, because there are more and more schools pumping out more and more artists. The way the politics of public money and the need to be distributed fairly, which of course is something that is absolutely manipulated all the time, is sort of clogging the arteries of the performance infrastructure and its ability to reach across the border. So, we’re trying to go over all of that stuff. (Gerry Godley, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) Jazz in Poland is growing, and we also have a big tradition in jazz there. We have over one hundred jazz festivals each year. And the spirit around the festivals is quite open to different cultures. You could say that music festivals in Poland, not only jazz festivals, they kind of showcase different cultures. So we see our work also as a way of bringing all these different cultures together. (Piotr Turkiewicz, PC, Dublin, 16 February 2013) I think there are more and more opportunities. Like in Ghent; Ghent is a small town, its inner city has about twenty-five thousand people, and there’s seventeen clubs where musicians can play jazz and jam. And there are a lot of initiatives that are growing. And of course they require a different approach. It’s not because other projects exist that I will say: ‘OK, I don’t need to worry about jazz anymore because they’re doing it in living rooms and small clubs’. No, no. We, as programmers, have the responsibility, as an art centre, to programme jazz and create really good, professional opportunities. (Wim Wabbes, PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

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I can give you an example of what is happening. Three years ago, I was at Jazz Ahead and then I  met a girl with a Swedish group, all dressed in green, she had a lot of records and she was not talking and the next time I  saw her she was on the telly, she was into this ‘Idol’ thing, and the next time she was at my festival and she had a seminar about networking, for young musicians and it’s all going through Sweden now. It’s a project for young musicians to meet and just play together and mix whatever music, it’s improvised. And now she was a prize winner of alternative Grammis9 this year, as pop artist. So, it says a lot about what’s going on for young musicians. (Lennart Stromback, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

Four countries have developed an efficient network of regional and national jazz associations: Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Those associations have established themselves as key players in their national policy-making. Jazz Denmark is directly funded by the Danish Arts Council. Its main goals, as Lars Winter describes, are promoting Danish jazz musicians abroad and inside Denmark. The West Norwegian Jazz Centre, one of five regional centres in Norway, provides musicians with working opportunities across Norway. The Norwegian Jazz Federation is mainly devoted to promoting Norwegian jazz by supporting and organizing international tours. The Swedish Jazz Association consists of over a hundred members, mostly jazz clubs and festivals. Its mission is to promote tours of Swedish jazz musicians across the country, through the network of its associates, such as the Umeå Jazz Festival. The Finnish Jazz Federation is financed by the Finnish Ministry of Culture and Education, and tours Finnish artists both in Finland and abroad. I’m with Jazz Denmark, we’re a national organization in Denmark. We did a fouryear contract with the Danish Arts Council, who has just renewed our contract a month ago, and we’ve succeeded in getting the same funding for the next four years as four years ago, and that’s a success in the current economic landscape. Our basic goal is to promote jazz in Denmark and Danish jazz abroad. So we go through various projects, everything from promotion in other countries, to work with young musicians in Denmark and help Danish jazz getting out there. And we hand out a lot of tour support to musicians, a hundred and twenty thousand euros a year for Danish musicians touring abroad and also for Danish musicians who want to tour . . . combined with foreign musicians . . . to tour in Denmark. (Lars Winter, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I’ve been working in the West Norwegian Jazz Centre for one year. The West Norwegian Jazz Centre is one of the five regional centres in Norway, it’s been there



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for fifteen years, so it’s really well organised, everything is well under control. The five centres do a little different work, they are a bit different. Somehow they are focusing on their own professional bands, working mainly to sell them, or the projects of them. In the Centre, we have all the touring activities, we work to help musicians, to help clubs, promoters, to get better and any aid that they will need. And I’m also in the board for the Norwegian Jazz Federation since 2007, so I know a little bit of what’s happening nationally as well. (Nina Torske, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I work in the North, in Umeå, and the region around Umeå at the Opera House, that’s where we’ve developed in the last ten years to work as a regional cultural centre, you could say. We have a symphony orchestra, we do big operas, we have a dance residence company, we have an exhibition hall, and I work with music productions and incorporate all of those departments. Also, I’m directing the Umeå Jazz Festival, that’s been around since sixty-eight. So Umeå is also a centre for jazz, it provides music . . . What we do is we’re touring bands, but not just jazz, not just music. We work with every kind of expression, but we are focused on contemporary . . . sounds. We’re also involved in supporting artistic projects, with the new governmental department. So, I’m also in the board. The artists have possibilities to apply for money; it’s 2.5 five million euros every year. And it’s all about connecting people, so it’s interesting, actually, for you guys if you have friends in Sweden that you want to work with, you can actually apply for money. I’m also in the board for the Europe Jazz Network since a couple of years . . . or four years. (Lennart Stromback, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I’m the director of the Finnish Jazz Federation, which is the national umbrella organization for mostly associations around the country. Most of those associations are doing their business organising festivals, and most of them are not led by jazz professionals, or cultural professionals, necessarily. Many of these people are jazz enthusiasts. But we also have professional organizations that are members, so the organizations are varied. We are funded by the Finnish Ministry of Culture and Education . . . What we do currently is, our main function is touring Finnish bands, mainly in Finland. We have some corporations, for example, the jazz organization in Estonia, we have this exchange programme with them, and we have international projects every now and then. And we also represent Finnish jazz in many cultural development programmes that are ongoing in Finland. And we work closely together with Music Finland, which is the new organization that has worked with music export and music information. We have this international work and domestic work. (Maati Rehor, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

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On the other hand, in countries such as Portugal art centres and the institutions that manage them, mainly foundations financed by the state, function as the main links in the chain of relations between musicians, cultural policy-makers and audiences. Because the country does not have a formal jazz network, local cultural infrastructures assume the function of integrating jazz artists in their programs. In Porto, Casa da Música was designed to operate as the main responsible for promoting networking between local, national and international musicians and promoters. Fernando Sousa explains how Casa da Música has developed that plan. Gerry Godley, a year after the Porto edition, discusses how he feels jazz in Europe should have better performative infrastructures. So, because Porto is a small city, we’re not just concerned with the city centre. We think of a larger audience from the whole of the metropolitan area, and the satellite-cities, such as Gaia, Matosinhos. Actually, Matosinhos has been working in close contact with us. OJM,10 which is the most important big band in the North, is based there, but they perform regularly here. They’re always on our annual programme and they bring important international musicians here to Casa da Música to compose, rehearse and premiere some of their projects with OJM. So, OJM is also an important partner. (Fernando Sousa, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) I’m working on a two hundred and fifty sitter venue here and I always worry whether I can fill it, because this is quite a tough town here. It’s quite conservative in jazz terms. And in a way, by the standards of their conservatism, I’m pushing something very strong. In Porto, four, five, six hundred people were in that room every night and that blew my mind. And I was really trying to think about why that was, because Porto is not a big city, Dublin is a bigger city, and Porto looks like a city to me that has had years of underinvestment and high unemployment and economically depressed, so you would think that this was not going to be a particularly fertile situation for what we were doing. Of course, it has this jewel, called Casa da Música. It was very interesting to be in a landmark building, a piece of trophy architecture, in a way, a very self-conscious piece of architecture, and we don’t have buildings like that. What the people have achieved in Porto with that building has never happened here. But what fascinated me was how Casa da Música was becoming this engine of music for the city, and how people were coming out without prejudice, to experience what was there. And built infrastructure, we still need it. In fact, one of the threats for our sector is that this is the very time when the whole notion of building culture buildings is going to be very cold. And yet, we have very few of these places in Europe, that are



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dedicated to our art form. In fact, the only one really is the Bimhuis. (Gerry Godley, interview, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

Two main groups of entities produce and encourage jazz networking in Europe – on the one hand, local and national associations and, on the other, arts centres. In countries such as Norway, Denmark, Finland and the UK, associations seem to have a higher prevalence and to have established themselves as the main players in promoting jazz networking. In countries where associations are residual, such as Portugal, arts centres assume that role.

Paradigm-shifts in jazz funding Jazz promotion in Europe and its relationship with public funding occurs in very different social, economic and political contexts. If, in countries such as Norway, Denmark and Finland, institutional relations between the jazz sector and cultural policies have been established for decades, in others, as a result of the economic crisis but also due to the restructuring of cultural policies, jazz is confronted with new challenges. With less funding, or different funding criteria, promoters and musicians are forced to change the way they position themselves towards public subsidy. Consistent financing may have led some musicians to create dependency. Younger musicians adapt more easily to change and are more entrepreneurial. Gerry Godley addresses a paradigm shift in jazz funding, and the issues associated with that process. Finland seems exemplify how the debate on funding has come to the fore. While Lars Winter describes how Jazz Denmark is engaged in raising awareness among musicians in order for them to become more independent; Isabel Sorling seems optimistic towards this new challenge. However, change also appears to be directed in the opposite direction. In Norway, funding, which has been directed primarily to promoters, will be increasingly available for musicians, in order to bring the musicians’ average income closer to national levels. The money question, and the public money question, which will come up again and again . . . and it’s only going in one direction. Whatever happens we’re going to have to adapt. But the really interesting question is: how much money is enough? Nobody ever talks about what enough money is. All we ever talk about is more money. But we’re going to be working with less money and maybe we need to be thinking about how less money forces us into a new kind

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of relationship, into a new kind of engagement. Maybe we’ll really have to be dragged, kicking and screaming to this much more kind of robust relationship with the public. I think that this conversation is everywhere in the cultural world right now, and it’s a really big conversation, and it’s very important, because it will change the work, because maybe the work kind of follows the money. And if the money was coming from public sources that would put certain criteria about what the work should be, then the work would fit. And now there’s a new frame and it’s going to be defined by completely different people and in completely different ways. (Gerry Godley, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) There’s this particular change happening in public funding. Our national museum has been brought to be funded by lottery money that so far has been used to fund the architecture, culture, and also the youth and sports activities. Now our national gallery sort of comes into that money. It’s been said that the probable future for 2014 on is that there will be around twenty per cent cuts. So we don’t know what is really going to happen. The funding is really a big, big question now. (Maati Rehor, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I think that we are trying to adapt. We’re also trying to work within the musicians’ environment, with some more established artists we’re trying to challenge them in their conception of what’s the price of music and the arts, what effort can be required by musicians in terms of taking care of his own career and so on. What do you expect when you’re invited to be a part of a project that we do? Is it full order catering and five star hotels? Or do you really need to do something yourself? I think that’s our trying to adapt to the new world. Maybe not taking the easy road and sometimes asking more from people than we used to. (Lars Winter, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) And that’s how it has changed, because some years ago in Sweden there would be a foundation that would go to see a lot of different concerts and they would pick the bands they liked and then they would do all the administration and all the booking. But today the musicians they have to be the booker, they have to be the administrator and everything . . . apply for the money, and then be the arrangers themselves. But it has been good. (Isabel Sörling, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013) One thing happening in Norway concerning the governmental money or public money you can apply for is this change from supporting organisers, clubs and festivals to putting more money musicians can apply for. Because they see that we have fundamental clubs and festivals that, of course it’s not always stable, but it’s OK, it’s something we can deal with. But what’s really the problem is that still musicians, jazz musicians in Norway, their income is twenty-five per cent of



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the normal income. So what we’re really trying to do now, as a change, is to put much more money in the . . . this free money musicians can apply. (Nina Torske, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

Policies assume an essential role in the development of the sector. The discrepancy between different policies seems to originate in the different ways in which jazz is perceived across Europe. The various criteria for support within each country reveal how jazz in Europe assumes different ideological meanings.

Self-promotion and networking: merging roles Jazz promotion in Europe seems to be submitted to myriad changing variables, including the financial crisis of 2008 and its repercussions. This set of challenges has led to the emergence of various strategies and to a significant change in the way jazz players position themselves within the music industry. On two different occasions during her interview, Isabel Sörling expressed a generalized feeling of frustration among musicians at the difficulties they are faced with and the increasing obstacles they have met in applying for funding. She also described how she assumed various roles in order to promote her music, and how she developed informal networking with musicians from other countries who are in a similar situation. We are doing everything ourselves. We have no label, no manager, nothing. And it’s all through social networks. We have a concert and we post it. But you kind of only reach the people you know, it’s hard to reach new people. And that’s what we struggle to, to expand, because it can so easily turn into this internal jazz music world. It seems like all the musicians we meet in Europe, we’re all in the same shit. So we’re all trying to help each other. Like you meet someone from Austria and you say ‘Oh, I’d like to go to Austria to play and you’ll come to Sweden to play’. And that’s good . . . So we went to France and Germany on a tour that we arranged ourselves and we invested money to do it and to get out from Sweden and with help of musicians we managed to find somewhere to play. (Isabel Sörling, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

English keyboard player Dave Morecroft, from World Service Project, has developed a formal network from his informal networking experiences. UK-based Match & Fuse is an exchange network and festival that connects bands from across Europe. It also develops activities with its associates in education,

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business administration, project development and compilation CD releases. Its main funders include institutions such as Arts Council England, Norsk Kulturråd (Arts Council Norway) and Institut Français et region Midi Pyrénées. We have put out one album, but we’re also producing these compilation CDs. We’re running a project called Match & Fuse, where we are trying to do this kind of thing – meet up with bands from around Europe and essentially swap a tour and tour in each other’s countries and basically help each other to expand. So we’ve got four of those compilation CDs out now, but they’re going to be widely distributed later in the year. (Dave Morecroft, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012)

These two cases show to what extent jazz networking comes partially from independent initiatives. However, top-to-bottom initiatives can enable informal networking. In the case of Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, the informal networking activity that she developed in recent years came as a result of her experience with a formal network – the European Movement Jazz Orchestra. Dave Morecroft stresses how formal networks, such as 12 Points, enable informal networking to happen. I’m with the European Movement Jazz Orchestra, which was established in 2007 for the European rotating presidencies of Germany, Slovenia and Portugal. And it was supposed to last a year and a half. But the musicians liked playing with each other so much that we’ve decided to continue with the project even after it’s supposedly over. And we are trying to survive – which is very difficult. There is no one . . . we’re all trying to make it work. I am currently dealing with a concert that will take place in Portugal this year. Last year it was Jure Pukl11 who handled our trip to Cairo. Last year we made a record for Clean Feed, which was a good kick-off. (Susana Santos Silva, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) Just with conversations you have with musicians, it’s very informative, because immediately you can get very quickly down to the very important issues, because you’re in the same position; you’re trying to get gigs and you know how hard it is to make a living out of this kind of thing. You don’t have to salute . . . it’s like when you first meet someone, in any situation you have to do the small talk, and then after a while you start to talk about the real things. But I guess because everyone here has so much in common, you can start talking about those things straight away. What clubs have you to play and to get gigs and which musicians to talk to, and you can start talking about important issues very quickly. Because everyone wants to help each other and everyone understands, everyone has the



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same situation, to a degree. So I’ve had some very interesting conversations and obviously the presence of the press and the media and some promoters and all that kind of stuff really helps as well, especially with the seminars just to hear different perspectives from people from different countries, it’s really useful. And I definitely think there will be opportunities of perhaps meeting up with some of these musicians again and making new projects or taking existing projects to different places. (Dave Morecroft, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012)

The economic crisis and the reforms on public support for jazz – or almost complete lack thereof  – have triggered a strong awareness among musicians to the need to position themselves differently in the industry. Top-to-bottom initiatives appear to foster partnerships and collaborations between independent musicians. Independent initiatives also appear, in some cases, to result in formal networks. Sharing assets – whether financial support or human resources – seems to have a major importance in the way jazz networking is done in Europe today.

Communication and mobility Easier access to communication and to mobility within Europe are two key elements for changing the ways in which jazz musicians engage in networking today, by blurring geographical borders and by challenging social and economic dissimilarities between countries. Such reform seems to cut across Europe. Swedish singer Isabel Sörling highlights the increasing access to mobility within Europe: ‘It’s easier to travel. You can move very easily, it’s cheaper to fly’ (Isabel Sörling, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013). Portuguese bassist Hugo Carvalhais, still at the beginning of his career, describes how geographical limitations are becoming gradually irrelevant:  ‘Today you already think of Europe as a whole. Our album is being distributed around Europe and we are playing with Émile Parisien, a French musician. So we feel as if there aren’t any borders. We just aim for the “pan-something” festivals, anything that has “Europe” in it [laughs]’ (Hugo Carvalhais, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012). Gerry Godley speculates on how musicians’ mobility may bring attention to a central European city, Brussels, which, to his view, could become decisive in the near future of European jazz: ‘And then, of course, migration is another part of it too, because these young musicians are migrating a lot. I think Brussels is going to be important over the next few years, because lots of young musicians are

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moving to Brussels, because it’s just a good place to be and it’s easy to get to other parts of Europe’ (Gerry Godley, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011). For players from countries geographically distant to central Europe, the sense of periphery seems to have faded in recent years. Portuguese musicians, Susana Santos Silva e Hugo Carvalhais, explain how social networks and affordable flights have been decisive to that process. Gerry Godley discusses how 12 Points tries to respond to the fact that mobility opportunities for artists across Europe are still irregular. I think I’m benefiting from the fact that there are all these sorts of social networks, because suddenly you can step out of your corner. If you stay here, nobody knows you. And when you start creating these networks with people whom you identify with, musically and personally, projects start happening. (Susana Santos Silva, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) I don’t feel that I  live in a peripheral country. Not anymore. I  think perhaps ten, fifteen years ago I  would. But now things change more rapidly. Portugal was a peripheral country, forgotten in its corner. Nowadays flying to Paris or London is sometimes cheaper than driving from Porto to Lisbon or Faro. I feel that those barriers no longer exist. People listen to our music and no longer think about where we come from. They see us as musicians, who happen to live in Portugal, but who could live in Spain or Italy. (Hugo Carvalhais, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) One of the things I’m very interested in is mobility for artists. We have this programme called 12 Points Plus, it sort of spins out of the festival. And part of that has to do with reciprocity, so when people say, ‘It’s great that Europe is so open for jazz and artists can go everywhere’, but sometimes what people are saying is that a French artist can go anywhere or a Norwegian artist or a British artist. They don’t really mean Slovenian artists or Portuguese artists. I’m very interested in how 12 Points can be a catalyst for generating more mobility for these artists on periphery as well, because, of course, if you want to talk about European jazz, you have to talk about the periphery. You can’t just talk about Scandinavia. (Gerry Godley, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011)

Twelve Points not only seems to follow the change in the way musicians are using mobility opportunities in Europe, it also positions itself as a major actor in consolidating equality of opportunity. Although Central European countries have geographical advantages in mobility, peripheral countries are starting to reduce their own disadvantages. The mobility of jazz actors within Europe can



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bring consequences at various levels – of aesthetic variety, for e­ xample – that will be interesting to observe in the future.

Formal networking and expanding to Asia Formal networking are consolidating international relations between European countries. In the case of Norway in the nineties, as described by Maati Rehor, promoters such as Bo Grønningsæter established a good network within the country and, simultaneously, contacts with other countries, especially European. However, some of these formal networks are beginning to develop partnerships with countries outside Europe. Maryin Roen, from the inter-European project Swinging Europe based in Denmark, explains how the Copenhagen Jazz Festival has already established partnerships with China; Nina Torske describes similar initiatives between Norway and Japan; and Piotr Turkiewicz details how Jazztopad, in Poland, has been developing exchange partnerships with South Korea, Japan and Australia. The [West Norwegian] Jazz Centre, when it started in the nineties, from day one it became internationally focused. But Bo Grønningsæter, who was working really from day one, and has made these really great connections over the world, especially Europe, through Europe Jazz Network and other places . . . this has been the force, the strength of the Jazz Centre for like ten years. That was kind of their speciality. But during the years later, the other regional centres and the other organizations have other kinds of projects in the international field as well. So now it’s more spread. Networking is really all over Norway. So the West Norwegian Jazz Centre will still do international projects and that has led us to 12 Points. We have other projects. (Maati Rehor, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) I might add that we in Denmark are also exporting these initiatives to work with children. We have right now an initiative, which we made with China. We had some Chinese coming to the Copenhagen Jazz Festival going to these workshops with kids and some of them just said, ‘Oh, we want that!’ So now the Chinese, they’re buying the concept. So we’re also trying to expand our possibilities of income. We are trying to export this approach to work with others. (Martin Roen, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) And they also have this really great collaboration with a Japanese children’s jazz club. So they are doing the same in Japan, and thinking in the same way, and they have these children visiting each other. Last week two of the Japanese girls

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visited Bergen, where they joined a jam session. (Nina Torske, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013. We have a good connection with Asia, we’re starting to develop several projects involving, or having Asian partners. Last year at the festival we had a South Korean musician, he’s called Miyeon, a free improvisational pianist, and also a Korean, a percussionist, Park Jae Chun, with a Japanese pianist, Satoko Fujii. And we had a collaboration concert between two other South Korean artists who mix jazz with traditional Korean music, Heo Yoon-Jeong and Aram Lee, and two Polish jazz musicians, Marcin Oleś and Bartlomiej Oleś, they’re brothers. And also between Korean musicians and Australian musicians, so . . . we’re trying to create this strong connection with Asia. (Piotr Turkiewicz, PC, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

In some European countries, jazz is assumed to be a cultural export. The interaction between formal European networks and some Asian countries and Australia show to what extent jazz from Europe  – the music and the activity around it – can conquer new markets. Exporting both music and know-how in cultural production can also challenge the ways in which jazz from Europe will be perceived and valued by cultural policy-makers inside Europe.

A European Union made of contrasts Jazz networking in Europe seems to reveal many of the differences of which Europe is made. The history of jazz in Europe was made largely on the mobility of its actors. The mobility provided for EU Member States by the Schengen Area has exploded the ways in which European perceived each other. At the same time, Scandinavian countries outside the EU promote cultural policies based on exporting national culture and engaging collaborations between musicians across Europe. European jazz players acknowledge that greater mobility has increased their awareness of the others. Marcus O’Dair observed how mobility is increasingly commonplace for both musicians and promoters; Dave Morecroft explained how his participation on 12 Points challenged some of his preconceptions on European jazz; Isabel Sörling discussed how she feels that European musicians are strengthening collaboration across countries; and Jonathan Albrektsson expressed his view on how networking in Europe is more prevalent than in the United States.



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Players are bouncing around all over the place. Even here you’ve got a Lithuanian sax player playing with a Portuguese band, or World Service Project who are here have their Match & Fuse project which is into networking with musicians around Europe, and musicians like Stian Westerhus who’s a great Norwegian guitarist and he was living in London for a while and everybody seems to be doing those sort of things, both on the industry side and the musicians’ side. (Marcus O’Dair, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) I think it’s amazing to come to somewhere like 12 Points and just hear all this different music. It makes you realise how little you know, in some ways. Because you get an idea, sometimes of a sound of a country, and you think ‘Oh, that sounds very Norwegian or Portuguese or very French’, but then you realise that you don’t actually know what’s going on specifically in that scene or who’s playing or who the important people are. So I think 12 Points is a fantastic opportunity to link up all these networks, these little pockets of creativity. And that’s something that really needs to happen. I  think for the path European jazz is going, I do think that this kind of idea of connecting and bringing people together and working together and sort of playing all cards on the table a bit more is a really good thing, and it’s something that will help push the momentum of European jazz and where to go. (Dave Morecroft, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) I play a lot with musicians from other countries because of the Erasmus year in France. It really opened the big door to the world, almost, because Paris is in the centre of Europe. And you realise how small Sweden is. You meet people who don’t even know where Sweden is. And then you realise you got to get music coming out of the countries. It’s better because of the Internet. But I have a feeling that all the musicians in Europe are really feeling the same. Everyone is struggling. And it’s good that, instead of being a competition, I feel a lot of warmth, and people are trying to help each other. (Isabel Sörling, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013) When I first went to the States, I really understood how opened Europe is. There are practically no borders here. So that was the first time I’ve realised how easy it is to network and arrange things. (Jonathan Albrektsson, interview, Dublin, 15 February 2013)

However, some also stressed differences between countries and the fact that the engagement towards the idea of a united Europe may be more dominant in players from peripheral countries. Fernando Sousa and Gerry Godley confirm this notion, drawing from their experiences of working on the ground with

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other promoters. Marcus O’Dair points to the lack of unity between European countries and the absence of organized European jazz fans networks. I live in the most Westerly part of Europe, and we’re a small island, that has another island between me and the Continent. Irish people are very sensitive to this [laughs]. But I do think that it’s absolutely vital that the small countries, like Estonia with two million people, and Latvia with two and a half million people . . . small European countries, similar populations, similar economy to Ireland, and I was thinking that it has to be some way that we can make it happen. We haven’t succeeded yet, by the way. In a way the project has sort of been distracted with other things. And it’s a constant challenge not to let the bigger countries, the most successful countries, suck all of the oxygen out of 12 Points. In the beginning I was very concerned that we should have the very best music. But I’m less and less bothered by that. This year we’re probably going to take a band from Bosnia, and it’s pretty much more like a folk band, actually, because I want to put that in. Two years ago we had a band from Skopje. Because I think that with 12 Points we have this Hitler map of Europe, and we have these little flags all over the map and we’re invading [laughs]. So, every time we bring 12 Points to a different country, we’re like Hannibal bringing the jazz elephants over the Alps [laughs]. (Gerry Godley, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) I don’t see much jazz promoters concerned with the concept of a united Europe. I think that they’re mainly concerned about themselves, their own projects and their own agendas. I’ve seen that kind of thinking in some of the EJN associates with whom I exchange some ideas. Those European networks were created to do precisely that. 12 Points is one of the few exceptions. Gerry, for instance, doesn’t think of Ireland above all, he’s concerned with a bigger picture. He sees Europe as a whole. He opens doors for people from Portugal to Turkey. There are no geographical or cultural borders for jazz. (Fernando Sousa, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) There’s certainly formal networks and informal networks, there’s the industry side and certainly players. Obviously, events like this are crucial, I suppose, to that sort of network. Because Europe is, I think, smaller than the States and yet we don’t have the same sense of unity necessarily as they do in America. I don’t know how much fan networks there are. I suppose there are such social media style networks, but I don’t know one fan network. (Marcus O’Dair, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012)

Contrasts between countries may be perceived as an important asset to the jazz scene in Europe, in the sense that exchanging experiences may contribute



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to generalized improvement. However, those contrasts also bring frictions to the fore – different conceptions of cultural policy-making, of public cultural service, funding, entrepreneurism, of the commercial aspects of music promotion and dissemination, of educational policies, of audiences’ consumption, and of the role of the media.

Jazz identities As a European jazz festival, 12 Points shows that ground practices challenge official narratives around jazz and European identities. Players’ mobility, informal collaboration and formal networking are crucial to that process. Music, national and European identities are a result of the interaction between people from different cultural, political and musical backgrounds. As already stated, Gerry Godley  – and with him 12 Points  – assume the mission of bringing artists from peripheral countries closer to the opportunities available in Central European and Nordic countries. According to its director, the festival may contribute to redefining the European jazz musician’s identity and place in Europe, which is characterized by being flexible, entrepreneurial and informal. In Dublin, one of the participants, the Greek pianist Nicolas Anadolis, had no support from his country. For Gerry Godley, the fact that Anadolis participated in 12 Points transfers to the festival a deep-Europeanist symbolism. According to Godley, the festival confirms that there are creative young people around Europe, regardless of their countries of origin, and confronts the narrative conveyed by the European Union around each of its member states. On the socio-cultural level, I’m also interested in the European project. And I’m interested in our place within it. And I think that our place is quite profound, actually. What’s much more interesting about jazz from a European perspective is not necessarily the music, but it’s the way in which the actors make things happen, in a very direct, very informal, very flexible kind of way. Consider doing this with orchestras, for example, and the amount of money and the resources. And then you consider this kind of restless mobility that young European musicians have. The music will never fit inside a box called Europe, but the way the musicians respond to the opportunity is very powerful, as an example of what being in Europe can mean. And I do think that the music may sound different where ever you go, but this lingua franca that the music has, and this

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modus operandi of exchange of working together is pretty amazing. (Gerry Godley, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011) Having Nicolas Anadolis here this year, and the fact that he’s from Greece, it’s actually quite interesting. A, because we’ve never had a Greek artist at the Festival and part of our mission is to explore the darkest Europe. You know, it’s very easy to find great artists in Norway and France and stuff. They’re always here at the Festival. But these places that are not so obvious or where the ecologies for the music are much more fragile than they are in big countries, those are very interesting to us. And also because we’re one of the economic delinquents of the European Union, like you guys [laughs], it’s nice to reach out and actually it’s nice from a socio-political point of view, it’s very nice to say that, actually, life goes on, there are other things that matter, other than what the European Central Bank or the IMF is saying, and that in these countries, not everything that you read in the newspapers is an actual reflection of what life is really like there, because it produces great artists like these. (Gerry Godley, interview, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

National jazz scenes and the European jazz tradition How do European jazz actors perceive themselves and others? When asked to address his/her national jazz scene, inevitably each player characterized it by comparing it with other European national jazz scenes and the American. In that characterization, players tend to project their concerns and the elements they value the most. Susana Santos Silva values the fact that Portuguese jazz is less dominated by classic American jazz than is jazz in other European countries. Hugo Carvalhais and Marcus O’Dair also perceive European jazz as free from the American tradition and more permeable to the influences of other musical genres, being European classical music, folk music, pop, rock and so forth. I think Portugal has developed a lot in recent times. But it’s all still very new, when compared to other European countries, where jazz has been around long before it happened here. So it’s a process, which I think is happening much faster now because there are jazz schools and there are a lot of people who are playing very well, both in Porto and in Lisbon, or even people coming from other parts of the country. And this kind of exchange is crucial, it is essential. And I think that musicians in Portugal are very open, much more than in Spain, or even in the Netherlands. They are much more traditionalistic to some extent. And



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Portuguese musicians are very open to influences, whether it’s New York jazz or music from different parts of Europe. This is very positive. This allows us to build other bridges with other musicians, other cultures, and with other music. (Susana Santos Silva, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) We already belong to a generation that has a lot of jazz history in Europe before us:  Tomasz Stańko in Poland, in France you have Daniel Humair and JeanPaul Celea, in the UK you have Fred Frith and Kenny Wheeler, in Denmark you have people like Palle Mikkelborg, Ørsted Pedersen, Bobo Stenson. My generation comes from that lineage. (Hugo Carvalhais, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) I feel European. I think it’s very difficult to go against it, it would be unnatural. I tried to when I was younger, because we all try to imitate our idols. But then you realise that it doesn’t make much sense. The whole history of European classical music, our morphology, our genetic code . . . we have a much easier time catching certain kinds of ambiances and sounds that to us, Europeans, are much more natural. The rhythmic stuff, African-American jazz, to us is less natural. I think that you can find some common genetic elements in jazz that is done in Europe. From the Nordic to the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, France, I think there is a common denominator here, although of very different things. When you listen to American jazz, you realise that. (ibid.) I think you cannot escape that. It’s like trying to be Russian or Senegalese. It would be extremely complicated for us. Even if we were to live there, and we learned the language and how to behave, it would still be extremely complicated to assume another culture. I think we have to find ourselves and not spending our lives trying to find anything else. (Ibidem.) I think what European jazz has, and what I like about it, is being more or less free from the tradition. Not everyone is free from it; some people are quite slavish to it still. And not all Americans either are slavish to tradition. There’s some great stuff still going on over there. But I think mainly what brings the European thing together has something to do with drawing on their own folk tradition music as well as the African-American jazz, and as a result, possibly, less blue notes, less swing, trying to use a bit of classical music as well, maybe drawing on rock, maybe drawing on electronic music – so, just the willingness to incorporate it all. (Marcus O’Dair, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012)

Gerry Godley stresses the differences between several groups of European countries. According to him, those countries with a strong folk tradition seem to have developed a stronger relationship with American jazz, while the others

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tend to appropriate jazz in a way which is more detached from the American tradition. So we’re seeing lots of trends like this. For example, we’re seeing really, really strong applications from France. There are five or six bands there are like ‘wow!’. But I wouldn’t say that was the case every year. It tends to be a little bit cyclical. I think we could talk about why that is, but sometimes it’s probably certain cities having a critical mass of the right young players at the right time, and then that creates a wave of activity and that subsides and then it comes again. So we’re constantly seeing . . . I mean ‘new music’ is a very loaded term, but what we’re constantly seeing is evidence of creative approaches, not necessarily ‘new music’, but new musicians who are taking interest in creative approaches. Right now, the big dominant factor is pop music, actually. What I’m really hearing is a very interesting pop aesthetic, at both the music itself and the performance, the presentation, which is kind of interesting, because to me that implies that these young musicians are very anxious to reconnect with audiences their own age. There’s a real hunger for that. They’re playing the music that reflects their own life experiences, as opposed to a kind of fossilised music that only refers to itself, which sometimes can be the case. We work very hard with the programming to make it stylistically diverse, though. The real challenging part increasingly is to find young musicians who are adherent to the legacy music, and who are playing at a high level. This year [2016] will be our sixth edition and there are still countries in Europe that we have not managed to plug in. We’ve had no one from Latvia. We’ve had no one from the Czech Republic. Actually, Spain has also been difficult. Spain is different; it’s a case in point. It has its own reality and it works for them. But it doesn’t travel particularly well throughout Europe. And there’s a very strong connection with the New York scene through key players like Jordi Rossy and the way Fresh Sound and labels like that . . . So, for example, the Spanish scene, I can hardly deal with the Spanish scene. While the sort of brand of European jazz is supposedly quite cool in terms of the temperature of the music itself and the Spanish scene is very much defined by its relationship with the American scene. So, how do you tell a story of what European jazz is that accommodates what the Spanish are doing, and what the Norwegians are doing? It’s impossible. Increasingly I think that this idea of one sort of overarching a European aesthetic, the idea that you could tell where musicians came from by the way they played is nonsense, because in a blind testing I think we’d all be struggling with it. And I think that what people were really talking about is a sort of an ECM-Norway axis, that whole body of work that Manfred Eicher was recording with Norwegian musicians. That’s what people really meant by a European sound. But even within Norway that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,



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because in Norway there are lots of people playing unbelievably good free music and funky music. I think that a more interesting way to look at it is to look at the dynamic of the creative scenes in the different countries. The Scandinavian countries have a very fast creative rotation within their scene. I think there are quite a lot of people in Norway making a kind of noisy music as a reaction to all the very beautiful music. And the Danes are a little bit like that as well. And I think it’s very healthy, because it shows that there’s a little bit of conflict, there’s a positive creative conflict in the jazz scenes in those countries. And you don’t necessarily see that in Southern Europe and you don’t see it in my country either. Ireland is one of those places where . . . I think the places where the music tradition is very strong, jazz struggles a little bit. Like in Belgium, where the tradition was not strong, it practically disappeared, so they kind of appropriated jazz as their own. And the Dutch do this as well, of course. My observation of what’s happening in Europe is that there are three kinds of creative scenes. There are typically the Scandinavian ones, because they’re like post-jazz scenes, where really the nomenclature is absolutely breaking down and it’s very hard to tell sometimes whether it’s jazz musicians playing pop or pop musicians playing jazz, but it’s a kind of interesting creative music. So there are those scenes. Now, I think that in other parts of Europe to say this would be heresy. So, then you have the situation, for example, in a lot of the Eastern Europe countries, and the Balkans . . . I’m making big unfair generalizations for you . . . you have to go easy on me, right? [laughs] But in those places the scene, the aesthetic is still absolutely governed by what happens in America. Major American artists, major American artists dominating the festivals, local artists struggle to get any traction. It’s like the creative big bang hasn’t happened. In Norway and Sweden and Denmark and some other places, the creative big bang, where they left all of that dogma behind, has happened. Now their scenes sustain themselves pretty much internally. All of the creative material can be found locally, through the work of other Norwegian artists, for example. And we could analyse who they are. You can trace an interesting line from Garbarek all the way through a whole . . . forty years, now. And sometimes interesting things are happening in Norway because people do not want to be Garbarek, right? So, I think in some countries you can see that the big bang hasn’t quite happened, and it still feels like forty years ago, actually. And then there’s a bunch of interesting countries in the middle, who struggling, who are trying to get to that base, but still very reluctant to leave the old aesthetic behind, because it’s a sort of comfortable base. But the problem is that artistically is sort of a dead base, and the audiences have lost interest in that base I think. The audience for that is over, I’m afraid. So, in a way it’s very uneven. (Interview, Porto, 7 December 2011)

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According to the ground players, there is not a monolithic sonic representation of European jazz. Apparently, each country’s jazz scene has developed a different level of dependency on American jazz. The variants may be strongly connected to the role that traditional music has assumed in each country. However, as we have seen, cultural, political, educational and national identity elements seem to play a determinant role in establishing the form in which jazz is made and performed in each European country. Certainly, other elements  – such as historical and religious – may have been decisive for each one of those particular outcomes. This research, however, focused on the ground practices and the discourse as was produced and presented by the ground players.

The ‘j’ word Apparently, some European musicians want to distance themselves from what is commonly asserted as American jazz. Therefore, they reject identifying their music as ‘jazz’ – the ‘j’ word. Some, such as Susana Santos Silva, opt to reject any music genre labelling; others, such as Hugo Carvalhais, identify their music as improvised music. The musical tradition in which each musician positions himself in seems to be determinant to the way he perceives his music. As Hugo Carvalhais draws from his admiration for European jazz musicians, Dave Morecroft positions his music as part of the UK jazz scene. We should be as honest as possible to ourselves. What will come through our music – the compositions or improvisation – will have perhaps some elements of our roots, because we have experienced them, but also a bit of all the influences that we’ve captured along the way, but not by forcing it. I never think ‘Oh, I will now use a bit of my roots or a bit of fado because now it’s mainstream’. No, because if it doesn’t come naturally it’s because it’s the way it has to be, it’s not inside me and there is no need to force things. I hate labelling. Music is what it is. It’s music! Obviously, influences vary a lot. And there are so many musicians from so many different countries, so many different cultures, that it’s rather odd that we should try to get them all into one single category. (Susana Santos Silva, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012) I make improvised music. I  could say that I  play jazz, but ‘jazz’ has so many different interpretations. We could be talking about Glenn Miller, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis, Blossom Dearie, or Jan Garbareck . . . it is such a vast sea. (Hugo Carvalhais, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012)



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For me there’s been a very rich tradition of fantastic English bands, or coming from the UK, in the last few years, and that’s why for us it’s such an honour to come here and play, because for instance Trio VD, Led Bib, Curios, all the bands that have played here in the last few years have been those bands that I’ve been looking up to, and aspiring to – the guys above me . . . yeah, just buying their albums, going to their gigs . . . and so I was aware of the Festival because of their schedules. Just sent an application form and it’s just a fantastic experience to feel like we’re taking on this relay platform from those guys and then passing on this sort of UK tradition around the Festival and sort of represent what’s going on in London and the UK. I think our generation have had . . . it has come to a point where there are lots and lots of influences coming in to people’s music. And I suppose our generation is the first – or one of the first generations – to be really influenced by that sort of Brit-jazz movement, F-IRE Collective and the Loop Collective and that kind of thing. Since that’s like one step above us, I think we’ve taken on board some of those attributes into the music and we’re mixing up with all the other styles that our people has been listening to, like classical music and funk, punk, rock, all those kinds of things. But in the UK there are bands who are trying to mix in their sort of jazz sensibilities, if you like, with dubstep and grime and hard-core stuff. So I think there’s some very exciting stuff going on in the UK and hopefully we are along those lines. (Dave Morecroft, interview, Porto, 18 February 2012)

For Fernando Sousa, the sonic elements of most of the contemporary music that is presented as jazz challenges the very concept of what jazz music is currently. Maati Rehor describes how in Finland the boundaries between what is jazz and what is not seem to have been relativized. It’s interesting, and it has been interesting in the last ten years, and even in the four different countries [Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland] there are different ways of playing jazz. The jazz musicians have different ways of expressing themselves. We always have this discussion, ‘Are you a jazz musician, or not?’ And this discussion is merely interesting to . . . not to the musicians at all, because they just play the music they like and with other musicians they like to play with. And whatever happens what comes out of it, it’s the work that one can do, there and then. And it often happens in jazz clubs. So the jazz clubs in Norway, I think that they’ve always been very open and very defending that jazz is really, really wide. And everybody knows that, also the audience coming there. So you can hear the same musician one night performing mainstream or something like that and the next evening the same musician is playing something totally different with totally other musicians. And that’s a good thing.

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I think that’s been for so much time that it’s what we’re used to. The other thing is that the young, especially younger jazz musicians, who have been formally trained as jazz musicians do a lot of other kinds of projects. They play in hip hop bands, rock bands or so. And I think that, in Finland, they still identify as jazz musicians. And they don’t find anything strange in playing other music as well. In Finland this discussion about whether it should be called jazz or not it’s not about as if the ‘j’ word should never be used. (Maati Rehor, PC, Dublin, 15 February 2013) Nowadays it’s even impossible to define what is jazz and what is not. Jazz bands in Europe today don’t play classic American jazz anymore. What we call jazz today has little of what used to be played some decades ago. Although more and more musicians today study the basics, they’re more influenced by other aesthetics, such as rock, electronica and each country’s folk music. More and more jazz is a crossover of music genres. It’s called jazz and sometimes I honestly don’t know why. (Fernando Sousa, interview, Porto, 7 December 2011)

Just as jazz music has become more permeable to other genres, so have other music genres been increasingly influenced by jazz and shaped by jazz musicians. According to Gerry Godley, the fact that, increasingly, jazz musicians are engaging with projects of other musical genres, allows us to see jazz – although not presented as such – in other music contexts. The way I  see this is that you can hear the sound of jazz in other vernacular music, more and more. In areas like R&B, the sound of R&B has become more rounded and more and more complex. If you think about Hip Hop, the syncopation is becoming more and more sophisticated, the playing is more sophisticated, the forms. And that’s because lots of jazz musicians are now embedded in the structures of other music. It’s kind of clandestine, but they’re there. So, in one aspect, the monolith of jazz looks an awfully long way from the cultural mainstream, but in reality is very, very close. In fact, it’s so close that you can’t see it. (Interview, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

The discussions associated with the ‘j’ word may show to what extent jazz as music identity can be either relevant or irrelevant to ground players. The fact that there is not a consensual view on what European jazz is may be the result of two factors: first, the wide range of sonic manifestations of what is presented and promoted as jazz in Europe; second, the ongoing negotiation of where European jazz positions itself before the American jazz tradition, and of where European jazz – as a multitude of sonic manifestations – can represent the variety from which the notion of European culture has been built.



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Where is jazz in Europe heading to in the future? Future challenges for jazz in Europe seem to be easy to identify. Marcus O’Dair focuses on aesthetic issues. For him, European jazz may benefit from the fact that it has become, to his view, more interesting than American jazz. That’s a big question. For me, I don’t know if this is right, but you could argue that it’s a good time for European jazz. I’ve been to Scandinavia and there’s a very good scene there for sure, and in particular in Norway. But I  think you could argue – though I don’t know if you would be right – but you could argue that it’s more interesting than what’s happening in America these days. Whether or not it’s better, it’s certainly not the point, it’s only different. I  think there’s a really interesting take on jazz that’s not just based on swinging, blue notes and heads and solos and head again. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s something different. So I  think it’s exciting time, definitely in the UK there’s some good bands playing more or less in the jazz area. Most of them have influences from jazz and outside of jazz as well. And probably audiences who see themselves as jazz fans, some of them don’t follow through the whole of jazz. But I think there’s definitely some interesting, great stuff. For one, it’s not dead yet. One of the things that is quite interesting is that there are some elements in what jazz is going through that do relate to some of the other niche genres. But arguably jazz, as the only music that is guaranteed to be something different live than it is on the record, maybe jazz comes out of this better than any music. (PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

For Wim Wabbes, an attitude change in the European jazz sector is needed in order to affirm itself as a relevant player within the music industry sector. I think that maybe jazz must be a bit more – producers, records, and artists – they need to be a bit more arrogant, in a way, about what they’re doing, in the sense of pride, actually, be proud about what you’re doing, as ‘Yes, this will create trends in lots of ways.’ (PC, Porto, 17 February 2012)

Planning for succession seems to be one of the main concerns on the promoters’ side. According to Gerry Godley, a generational renewal is needed, which is incumbent upon promoters like him. We have to think about planning for succession in our sector. Very few new festivals of significance have come in the last ten years or so. The main period of real entrepreneurism and pushing was maybe the late nineteen sixties. And so there are legacy issues now around all of those structures, festivals and venues.

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And so the sector really has to start thinking about succession planning. And that will require leaders to emerge, and it’s the responsibility of people like me and of older colleagues who should start thinking about our succession, identifying leaders, bringing them through. That’s just one area that we could focus on. (Interview, Dublin, 16 February 2013)

Also, creating a discussion platform that would bring together promoters and the educational structures seems to be imperious. Gerry Godley discusses how the disconnection between jazz education and the ground practices may lead musicians in the future to react against institutionalized education. Again, observing his work at Leeds College in the future will certainly be interesting. Roughly one year before being appointed as that institution’s principal, his concerns were mainly focused on pedagogical issues and on the lack of debate between jazz education and players on the ground. The conversation with the educational structures will be a difficult one. And it will be adversarial, because there are profound issues around the existing pedagogical doctrine. We really have to question whether [the existing pedagogy] is fit for purpose, for where the music is going. And I have a very strong sense that jazz history is about to repeat itself in the same way that in the previous generations, you know, the guardians of specific idioms would be in conflict with the next one coming through. I think that’s going to happen again. I also think that’s a positive thing, because when those things happened in the past that’s when the music was on its most vital and on its most interesting . . . and the periods when that wasn’t happening were the flat, slightly banal, slightly directionless periods. And I think the next trend is going to be the auto-didactic musician. I think that’s where it’s going. I think there will be a reaction. (ibid.)

The other sector that should be closer to the ground practices is academia. In Gerry Godley’s view, academic work could assist ground players in framing the debates around their position on wider contexts, such as the European social, economic and cultural ecology. I absolutely feel academia should be more on the field. It’s vital, I think, because there’s no tradition of high level criticism, I  don’t mean what’s written in the newspapers, I  mean what you, José, are doing, high level academic criticism. I find it interesting to see the emergence of a forth level educational opportunity for jazz musicians, at doctorate level, and at post-doctorate level, but most of the people I meet who are doing doctorates are being gnostic, very deep into some granular aspect of artistic practice, but very few are looking at the wider



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socio-economic-cultural environment and the impact of the music on the world, and the impact of the world in the music. We have very little to frame our discussion around jazz’s place in the wider cultural firmament. We really need that, but we’re still a new art form, I guess, in glacial terms, in comparison to classical music for example. It’s still very early days for that. I believe it’s starting to come. I believe that the fact that you and I are having this conversation is a sign that that’s starting to come. Another reason it doesn’t happen is because we have no institutional frameworks to allow it to happen. For example, the European Concert Hall Organisation, ECHO . . . there are institutional structures around symphonic music and orchestral music. And, for example, there are institutional structures provided by public services broadcast that have radio orchestras, and many other institutions around that, which gives this sort of top layer of oversight and policy making and deeper thinking, proactive thinking, and mapping exercises. Whereas our community, everybody’s working on the ground. There’s only one level, and it’s on the ground. So, by definition, it’s reactive. We have to work in a very reactive way, because we’re pretty much in permanent crisis-mode, because there’s always a new crisis for jazz. So, we never really get either the time or the resources, or the institutional structure that allows that to happen. Now, ironically, the only institutional structure there is that could facilitate that conversation is academia. And one of the criticisms of actors like me is that the academy is in a different place from where we are. And I know that’s true in many spheres of endeavour, the world of the academy is hermetic, but we need to access all of the expertise that exists within the academy to inform what we do. So, I think there’s this maturing process of our sector. The art form is like a hundred odd years old, but the academic structures are even younger, they’re maybe sixty, seventy years old maximum. So, there is a very important kind of step change required in terms of academic thinking. Of course, what the academy is trying to do still is that they tend to talk about syllabus and performance doctrine, whereas now they need to get engaged with the other things. And there’s a huge opportunity in the university campus for the music to be part of it. Because one of the problems with the music schools is that they tend not to be part of larger campuses. But still they exist within an academic ecology where you would think that they would access the expertise of psychology departments, urban planners, sociologists and political theorists. And that needs to happen. (ibid.)

The exercise of speculating on jazz’s future in Europe seems to bring to the fore the players’ biggest concerns  – the aesthetics of the music, the ways in which the music is being promoted, presented and taught. At the same time,

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academia – namely European jazz studies – is perceived as a crucial partner that could assist ground players in informing their future actions.

Sintoma Records Lisbon, March 18, 2014. At a meeting room of an old amateur theater in Lisbon – Guilherme Cossoul – sitting at a table, amidst old props and posters, five members of Sintoma Records discuss the netlabel’s future. Desidério Lázaro, saxophonist, and João Firmino, guitarist, both in their thirties, created Sintoma Records in 2012. Camila Reis, graphic designer, Cicero Lee, bassist, and I have been asked to assist as the netlabel’s consultants. After fast growth, João and Desidério believe that it is time to rethink the steps Sintoma should take in the future. Under discussion are the very principles that had inspired the creation of the netlabel and the criteria that have guided its course. During the meeting, Desidério Lázaro expressed his views, as the conversation developed. I don’t know how far we can go, unless we become a formal association. So far, Firmino and I  have taken up the work, with the help of Camila, but we must start thinking about having a professional structure if we want to take this forward. Downloads should remain free. I think changing that should be completely out of the question. It’s one of our added values and it has become kind of our trademark. But everything else is open for debate, like everything has been from the start, actually. (PC, 18 March 2014)

Sintoma Records is a Portuguese jazz netlabel, based in Lisbon, which provides musicians a platform for releasing their albums online. Downloads are free, under CC licenses. Donations are invited. During its first year, Sintoma released twelve albums. Around five hundred downloads were made of each album. Approximately 60 per cent of the downloads were from Portugal and the other 40 per cent from around the world, especially from other European countries, such as the Netherlands, the UK, France and Germany. Particularly appealing for the younger musicians within the Lisbon jazz scene, the netlabel operates as an informal network between musicians and other actors of the Portuguese jazz sectors, such as club owners, festival directors and music critics. At the same time, the network brings together young independent professionals from other areas, such as studio engineers, graphic designers, photographers and videographers. Sintoma seems to embody the concept of social capital (Bourdieu 1983):  all its members benefit from the interchange of information and resources. The netlabel’s social structure is the result of that interchange process. Together with



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the recording label activity, Sintoma has promoted and produced three music festivals – two in Lisbon and one up-country, in Castelo Branco. Those festivals worked as showcases for the netlabel’s most recent releases. While for 12 Points I have adopted a position of non-participant observation, I have approached Sintoma Records using a participant observation methodology. As a Lisbon jazz musician, I decided to join the netlabel. During 2013, I released two albums as leader.12 In that capacity, I  took part in every meeting and all other activities promoted by the netlabel. In October 2014, I became part of an informal board of consultants, which has provided me with direct access inside the netlabel to the decision-making process. I conducted interviews with some of the musicians who have released albums under Sintoma, collected notes from meetings and recorded sound and video from performances that took place during the netlabel’s festivals.

A Portuguese case Sintoma is the Portuguese word for symptom. The process leading to the establishment of Sintoma seems to be closely associated to symptoms of profound changes that have occurred recently in Portugal, Europe and within the music industry. After exponential growth in jazz education in Portugal between 2001 and 2005, interest in jazz has spread to various age groups and social classes across the country. In 2005, Portugal saw a volume of jazz activity like never before: four higher education jazz courses13 and twenty two jazz schools and academies14 were established; four recording labels15 exclusively dedicated to jazz had been created, and over thirty annual international jazz festivals16 coexisted, as well as four radio shows17, one bimonthly jazz magazine18 and one record shop19 exclusively dedicated to jazz (Dias 2010). However, in the years following the country’s capitulation to international financial assistance as a result of the economic crisis of 2008, austerity measures triggered deep recession waves and profound social and economic changes. The optimism and enthusiasm of the first decade of the twenty-first century was followed by a period of economic, social and political instability. Jazz, as well as other artistic sectors, was strongly affected. Although all four university jazz courses have remained, as well as three jazz radio broadcasts, the only magazine dedicated to jazz is now limited to its online edition, the number of festivals

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has been reduced considerably, many jazz schools across the country have been closed and the only record store exclusively dedicated to jazz and two record labels have ceased their activity. Within this context, two independent jazz associations emerged: Portajazz, operating in Porto, and Jazz ao Centro, based in Coimbra. In addition to promoting regular concerts in their facilities, these associations created record labels – Carimbo Portajazz and JACC Records, respectively. In Lisbon, where the largest number of jazz musicians resides, the Hot Clube de Portugal, founded in 1948, runs a jazz school – Escola de Jazz Luís Villas Boas, founded in 1979 – and a club hosting regular concerts from Tuesday to Saturday. However, Hot Clube does not have any record label. The younger generation of the Lisbon jazz scene, many recently arrived from conservatories and universities abroad, struggled to find opportunities that would allow them to release their records and increase their exposure. João Firmino and Desidério Lázaro, former students at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag, respectively, decided to create an online platform that would provide Lisbon jazz musicians with the opportunity to release their work on a DIY basis. Sintoma is an informal group of people, sharing the same interests, and with close to no hierarchy within the structure. Because there is not a formal association for professional jazz musicians in Lisbon, many of them have already taken part, in one way or another, in Sintoma  – either being in one of the bands that have released an album through the netlabel, having performed at one of Sintoma’s festivals, having provided some form of assistance to those who have recorded or simply for consuming (or downloading) the netlabel’s releases.

Putting music out there João Firmino explains the process leading to the formation of Sintoma: the need to vent the volume of creative production made by jazz musicians seems to have been the main reason for the creation of the netlabel. Although he recognizes that the music industry is going through a difficult period, Firmino identifies several deficiencies in the process of promoting new releases as the major factor for young jazz musicians not being able to establish themselves in the market. Luís Barrigas, pianist, seems to share this view. He sees joining Sintoma as a way of controlling the circumstances under which his records are released.



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I knew Desidério20 while we were both studying in the Netherlands. He had just put out an album through JACC Records21 and shortly after I did the same. But we both shared this ambition of making records on a regular basis, and we’re always trying to stay focused on composing and creating new projects. So, although JACC has done a pretty decent job, within their abilities and the situation that every record label is struggling with, we both felt that after we had released our two records, and with all the work involved, we had very little in return. Music didn’t seem to reach people. Portuguese jazz has very little exposure in record stores. So the solution was to be very practical about it, and to find a way in which we could record and release on a regular basis. Because the truth is, we live in a country where lots of amazing musicians have been out there for some time, and they’re all composers. And if we take a look back, we realise that there’s not that much Portuguese jazz being released. And it’s not that the musicians aren’t producing enough, it’s just because making a record takes so much effort and you get so little in return, that musicians just say, ‘It’s not worth it’. I heard lots of musicians saying that. And most of them are quite known and they don’t have any problems in getting gigs. But they also need to put out new records in order to get more gigs. So the idea was basically to create a small label that would at least allow us to continue putting our music out there. But at the same time, this very small label manages to reach more people. And I think that the industry has created lots of barriers. You have to convince the people who run the recording labels to do it. You actually have to ask permission to put out an album the way you want it to be. And all those barriers bring down your energy, they curb down your enthusiasm. (João Firmino, interview, Lisbon, 8 November 2011) I’ve become tired of chasing record labels to put my records out. I just want my records out, whenever I want and the way I want them to sound like and look like . . . You just have to do a recording session and, when you think it’s good enough, you put it out. No one tells you how it should sound or when it should come out. I’ve got really tired of waiting, sometimes for months on end. And then, when it comes out, you’re probably doing something completely different, and with completely different musicians. So, you’ve just lost that momentum. It makes no sense. (Luís Barrigas, PC, Lisbon, 24 October 2012)

Another crucial symptom appears to be the low market dissemination that traditional jazz labels seem to achieve. Traditional labels have been operating mainly as distributors. Musicians often have to invest in the production process of their records, but hardly ever get to recoup that investment or even reach a reasonable volume of consumers. As Firmino illustrates, the musicians’

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confidence in the ways in which both traditional labels and music stores operate in order to promote jazz has been gradually broken. Desidério, for instance, his record had just sold fifty-seven copies in over a year [laughs]. It’s ridiculous! Another aspect is the price of the records. We don’t agree with the idea that jazz is elitist. Everyone can become a jazz fan, if they have the opportunity to listen to it, and then make they own decisions. I think the music industry hasn’t made an effort to change because there is a lot of money involved. In our case there isn’t, and that can be an advantage. We’re still selling our records at the end of the gigs. And because we have no access to big venues, or magazines, or air time on television, the easiest and the affordable way of spreading our music is through social media. (Interview, Lisbon, 8 November 2011)

Free download is assumed by Sintoma’s members as their main strategy to achieve greater exposure. Since financial investment is not retrieved when releasing through traditional labels, exposure – or a long-term investment in their careers, according to Firmino – represents a non-financial, but positive, return. We started thinking that we should do it the other way around – why not give our music for free and let people listen to it? Let people talk about it and share it! I mean, we’re making this kind of music that doesn’t reach big crowds, it’s niche music, it’s not subsidised and, because of all that, there’s not many people interested in investing money into it. So it’s up to us to do it ourselves, to make it happen. I don’t know anyone in our industry who is making money out of records. So, we’re making records that people can listen to and we hope they’ll like them. It’s a way of promoting our work. It became obvious that it would be better to invest two thousand euros on a record that would reach a thousand people, than not spending any money at all but reach fifty-seven people. It’s an investment in my career and in my work. So, one of the things Desidério and I  agreed from the start was that we didn’t want to be submitted to that kind of process. I  want to be able to have an idea, and immediately I  know that I can organise things in order to make it happen, record it and put it out there. I remember David Binney22 saying that Scofield23 told him that things only begin to happen for you after your eighth record. So, each new album you put out is a way of getting some exposure. And the more records you put out, the more you get known. (Interview, Lisbon, 8 November 2011)

Also, the way cultural policies are governed in Portugal seems to have been decisive for the creation of Sintoma  – namely, the lack of public support for cultural associations, lack of networking between cultural associations across



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the country and the lack of public investment in promoting culture and national artists inside and abroad. The netlabel is assumed to be a proactive platform which, through its members, aims to become an independent and active player within the country’s cultural sector. To that effect, it represents a disruption in the way cultural players had positioned themselves towards the country’s cultural policies. The Portuguese cultural sectors have been supported almost exclusively by public funding. Economic austerity measures have had a severe impact, with public investment in culture dropping from 1.2 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2003 to 0.1 per cent in 2013, a 75 per cent drop.24 Luís Candeias, drummer, expresses his frustration towards this economic context and stresses the differences between Portugal and the Netherlands, where he studied. Firmino also draws from his experience to criticize the lack of public protection for the cultural sectors. In the Netherlands you’re able to get to other countries for very cheap flights, or even driving. This seems to be easier over there. And also people go out more. It used to be like that a few years ago over here, but now you see lots of people struggling to pay the rent or to hold a steady job. So, people can’t afford to buy jazz records [laughs]. That’s the least of their concerns. If we can give them away, why not do it? (Luís Candeias, PC, Lisbon, 24 October 2012) We don’t have many opportunities in Portugal, which means that outside Portugal it’s even harder. Maybe Mário Laginha and Maria João25 have done it, but I don’t see anyone else making it. I’ve lived in the Netherlands and I felt that the market there, as everywhere else in the world, tends to protect their own musicians. And it makes sense. You know the people there, so it’s easier to get gigs. And our generation has such a hard time, and no opportunities. Portugal doesn’t have a Ministry of Culture anymore. Venues are not booking jazz concerts anymore. We have so little resources. So, we can’t simply stay home waiting for better days. Because there’s lots of public money that is being spent on fireworks and all of that stuff that should be invested in culture. And you can do a lot with very little money and resources. And there are lots of cultural associations around the country wanting to have live music and live jazz, but they have no support. And people don’t want to pay to see live jazz. We’re actually competing against DJs . . . Of course we need to make the effort of bringing jazz to where the people are, but it’s nothing compared with the amount of money that used to be paid to jazz musicians some decades ago. That’s simply unsustainable. And we should all make an effort to make things sustainable for a long time. (João Firmino, interview, Lisbon, 8 November 2011)

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Firmino’s last statement seems to denounce another important factor in the changes that have occurred within the Portuguese jazz sector: the growing number of musicians. This exponential growth – the result of investment in jazz education – has reshaped the Portuguese music scene and the space each player has available within that scene.

‘No Middleman’ In an industry increasingly populated by young musicians, middlemen begin to be seen as expendable. Technological progress  – both in terms of digital recording and music dissemination online – has allowed musicians to accumulate multiple tasks that were previously performed by different actors. The way in which musicians perceive the scope of their work seems to have altered widely in recent times. Gradually, musicians have come to assume that, in addition to their musical expertise, their role also extends to ensuring the production, promotion and dissemination of their music. Sintoma adopted the English expression ‘no middleman’ as its slogan. In three different occasions during the interview, Firmino brought to the fore this notion: first, he questioned the legitimacy of middlemen’s decisions on his music; secondly, he drew from examples of jazz and rock musicians and bands that have gone independent from the recording industry; thirdly, he explained to what extent netlabels do not collide with the traditional industry, by operating in parallel to the market. Another reason is the quantity of middlemen. It’s true that it takes a lot of work to do everything on your own – the music, the studio, the musicians, producing, multitasking – but, on the other hand, I can deal with my own mistakes much easier than I do with the mistakes others make, because I can learn from my own mistakes and improve. And when there are so many third parties involved in the same process, and things don’t go as well as they should, which is kind of frustrating because you cannot control your own music, it can become very hard to accept. This is not an original idea. Rock musicians, pop, they’ve done it in the past. And even famous bands have done this. Radiohead26 were very successful. Even jazz musicians, like Kurt27 and Joshua,28 who had been working with big labels, are now creating their own independent labels. So, we realised that, in this industry, there is no place for middleman anymore. When we first started, we thought that we were kind of looking for trouble and that we would make lots of enemies, but the truth is that we didn’t. We’re going against the system,



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but not against anyone in particular. Clean Feed,29 TOAP30 and all of the other Portuguese jazz labels have done an amazing work. So, there’s nothing against them. But for us it didn’t make much sense anymore to continue working within those models. If you want to be released through them, you have to invest some money. And we wouldn’t be able to come up with the necessary amount every year and a half. So, that, for us, wasn’t an option. And also, like this, you have the freedom to get involved in your own projects and your own dreams. You can do whatever kind of project you want, whether it’s free jazz or playing standards, you can do it. (Interview, Lisbon, 8 November 2011)

The digital revolution in the music industry has challenged the ways in which musicians perceive their role in the process of producing and disseminating music. Not only did they acquire the ability to multitask; they seem to believe that they have developed greater control over their own music.

‘Sintoma is a laptop, nothing else’ The concept that musicians can regain control over their music through technological means redoubles the optimism towards the possibilities of the netlabel achieving international exposure and dimension. When referring to this aspect, Firmino and Lázaro accentuate the technological nature of the movement. Sintoma was meant to function as this kind of shop window for Portuguese independent jazz musicians. Each new musician brings his own fans. And so it just grows from there. Each time someone talks about Sintoma, each musician benefits. And also the fact that many of us have studied abroad helps bringing some international attention to what we’re all doing. And we’re open to releasing international musicians. That way we would become kind of an international jazz movement. And that is very easy to do. There isn’t any physical impracticality. Sintoma is a computer. It’s nothing else. So, it can exist anywhere where there’s Wi-Fi. But we’re perfectly aware that it will take time to get there. It’s just starting in Lisbon. We hope it gets to other cities around the country, and it will take time to get to other places around the world. But that’s the goal – becoming an international label, just like Clean Feed and ECM. (ibid.) Our record label is a laptop. We don’t need anything else. The moment we put our records online, we’re out there, our music’s out there. (Desidério Lázaro, PC, 18 March 2014)

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However, technological capabilities seem to be just a medium that allows people to come together around a project. The optimism shared by the other members consolidates the sense of belonging to a social movement and, at the same time, feeds both the affective dimensions of interpersonal relationships, and of each member’s dedication to the project.

Helping musicians doing things by themselves Sintoma functions not only as an informal network, but also as a DIY platform that encourages its members to value DIY as their way of operating. As underlined by Firmino, any financial return is seen as potentially destructive of the spirit that inspired the netlabel. So, what we decided was that, instead of doing all the production work for the musicians, we would help musicians doing that work by themselves. Sintoma doesn’t have any money, it doesn’t make any money and it simply cannot give money to anyone. What we do is help musicians do things by themselves. And even if Sintoma ever becomes a formal association, we have to make sure there is no money involved, because the moment there is money involved, the whole idea falls apart. Work should always be voluntary. Donations don’t seem to be working yet. I think it’s a question of educating people and creating awareness. I think it might take decades. (Interview, Lisbon, 8 November 2011)

DIY informal network As we have seen in the earlier case study, 12 Points can be perceived as a formal and informal network that promotes formal and informal networking. Sintoma, on the other hand, can be regarded as an exclusively informal network, based on DIY action, which promotes DIY informal networking. Since Sintoma’s members are almost entirely musicians, they collaborate with independent professionals from other creative areas associated with the production and dissemination of music. We provide musicians with information about cheaper studios. We’ve managed to create these agreements with some studios in order to get lower prices. And we did the same with graphic designers, photographers, video producers, and so on. It’s kind of a trading system. You can get a professional to make you a video



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for a very good price. And if that particular video producer likes your work and he asks you to make some music for his next documentary, you will probably return the favour, and make it really cheap for him. It’s probably the one good thing about the economic crises. Because everyone I know who is working on those areas is in the same situation as we are. So, we’re just kind of helping each other to keep on working and promoting each other’s work. (ibid.)

Sintoma has proved to be a relevant case study by enabling us to see how an informal DIY network operates in its early stages. With a non-hierarchical structure and a strong independent proactive spirit, the netlabel seems to be a potential response to the country’s economic and cultural context and to the music industry’s paradigm shift. At the same time, it responds to the fact that there are no formal institutions in the country that provide jazz musicians with information and support. However, some of the netlabel’s characteristics are profoundly paradoxical. First, although it is indeed DIY motivated and promotes networking between DIY actors from other creative areas, the fact that Sintoma needs independent professionals from those areas seems to indicate that the traditional record label structure was simply substituted by the collaboration between independent professionals. Secondly, disseminating music online, though seen as a way of engaging direct communication with fans and of attracting new ones, is strongly dependent on traditional promotional strategies, such as sending electronic press kits to music critics weeks before the records are released, thus synchronizing those releases with the newspapers’ reviews; producing music festivals exclusively with the netlabel’s artists and releasing a CD version for every record released online, which is mainly sold at concerts. Thirdly, although mainly run by its members, Sintoma’s agenda is mostly set by their co-founders, Lázaro and Firmino. Nevertheless, Sintoma seems to be a laboratory for cultural strategies and practices, where ideological meanings are in constant reformulation. During the several meetings of the netlabel’s members, some frictions have come the fore:  the principle of voluntary work and the financial sustainability of the structure; the notion of DIY and the dependency of others; operating in parallel to the system but within its logic; rejecting the ‘middleman’ while creating collaboration with new ones; no restraints to aesthetic models on the netlabel’s catalogue while trying to create a consistent sonic representation for Sintoma. In many ways it allows us to get a glimpse of how an informal platform for a social structure around music is built.

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Conclusions

The civilization of Europe has been built upon a series of transnational connections between cities. These networks are a crucial element in the way Europeans have led technological, aesthetic and political changes throughout the centuries. Therefore, networking is key to understanding the way Europeans operate in the cultural and political arenas. My research suggests that networking is an essential aspect of jazz practices in Europe. Europe historically has been built as a culture of networking cities, and as result European jazz actors function within this logic, and at two levels – formal jazz networks and informal jazz networks. Formal jazz networks serve chiefly as established and systemic platforms for advocacy. These organizations gather various actors  – mainly musicians and promoters – who come together in order to better assess current challenges, define common strategies and reinforce their ability to promote and disseminate jazz in Europe. As systemic platforms for advocacy, formal jazz networks negotiate their intents with top-to-bottom cultural policies. The official rhetoric conveyed by the EU around European common identity often stresses the notions of integration and cultural diversity. Across countries, the very perception of what jazz is  – as sound and as cultural experience  – finds different meanings. European jazz promotors and musicians feel the need to engage in closer communication with audiences, in order to know their expectations and interests, and to better understand the undergoing changes in the ways in which they experience jazz. Realizing how jazz can be part of audiences’ cultural consumption constitutes a crucial factor in order to develop future strategies. A series of ‘Third Way’ policies has been conducted in order to place schooling and education at the core of social policy. Both promoters and musicians recognize that the investment made in educational opportunities is of extreme importance. However, they also feel that a new investment is needed in the quality and variety of infrastructures where jazz is  – or could be – presented to audiences. On the other hand, informal jazz networks operate as beacons of independent cultural creativity. Operating at both local and/

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or international levels, they constitute social structures built upon ‘capitals of information’ that allow independent jazz actors to consolidate vital information for their activities – touring, recording, disseminating and promoting. The ways in which both informal and formal jazz networks operate are greatly informed by their members’ knowledge and experience from working on the ground. This process echoes the ways in which ‘cultural production’ takes place in Europe and demonstrates how various cultural policies within Europe determine different levels of cultural production. Diverse economic contexts, cultural, geographical, social and political periphery or centrality in Europe are some of the most crucial aspects that inform the terms by which cultural production is negotiated in the jazz sector. Jazz is created and reinvented in the process of its dissemination and practice (Johnson 2002). I suggest that jazz identities in Europe result from the negotiation between discourse and practice (Sassatelli 2009) and in the interstices between the formal and informal networks that support them. The narratives on jazz in Europe are thereby both informed by the experiences of actors on the ground and their projection of what European identity is or should be. In these narratives, both jazz and Europe are featured mainly in their ideal interpretations, with common values of cultural diversity, mobility and of a pan-European reality. Within this context, I suggest that jazz networks are important contributors to the process of creating European cultural identity – or identities. The fact that some of the characteristics of that identity are paradoxical, by affirming its uniqueness while adopting external values – those from the United States – accentuates the extent to which both cultural European identity and jazz identities are constantly being built. A  number of overlapping issues around jazz activity in Europe are at the core of that negotiation process. Music education, cultural policies, public funding, the reshaping of the music industry and the ways in which jazz is presented to audiences around Europe are all central to the debate among contemporary European jazz actors. By giving voice to the actors on the ground, academic research can help in shedding a new light on these crucial issues. Jazz promoters across Europe have limited – or non-formalized – information on jazz consumption. The audience categorizations, which were established by research conducted during the 1990s and 2000s – such as high-, middle- and lowbrow social groups  – are being challenged by information coming from both ground players and academic researchers. Comprehensive trans-European research is ripe for carrying out so we might better understand in what ways cultural consumption, and particularly how it relates to jazz, is changing in

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Europe. Independent jazz practices have increased as a response to the decline of the authoritative role played by the traditional gatekeepers of jazz. In the 1980s computing technologies gave rise to affordable home recording and production; in the 1990s file sharing became commonplace and largely replaced traditional music consumption (Galuszka 2012a); by the end of the twentieth century, major recording labels began cost-cutting, impacting small divisions like jazz (Cuscuna 2005). Although extensive mapping has been done on the changes in the music industry in the digital age, the ways in which jazz talent, performance and dissemination are authenticated today requires further enquiry. Also, jazz education in Europe is one of the most pressing concerns. In the 1990s and early 2000s numerous jazz departments were created in European universities (Medbøe and Dias 2014), as well as in basic and secondary education. I suggest that the booming of jazz education in Europe can be seen as a determinant contribution to the development of national jazz scenes and jazz networks across Europe. However, further research would be useful in juxtaposing different education models across Europe and analysing the extent to which they are responding to the current challenges of jazz musicians. My presence in 12 Points from 2011 to 2013 was perceived as a step towards a greater commitment from academia to engage in close collaboration with the ground. That collaboration was increased as I  took on the role of academic delegate alongside Tony Whyton and George McKay in the following years. EJN has also increased the level of collaboration with academic researchers and, in 2018, the EJN Jazz Research Group was established. Across Europe, more and more jazz festivals host activities with the collaboration of researchers, such as roundtables, exhibitions and public lectures. This collaboration is absolutely vital. At a time when knowledge exchange and collaborative research is at the core of jazz studies in Europe, researchers are increasingly valuable for the development and sustainability of the industry. They have bridged the gap between practices on the ground and academic input, which is progressively being reflected on informed agenda setting and policy-making. Ground players are also progressively pursuing research. As practice-as-research becomes on a par with more traditional methodologies, performers are also starting to contribute with essential outputs to the understanding of such a rich and diverse music reality. Jazz networks in Europe are built upon multiple layers of relationships. Geographically, those networks extend from local, regional and national to

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international and pan-European. As sectors, they connect musicians, promoters, media, audiences, academics and cultural policy-makers. Jazz networks in Europe thereby represent the complex weaving of various meanings and understandings. They constitute an organic, dynamic force that continuously challenges the realities and aspirations of European music and identity.

Notes Introduction 1 The Economist, 21 October 1999. 2 This work, however, does not have as its focal point the relationship between American and European jazz. 3 José Dias Quartet, 360, Sintoma Records, 2013; José Dias, Nuno Oliveira, Alexandre Alves, Magenta, Sintoma Records, 2013.

1  Researching jazz in Europe today 1 See Francesco Martinelli (ed.), The History of European Jazz: The Music, Musicians and Audience in Context (London: Equinox, 2018). 2 Prolific work has been done in this field. On Nazi Germany see Michael H. Kater, Different Drummers, Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Michael H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Susan C. Cook, ‘Jazz as Deliverance: The Reception and Institution of American Jazz during the Weimar Republic’, American Music, Special Jazz Issue, 7, no. 1 (1989): 30–47; on the Soviet Union see Gertrud Pickhan and Rüigger Ritter (eds), Jazz Behind the Iron Curtain – Jazz Under State Socialism (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2011); Peter Bugge, ‘Normalization and the Limits of the Law: The Case of the Czech Jazz Section’, East European Politics and Societies, 22, no. 2 (2008): 282–307. 3 See Marc A. Weiner, ‘Urwaldmusik and the Borders of German Identity: Jazz in Literature of the Weimar Republic’, German Quarterly, 64, no. 4 (1991): 475–87. 4 See Robert T. Holt, Radio Free Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minneasota/ Lund Press, 1958); Suzanne Lommers, Europe On Air – Interwar Projects for Radio Broadcasting (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); Tim Wall and Paul Long, ‘Jazz Britannia: Mediating the Story of British Jazz on Television’, Jazz Research Journal, 3, no. 2 (2009): 145–70.

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5 Anna Sofia Rossholm, Reproducing Languages, Translating Bodies: Approaches to Speech, Translation and Cultural Identity in Early European Sound Film (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2006); Andrew W. Hurley, ‘Hansjürgen Pohland’s Tobby (1961–62): Jazz, Cinéma-vérité and the Beginnings of Young German Cinema’, Studies in European Cinema (2010): 193–207, www.tandfonline.com/toc/rseu20/7/3; Jennifer Fay, ‘That’s Jazz Made in Germany!: Hallo, Fräulein! And the Limits of Democratic Pedagogy’, Cinema Journal, 44, no. 1 (2004): 3–24. 6 Michael H. Kater, ‘New Democracy and Alternative Culture: Jazz in West Germany after the Second World War’, Australian Journal of Politics & History, 52 (2006): 173–87; Berndt Ostendorf, ‘Subversive Reeducation? Jazz as a Liberating Force in Germany and Europe’, Revue française d’études américaines. (2001): 53–7. 7 Ted Gioia, ‘Jazz and the Primitivist Myth’, The Musical Quarterly, 73, no. 1 (1989): 130–43. 8 Jim Smyth, ‘Depravity and All That Jazz: The Public Dance Halls Act of 1935’, History Ireland, 1, no. 2 (1993): 51–4. 9 Ralph Willett, ‘Hot Swing and the Dissolute Life: Youth, Style and Popular Music in Europe 1939–49’, Popular Music, 8 (1989): 157–63. 10 George McKay, ‘Trad Jazz – Protest, Pleasure, Politics – Interviews with Some of those Involved (2001–02)’, http://usir.salford.ac.uk/9306/1/trad_jazz_ interviews_2001-02_PDF.pdf, last accessed 21 August 2013. 11 Lisa E. Davenport, Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War Era (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2009); Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2006); Stephen A. Crist, ‘Jazz as Democracy? Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics’, Journal of Musicology, 26, no. 2 (2009): 133–74. 12 Jed Rasula, ‘Jazz as a Decal for the European Avant-Garde’, Blackening Europe: The African American Presence, ed. Heike Raphael-Hernandez (New York: Routledge, 2004): 13–34; Tyler Stovall, ‘Black Modernism and the Making of the Twentieth Century Paris, 1919’, in Afromodernisms: Paris, Harlem and the Avant-Garde, ed. Fionnghuala Sweeney and Kate Marsh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013): 19–42. 13 Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels – Cold War Politics, American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 14 On New Jazz Studies, see Krin Gabbard, ‘Introduction: The Canon and Its Consequences’, in Jazz Among the Discourses, ed. Krin Gabbard (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995): 1–28; Heli Reimann, ‘Jazz Research and the Moments of Change’, in Etnomusicologian Vuosikija 2013 (Helsinki: Suomen Etnomusikologinen Seura, 2013): 8–33; Kenneth E. Prouty, ‘Toward Jazz’s “Official”

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20 21

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History: The Debates and Discourses of Jazz History Textbooks’, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, 1, no. 1 (2010): 19–43. Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities was a three-year project (2010–13) funded as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA), which included experts in jazz research from seven European universities in five countries, such as project leader Tony Whyton and George McKay (University of Salford), Andrew Dubber (Birmingham City University), Nicholas Gebhardt (University of Lancaster), Franz Kerschbaumer and Christa BrucknerHaring (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz), Anne Dvinge (University of Copenhagen), Walter van de Leur (University of Amsterdam) and Petter Frost Fadnes (University of Stavanger). Its main goal was to examine the way in which jazz has developed in different European settings by a comparative study on community, history and national identity. The project team continues developing research networking in transnational jazz studies. Mark Slobin (ed.), Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Paul Austerlitz, ‘Birch-Bark Horns and Jazz in the National Imagination: The Finnish Folk Music Vogue in Historical Perspective’, Ethnomusicology, 44, no. 2 (2000). Haftor Medbøe, ‘Cultural Identity and Transnational Heritage in Contemporary Jazz: A Practice-Based Study of Composition and Collaboration’. PhD thesis (Edinburgh Napier University, 2013), http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/6124/, last accessed 10 December 2013. Tony Whyton, ‘Birth of the School: Discursive Methodologies in Jazz Education’, Music Education Research, 8, no. 1 (Taylor & Francis, 2006): 65– 81; Sanne Posthuma, Professional Jazz and Pop Music Training in Europe (Amsterdam: Associacion Européene des Conservatoires, 2002). George McKay, Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Christopher Washburne, ‘Jazz Re-Bordered: Cultural Policy in Denmark’, Jazz Perspectives, 4, no. 2 (2010): 121–55. M. F. Jordan, Le Jazz: Jazz and French Cultural Identity (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010). Marie Buscatto, ‘Contributions of Ethnography to Gendered Sociology: the French Jazz World’, Qualitative Sociology Review, 3 (2007): 46–58; George McKay, ‘From “Male Music” to Feminist Improvising’, Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005): 243–95. Michael Cuscuna, ‘Strictly on the Record: The Art of Jazz and the Recording Industry’, The Source: Challenging Jazz Criticism, no. 2 (2005): 63–70; Tom Sykes, ‘Remediated Swing and the Celestial Jukebox: New ‘Friends’ for Jazz?’,

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24 25 26 27

28

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31 32

Notes in Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference 2009 (Salford: The University of Salford, 2009): 390–5. Tony Whyton’s critique on Stuart Nicholson’s Is Jazz Dead?, in Tony Whyton, ‘Europe and the New Jazz Studies’, in Eurojazzland: Jazz and European Sources, Dynamics, and Contexts, ed. L. Cerchiari, L. Cugny and F. Kerschbaumer (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012): 266–380. Henry Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). Bruno Nettl, Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995). Ruth Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Andy Bennett and Richard Peterson, ‘Introducing Music Scenes’, in Music Scenes: Local, Trans-local and Virtual, ed. A. Bennett and R. Peterson (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004). Travis Jackson, Blowin’ the Blues Away: Performance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); see also James Spradley, ‘Adaptive Strategies of Urban Nomads: the Ethnoscience of Tramp Culture’, in Urban Life: Readings in Urban Anthropology, 2nd edn, ed. George Gmelch and Walter P. Zenner (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988): 102. On the role of records in the jazz cannon, see Krin Gabbard, ‘The Jazz Canon and Its Consequences’, in Jazz Among the Discourses, ed. Krin Gabbard (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995): 1–28; Tony Whyton, ‘Birth of the School: Discursive Methodologies in Jazz Education’, Music Education Research, 8, no. 1 (Taylor & Francis, 2006): 65–81; Catherine Tackley, ‘Jazz Recordings as Social Texts’, in Recorded Music: Performance, Culture and Technology, ed. Amanda Bayley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 167–86. On jazz covers’ iconography see Carissa Kowalski Dougherty, ‘The Coloring of Jazz: Race and Record Cover Design in American Jazz, 1950 to 1970’, Design Issues, 23, no. 1 (2007): 47–60; Phillipe Carrard, ‘Titling Jazz: On the Front Cover of Blue Note Records’, Genre – Forms of Discourse and Culture, 37, no. 1 (2004): 151–72; Davide Sparti, ‘Images of a Sound: Portraits and Pictures of Jazz’, Imaginations – Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, 1, no. 1 (2010): 112–25. Jacques Tati, Playtime (Paris: Jolly Film and Specta Films, 1967; distributed by Les Films de Mon Oncle, 2002), 1 DVD (115 min.). This deceivingly short article was, at first, highly criticized and, later, led to some misinterpretations on the boundaries of ‘multi-sited ethnography’. No earlier than 2009 the first systematic study around this debate was compiled in a volume. See Mark-Anthony Falzon (ed.) Multi-sited Ethnography – Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Research (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009).

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33 Though Sidney Mintz – as indeed do most of the authors cited on this matter – comes from the field of anthropology; the same ethnographic methodologies are debated in ethnomusicology. 34 This paradigm shift in ethnomusicology – and also in anthropology – in the fifties, had been already analysed as early as in 1960 by Alan Merriam. See Alan Merriam, ‘Ethnomusicology: Discussion and Definition of the Field’, Ethnomusicology, 4, no. 3 (1960): 107–14. 35 On that matter see Eduardo Restrepo and Arturo Escobar, ‘Other Anthropologies and Anthropology Otherwise: Steps to a World Anthropologies Framework’, Critique of Anthropology (2005): 99–129. 36 This theory, as Erdem Üngür notes, ‘has essentialist and sedentarist connotations which can be traced back to Aristotle and Plato’ and has been criticized specially for inverting de Certeau’s distinction between ‘place’ as an abstract location and ‘space’ as the set where individual and social practices take place. For further reading on this matter see Ian Buchanan, Michel de Certeau: Cultural Theorist (London: SAGE, 2000): 62; and Sarah Sharma, ‘Baring Life and Lifestyle in the Non-Place’. Cultural Studies, 23, no. 1 (2009): 129–48. 37 For further reading on this matter see Garry Mc Donagh, ‘The Face Behind the Door: European Integration, Immigration, and Identity’, in Cultural Change and the New Europe. Perspectives on the European Community, ed. T. Wilson and E. Estellie (New York and Abingdon: Westview Press, 1993). 38 Quoted in Matthew Fraser, ‘Soulless Europe’, The Gazette, August 8 (Montreal 1993). 39 On this dispute see Monica Sassatelli, Becoming Europeans – Cultural Identity and Cultural Policies (Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillian, 2009): 46. 40 The 1957 Treaty establishing the European Economic Commission (TEEC) led to the founding of the EEC in 1958, co-signed by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. 41 It is worth noting here that on May 9, 1950, Robert Schuman – French prime minister in the late 1940s – presented a proposal on the creation of an organized Europe, indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the Schuman Declaration, is considered to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union as a supranational democracy structure. 42 Treaty on European Union, 1992. 43 Originally on the EU Spanish presidency official webpage, www.penki.lt /Culture/ Eurojazz-a-festival-for-a-continent-of-jazz.im?id=226637&f=c, last accessed 10 June 2011. 44 Original text: ‘Unos son ingleses y el otro no. Unos son muy jóvenes, el otro también. La música de unos es un tostón, la del otro, lo mismo. Un modo como

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Notes cualquier otro de arrancar el ciclo Jazz es Primavera del San Juan Evangelista, y un festival, este Eurojazz 2010 que alguien se ha sacado de la manga con dineros de la UE (o sea, de todos nosotros).’ Published review on Eurojazz 2010, in Cuadernos de Jazz, www.cuadernosdejazz.com/index.php?option=com content&view=article&id=594:18o-ciclo-de-jazz-es-primavera&catid =9:general&Itemid=8, accessed 12 June 2011. As cited by Medbøe (2013: 16). Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets. (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1946). Blesh criticized the new stylistic currents in jazz. For example, about bebop he wrote that it ‘comes perilously close to complete nonsense as a musical expression . . . exploiting the most fantastic rhythms and unrelated harmonies that it would seem possible to conceive’ (cited in Jones 1963: 190). Sidney Finkelstein, Jazz: A People’s Music (New York: Citadel Press, 1948). Finkelstein is considered a ‘leftist American critic’ (Poiger 2000: 258). Through his work he has stressed his conception of jazz as ‘people’s music’, as opposed to academics, ‘who hijacked jazz and turned it into a nearly occult pursuit only they can comprehend’ (Giddins 2004: 300). Barry Ulanov, A History of Jazz in America (New York: Viking Press, 1952). Ulanov, an American jazz critic, stated that bebop should be treated as ‘delicately as literature or abstract art’ (cited in Davenport 2009: 48). Editor of Esquire at the time. French jazz enthusiast. Directive 2004/38/EC of 29 April 2004, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/ LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2004:158:0077:0123:EN:PDF, last accessed 4 November 2012. Decision No 1855/2006/EC, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri= CELEX:32006D1855, last accessed 23 November 2013. Crossing Borders – Connecting Cultures: The EU Culture Programme 2007–2013 (Brussels: European Commission Directorate-General for Education and Culture 2007): 32. Belgium assumed the rotating presidency of the EU from July to December 2010, as part of a team presidency with Spain and Hungary, from January 2010 to July 2011. Inside the Belgium Presidency of the EU – A Guide for Business and Politics July – December 2010 (Brussels: Weber Shandwick, 2010), www.webershandwick.eu/ presidency/more-info/download-pdf, last accessed 7 October 2013. The Music in Europe conference was organized in Brussels by the Belgian presidency of the European Union, in collaboration with the European Commission Brussels, on 13 October 2001. European Voice is a daily newspaper, part of The Economist Group. It was established in 1995, is published both in print and online, and specializes on EU politics.

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58 PR Newswire Europe, 12 July 2013, www.thefreelibrary.com/EUROPAMUSICALE +Gala+Concert%3A+the+Occasion+of+the+EU-+Presidency+of…-a0336553761, last accessed 12 March 2014. 59 Officially EU member states since January 2004. 60 The Austrian Foreign Ministry webpage, 9 December 2003, www.bmeia.gv.at/ en/ foreign-ministry/news/press-releases/2003/platform-culture-central-europecentral-european-jazz-performance-in-rome.html, last accessed 13 March 2014. 61 This Agreement is part of the EU-Philippines relations, which started in 1980 with the Cooperation Agreement between the European Economic Community and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – member countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations. The EU–Philippines’ partnership cooperation agreement was signed on 11 July 2012 and it concerns cooperation in a broad spectrum of areas, such as human rights, non-proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction, trade and investment, migration, development cooperation, environment and climate change, and science. 62 The delegation was officially opened in October 1990. Although it has the status of a diplomatic mission, it only functions as an official channel of bilateral relations. 63 A quintet, featuring Vietnamese-French guitarist Nguyên Lê, Spanish jazz percussionist Tino di Geraldo, German jazz singer Michael Schiefel, Italian double bass player Furio di Castri, and Filipino saxophonist Tots Tolentino, performed in two concerts on February 21, at Arts in the City in Bonifacio Global City in Taguig; and on February 22, at Maestranza Plaza in Intramuros, Manila. A jam session at the end of the concerts was held on both occasions. The Euro-Pinoy Jazz Concerts was the first project of the Eunic Philippines, composed of Alliance Française de Manille; Goethe-Institut Philippinen; Instituto Cervantes; and the Philippine Italian Association, with the collaboration of the European Union Delegation to the Philippines; the National Commission for Culture and the Arts; the Intramuros Administration; and Arts in the City. The event was supported by the embassies of France, Italy and Spain, as well as by Qatar Airways, Bayleaf Hotel and Radio Republic. 64 Ibarra Mateo, ‘European Pinoy jazz artists to jam on a cross-cultural ‘little blinddate’’, GMA News, 18 February 2014, www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/348946/ lifestyle/peopleandevents/ european-pinoy-jazz-artists-to-jam-on-a-cross-culturallittle-blind-date, last accessed 12 March 2014. 65 Guy Ledoux, ‘Jazzing-up EU.Phl relations – the EU views by Guy Ledoux’, The Philippine Star, 3 April 2014. www.philstar.com/opinion/2014/04/03/1308200/ jazzing-eu-phl-relations, last accessed 10 April 2014. 66 Ibarra Mateo, ibid. 67 Ibid.

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68 The Education, Audio-visual and Culture Agency Executive Agency (EACEA) was the responsible for the management of most parts of the EU’s Culture Programme 2007–2013, under the supervision of the Directorate-General for Education and Culture (DG EAC of the European Commission). The Decision No. 1855/2006/ EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 established a financing and programming instrument for cultural cooperation for the period between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2013. It provided for a budget of EUR 400 million to develop transnational cultural cooperation between operators from European Union (EU) countries or non-EU countries participating in the programme. The aim of the culture programme was to support cultural cooperation actions, European organizations active in the field of culture, as well as the collection and dissemination of information in the field of culture. Decision No. 1855/2006/EC, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ ALL/?uri=CELEX:32006D1855, last accessed 23 November 2013. 69 James Rampton and Andrew McCoshan, ‘Interim Evaluation of the Culture Programme 2007–13 – Final Report 2010’, 2010, 96, www.programculture.cz/ media/document/final-report-interim-evaluation-2010-by-ecorys_en.pdf, last accessed 12 December 2011. 70 Numbers provided by EJN in September 2018. 71 Italian jazz promoter, artistic director of Ravenna Jazz and Reggio Emilia Jazz, EJN’s founding member, president from 1987 to 1989 and honorary president. 72 EJN’s first meeting took place in Ravenna, 13–15 September, attended by Pompeo Benincasa, Filippo Bianchi, Enzo Costa, Antonio De Rosa, Luciano Linzi, Gilberto Giuntini, Andrea Oggiano, Riccardo Sgualdini, Nicola Tessitore, Giovanni Tafuro, Livio Testa, Giambattista Tofoni, Marco Travagli (Italy); Roger Spence, John Cumming (UK); Pierre Losio, J. F. Rohrbasser (Switzerland); Michel Orier, Christian Mousset, J.P. Boutillier (France). The second meeting, in Pisa (1–3 October 1987) was attended by the same members, excluding Michel Orier and J.P. Boutillier (France), plus Huub van Riel (The Netherlands) and Susanna Tanner (Switzerland), where Bianchi was elected president and Antonio De Rosa appointed secretary general. In the course of the following five years some organizations joined as members: Gaudeamus (Amsterdam), Oosterport (Groningen), GRIM (Marseille), Theatre Châtelet (Paris), Banlieurs Bleues (Paris), ARFI (Lyon), Moods (Zurich) Red Sea (Eilat), Stadtgarten (Köln), Lundis d’Hortense (Bruxelles), and DeSingel (Antwerp). 73 Francesco Martinelli, ‘Filippo Bianchi’. The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine, 2012, http://issuu.com/europejazznetwork /docs/ magazine25th_print, last accessed 14 September 2013. 74 Made by Ecorys UK consulting, on behalf of the European Commission DG Education and Culture. James Rampton and Andrew McCoshan, ‘Interim Evaluation of the Culture Programme 2007–13 – Final Report 2010’, 2010, 96,

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www.programculture.cz/media/document/final-report-interim-evaluation-2010by-ecorys_en.pdf, last accessed 12 December 2011. 75 Director of the Europa Jazz Festival, Le Mans. 76 EJN member, director of Vossa Jazz (1993–2006), Regional Manager of Vestnorsk Jazzsentre (2008–12), and currently independent consultant. 77 B.1957–D.2012. Director of the Molde Jazz Festival (1987–90); responsible for culture in the district of Nordnes, city of Bergen (1990–98); director of Vestnorsk Jazzsenter (2002–07); member of the EJN board (2008–10). 78 Sandra Constantini, director of Crossroads/Ravenna Jazz Festival. 79 Including Louis Sclavis, Misha Mengelberg, Bob Moses, Michael Riessler, Pierre Favre, Marilyn Mazur and others. 80 Europe Jazz Network, ‘A Brief History’, Europe Jazz Network website, www. europejazz.net /brief-history, last accessed 30 November 2012. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 Lars Mossefinn, ‘Bo Grönningsæter: In Memoriam’. AllAboutJazz website, 11 November 2012, http://news.allaboutjazz.com/bo-gronningsaeter-in-memoriam. php#.U1pt21VdWMZ, last accessed 12 November 2012. 84 ‘Key Areas of Work for 2013’, Europe Jazz Network website, www.europejazz .net/ key-areas-work-2013, last accessed 15 September 2013. 85 Includes visiting showcases; developing 12 Points ‘as an example of networking collaboration which supports the mobility of artists’; and increasing membership information ‘on website and social networks to encourage informal artistic collaborations’. Ibid. 86 Includes planning ‘pilot project for “cultural tourism” across [EJN] members’ audiences’. Ibid. 87 Includes inviting ‘experts’ and promoting ‘seminars and exploratory discussions to begin action plans’. Ibid. 88 Includes two general principles – ‘developing Europe-wide awareness and profile for the value and diversity of jazz/creative music’; and ‘representing EJN and the importance of jazz/improvised music to national agencies’ – and five specific actions, such as ‘board meetings . . . to meet other promoters and agencies’, ‘making new contacts’; ‘individual members representing EJN to regional and national agencies’; ‘participation in European Union meetings and consultations’; and ‘participation in policymaking debates and consultations’. Ibid. 89 Includes one general principle – ‘providing a forum in which members can find project partners in other European countries and build co-operative musical projects’ – and seven specific actions, such as ‘EJN presence at 12 Points, Dublin’; and ‘recruiting new members to the network, with a priority given to recruitment in Eastern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula’. Ibid.

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90 Includes ‘long-term research to determine the scope, and impacts of members’ activities & the jazz/creative music sector in Europe. Research Working Group & contracted partners continue to collect, collate and analyse information’; ‘beginning to operate an annual research programme with other partners’; and ‘publishing and disseminating economic research findings to members, national/ regional and European institutions and policy-makers’. Ibid. 91 Includes: ‘Improving communication and information services to members’; ‘Collating and providing information to musicians to assist their mobility in the European music scene’; ‘Collating and providing information to members and musicians on booking, programming, policy and funding opportunities’; ‘Working Group on media and contracted partners establish European media database’; ‘Providing regular communications on EJN and EJN members’ activities on a pan-European level to specialist music and general cultural press, broadcasting and other media’; ‘Invitations to media representatives to meetings and General Assembly’; ‘Working Group developing contacts and potential projects with broadcasters’; ‘Revising, developing and maintaining the EJN website’; ‘Production & updating of basic publication pack, including translation into other languages’; ‘Publication of General Assembly report’; ‘Publication of new Annual Report’; ‘Planning new publications on significant areas of work’; ‘Seminars and discussions on significant issues within the jazz and wider cultural domain’. Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Fiona Goh, Strength in Numbers – A Study of Europe Jazz Network (EJN 2011). 94 Including 12 Points Festival, the Gent multi-arts center Vooruit, the transnational new talent project Take Five Europe, the Pozitif club in Istanbul, the Nordic jazz scene, ‘lobbying and advocacy for jazz’; ‘Programming through EJN’. 95 James Rampton and Andrew McCoshan, ‘Interim Evaluation of the Culture Programme 2007–13 – Final Report 2010’, 2010, 96, www.programculture.cz/ media/document/final-report-interim-evaluation-2010-by-ecorys_en.pdf, last accessed 12 December 2011. 96 Founder of Swinging Europe and the Brande International Music Workshop Orchestra; financial director of Swinging Europe. 97 B.1930–D.2012. Danish jazz bassist and composer; leader of the DR (Denmark’s Radio) Big Band from 1961 to 1966; principal of the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen from 1992 to 1997; founder of Swinging Europe. 98 Swinging Europe website, http://swinging-europe.dk/DSISE/home/history/, last accessed 2 November 2014. 99 Ibid. 100 ECI is a platform of European organizations that promote emerging jazz musicians and entrepreneurs. Its members include Pluto Finland – Helsinki Arts Initiative (Finland); Norrbotten Big Band – Red Film (Sweden); DSI Swinging

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Europe – Jazz Denmark (Denmark); Witold Lutoslawski – Philharmonic (Poland); Music LX (Luxembourg); Mad in Belgrade – Piñata Entertainment (Serbia); Bass Culture SRL – Fundazione Fitzcarraldo (Italy); Europe Jazz Network (France); Brussels Jazz Orchestra – Handelsbeurs Concertzaal (Belgium); Improvising Music Company – 12 Points Festival (Ireland); and Casa da Música (Portugal). A multi-year international cultural exchange program for music and musicians, including Danish Music in China, which promotes presentations of Danish music in China via research and visitors’ programs, knowledge sharing, touring and networking; and Sonic East, which produces concerts with Asian rock, pop, jazz and electronic artists, alongside international partners. Promotes jazz concerts in Herning (Denmark) and the surrounding area. The European Jazz Orchestra Reunion is essentially a one-concert event at the end of the EJO’s tour to promote networking amongst its musicians. Swinging Europe, ‘European Circuit of Interludes’, Swinging Europe website, http://swinging-europe.dk/DSISE/projects/european-circuit-of-interludes/, last accessed 2 November 2014.

2  Challenges for European jazz networking 1 Mike Paxton, Expanding the Audience for Jazz: A Report of the Findings from a Qualitative Research Study – The Research Practice (The Arts Council of England, 1990). 2 Fiona Goh, Strength in Numbers – A Study of Europe Jazz Network (EJN, 2011): 37. 3 The Statistic Overviews of Five Partner Countries collects data regarding musicians, venues and festivals, education, media, audience, recording and distribution, and subsidy and funding from the UK, Austria, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark. See Tony Whyton and Christa Bruckner-Haring (eds), Statistic Overviews of Five Partner Countries (Graz: Institute for Jazz Research, 2013). 4 The UK, Austria, Norway, The Netherlands and Denmark. No data was collected or displayed from Norway; data from Austria was collected from the study Wozu Musik? (Huber 2010); data from the Netherlands collected from the Benchmark Analyse Muziekpodia (Benchmark Analysis Music Venues, 2010); data from Denmark was collected from the Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2011 analysis; data from the UK was collected from several studies, including on audience demographics in England, Scotland and Wales. 5 Scotland 5%; England 6%; Wales 10%; Austria 20%; no percentage data available from Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark (Whyton and Bruckner-Haring 2013).

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6 Scottish Jazz Federation, Jazz Audiences in Scotland research and benchmarking for Scottish Jazz Federation (Scottish Jazz Federation 2011), http:// scottishjazzfederation.com/wp-content/uploads/060511_TAB_Jazz_Now_Report__ Long_Appendices.pdf, last accessed 21 October 2013; M. Riley and D. Laing, The Value of Jazz in Britain (London: Jazz Services Ltd, 2006), www.jazzservices. org.uk, accessed Oct. 19, 2013; K. Burland and S. Pitts “Understanding Jazz Audiences: Listening and Learning at the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival”, Journal of New Music Research, 39, no. 2 (2010): 125–34; M. H. McIntyre and the Jazz Development Trust, How to Develop Audiences for Jazz (Arts Council of England 2001), www.creativenorthyorkshire. com/documents/DevAudJazz1.pdf, last accessed 19 October 2013; S. Oakes, ‘Profiling the Jazz Festival Audience’, in International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 1, no. 2 (2010): 110–19; S. Oakes, ‘Demographic and Sponsorship Considerations for Jazz and Classical Music Festivals’, in Service Industries Journal, 23, no. 3 (2003): 165–78; J. Payne, A Tale of Four Cities: Final Project Report (Richmond: JAZZDEV 2001), www.newaudiences. org.uk/documents, last accessed 26 October 2013; M. Riley and D. Laing, The Value of Jazz in Britain II (London: Jazz Services Ltd, 2010), www.jazzservices. org.uk, accessed Oct. 19, 2013; H. Maitland, Understanding Audiences for Jazz (Derby: EmJazz, 2009), www.derby-jazz.co.uk, last accessed 20 October 2013. 7 A report made on the Umeå International Jazz Festival show that the largest segment of attendees is between 20 and 30 (Törnmarck and Wikström 2013: 43); the Wozu Musik? (Huber 2010) report on Austrian musical preferences ‘shows various age groups between 30 and 59 attend a roughly equal number of concerts’ (Bruckner-Haring 2013); ‘research from the Arts Council of Wales shows the average jazz audience to be slightly younger than the overall Welsh population’ (Riley and Laing 2006: 24). 8 Nicholson stresses the fact that jazz has a higher attendance in the 15–24 age range than classical music or opera, thus concluding, based on that particular information and in some musicians’ comments alone, that jazz audiences are younger than those for classical music (2009: 11, 17). 9 ‘an approximate 50:50 split between men and women’ (McIntyre 2001: 7); ‘a relative bias in the jazz audience towards males: 57% of the audience’ (Riley and Laing 2006:24); ‘many respondents characterized the ‘typical’ audience member as being aged 40–60’ (Burland and Pitts 2010: 128) ‘those attending jazz were most likely to be male but only slightly: 55% male, 45% female’ (SJF 2011: 14); ‘The gender distribution [of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2011] shows that 53% was male and 47 % female’ (Dvinge and Bruckner-Haring 2013: 101). 10 Paul DiMaggio, Michael Useem, and Paula Brown, Audience Studies of the Performing Arts and Museums: A Critical Review (Washington, DC: National

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Endowment for the Arts, 1978); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [1979] 1984); Nan Dirk De Graaf, ‘Distinction by Consumption in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Netherlands’, European Sociological Review, 53 (1991): 103–12; Alan Warde, ‘Consumers, Identity and Belonging: Reflections on Some Theses of Zygmunt Bauman’, in The Authority of the Consumer, ed. Keat Russell and Nicholas Abercrombie (London: Routledge, 1994): 58–74; Richard Peterson and Roger Kern, ‘Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore’, American Sociological Review, 61 (1996): 900–7; Michael Lamont and Virag Molnár, ‘How Blacks Use Consumption to Shape Their Collective Identity: Evidence from Marketing Specialists’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 1 (2001): 31–46. Bethany Bryson, ‘Anything But Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes’, in American Sociological Review, 61 (1996): 884–99. Ibid.; Jordi López-Sintas and Ercilia Garcia-Alvarez, ‘Omnivores Show Up Again: The Segmentation of Cultural Consumers in the Spanish Social Space’, European Sociological Review 18 (2005): 353–68; Tony Bennett et al., Culture, Class, Distinction (London: Routledge, 2008). Richard Peterson, ‘Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore and Univore’, Poetics, 21 (1992): 243–58; Richard Peterson and Albert Simkus, ‘How Musical Tastes Mark Occupation Status Groups’, in Cultivating Differences. Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, ed. M. Lamont and M. Fournier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992): 152–86; Richard Peterson and Roger Kern, ‘Changing Highbrow Taste: from Snob to Omnivore’, in American Sociological Review, 61, no. 5 (1996): 900–7. Arthur Alderson, Azamat Junisbai, and Isaac Heacok, ‘Social Status and Cultural Consumption in the United States’, in Poetics, 35, nos. 2–3 (2007): 191–212; Andy Bennett, Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity, and Place (London: Macmillan, 2000); Tak Wing Chan (ed.), Social Status and Cultural Consumption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Philippe Coulangeon and Yannick Lemel, ‘Is “Distinction” Really Outdated? Questioning the Meaning of the Omnivorization of Musical Taste in Contemporary France’, Poetics, 35, nos. 2–3 (2007): 93–111; Philippe Coulangeon, ‘La stratification sociale des goûts musicaux: le modèle de la légitimité culturelle en question’, in Revue Française de Sociologie, 44, no. 1 (2003): 3–33; Philippe Coulangeon, Les musiciens de jazz en France à l’heure de la réhabilitation culturelle. Sociologie des carrières et du travail musical (Paris: L‟Harmattan, 1999); Olivier Donnat, Les pratiques culturelles des Français. Enquête 1997 (Paris: La Documentation Française, 1997); Olivier Donnat, Les Français face à la culture. De l’exclusion à l’éclectisme (Paris: La Découverte, 1994); Vincent Dubois, La politique culturelle. Genèse d’une catégorie

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d’intervention publique (Paris: Belin, 1999); Bonnie Erickson, ‘Culture, Class and Connections’, American Journal of Sociology, 102, no. 1 (1996): 217–51; Tally KatzGerro, ‘Comparative Evidence of Inequality in Cultural Preferences: Gender, Class, and Family Status’, Sociological Spectrum, 26, no. 1 (2006): 63–83; Tally Katz-Gerro, ‘Highbrow Cultural Consumption and Class Distinction in Italy, Israel, West Germany, Sweden and the United States’, in Social Forces, 81, no. 1 (2002): 207–29; Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals and Manners. The Culture of the French and American Upper-Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Omar Lizardo and Sara Skiles, ‘Highbrow Omnivorousness on the Small Screen? Cultural Industry Systems and Patterns of Cultural Choice in Europe’. in Poetics, 37, no. 1 (2009): 1–23; Meir Yaish and Tally Katz-Gerro, ‘Disentangling ‘Cultural Capital’: The Consequences of Cultural and Economic Resources for Taste and Participation’, European Sociological Review (2010), www.esr.oxfordjournals.org/ 10.1093/esr/jcq056, last accessed 26 October 2013. 15 F. Saleh and C. Ryan, ‘Jazz and Knitwear: Factors that Attract Tourists to Festivals’, in Tourism Management, 14, no. 4 (1993): 289–97; Morris Hargreaves McIntyre and the Jazz Development Trust, How to Develop Audiences for Jazz – Report Prepared for the Arts Council of E. (2001) www.creativenorthyorkshire.com/ documents/DevAudJazz1.pdf, last accessed 24 October 2013; S. Oakes and A. C. North, ‘Reviewing Congruity Effects in the Service Environment Musicscape’, in International Journal of Service Industry Management, 19, no. 1 (2008): 63–82; Heather Maitland, Understanding Audiences for Jazz (EMJAZZ, 2009); S. Oakes, ‘Profiling the Jazz Festival Audience’, in International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 1, no. 2 (2010): 110–19. 16 ‘These results confirm the findings of previous demographic research identifying the high educational levels of jazz festival patrons (Saleh and Ryan, 1993), and are consistent with research by Oakes and North (2008) that revealed how the ‘elite’ nature of jazz has typically appealed to educated people who are higher up the social class structure’. (Steve Oakes 2010: 115); ‘The current jazz audience is predominately middle and upper middle class. Individuals from the higher socioeconomic groups (ABC1s) account for 85% of the current attenders at jazz, and 78% of potential jazz attenders . . . approximately 60% completed their formal education aged 19 or over’ (McIntyre 2001: 9–10); ‘1rst group comprises people who have successfully established themselves and their families in comfortable homes . . . Well educated, socially aware, career oriented professionals’ (Heather Maitland 2009: 3). 17 ‘‘Free-jazz’ is likely to be associated with a more ‘liberal’ self-image for its audience in comparison to more ‘conservative’ traditional/mainstream jazz’ (Oakes 2010: 113).

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18 ‘The jazz audience are musical omnivores – on average respondents had attended 7 different genres in the past 12 months. A third considers themselves to have specialist music knowledge (33%) and are the most likely to attend in a theatre or arts centre (65%)’ (SJF 2011: 14); ‘The patterns of attendance exhibited by jazz audiences seem to differ from those of classical music listeners . . . Steve Oakes’ (2003) study of classical and jazz festivals held in the same English town in 2001 found that ‘whilst the classical music audience included only nine heavy users of jazz concerts, the jazz audience included 86 heavy users of classical concerts’ (177)’ (Pitts and Burland 2010: 126); ‘Current attenders show high cross-over into classical music (69%) and contemporary music (42%) at one end of the scale and rock/pop (45%) and folly (29%) at the other’ (Oakes 2010: 10–11). 19 ‘The risk profile of current and potential jazz attenders shows marked differences in their attitudes. Over a third (36%) of current attenders were prepared to take risks with less well-known jazz music and artists, just under a half (46%) were willing to take limited risks and a fifth (18%) would only attend jazz events where they had a clear idea of what to expect’ (McIntyre 2001: 15). 20 Established in 1954 by Nicole Barclay, Eddie Barclay and Jacques Souplet; in 1956 Frank Ténot and Daniel Filipacchi became the directors; in 2009 it merged with another French jazz magazine, Jazz Man; it has been published in French since its beginning; currently Franck Bergerot is the editor-in-chief (Legrand and Pernin 2004). 21 Established in 1994, in the UK; Jon Newey is editor-in-chief; it was granted several awards, including best jazz publication by the Parliamentary Jazz Awards in 2007 and in 2010; it is the biggest selling monthly magazine in the UK and one of the English language jazz magazines in Europe. 22 Established in 1964 by bassist Jan Byrczek; although its first publication was in Polish only, in the late 1970s it was being also published in English (1967–1989), and German (1976–1981) and distributed in 103 countries; in 1969 it became the official publication of the European Jazz Federation, and in 1970, had contributing correspondents from Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, East Germany, West Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Norway, Rumania, Spain, Switzerland and Yugoslavia; currently Paul Brodowski is the editor-in-chief; it has received funding from the International Music Council (Knauer 2011). 23 Established in 1992 in France; formally called France Supervision until 1998; broadcasts classical music, world music, opera, ballet and jazz, mainly live; distributed through cable and satellite channels. 24 Frank Ténot (1925–2004), director of Jazz Magazine. 25 Countries such as Norway and Germany have a significant number of national and regional jazz agencies and organizations working in national and international

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31 32 33

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Notes articulation; in countries such as Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark there is a significant number of jazz festivals and venues that often work in national and international articulation; in countries such as Portugal and Ireland there is a limited number of jazz organizations that often work as regional agencies as well; in both countries those organizations are exclusively situated in a few major cities and a very limited number of organizations work in articulation with the EJN. Cf Giambatista Tifoni ‘we are “cultural people”, not “business people”’ (The EJN 25th Anniversary Magazine 2012: 6). Reiner Michalke (Statgarten Cologne) stated that in Germany, ‘while classical music gets 3€ million, jazz, rock, pop, and all of the other together get 1€ million’ from the total of 4€ million awarded to music in 2012 by public funding (12 Points, Dublin, Jazz Futures talks, Feb. 2013, recorded by the author). Cf. statista.com, www.statista.com/statistics/276213/genre-distribution-of-musicalbum-unit-sales-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/, last accessed 30 May 2014. ‘Local press (64%), venue mailing list (42%), national press (40%), brochures/pick up leaflets (40%), told by someone else (39%)’ (McIntyre 2001: 16). The importance of private tuition and listening to recordings as learning method is not disregarded here. Actually, Jaap Gerritse (1985), in ‘Jazz and Light Music in Music Teaching Institutions’, stresses the importance of those recordings as ‘the first text-books’ from which jazz musicians would analyse and transcribe solos starting from ‘about the 1920’s’; the article also points how ‘many good teachers became available in the major cities’ in the 1930’s, at a time when ‘some musicians published their methods’, including at Down Beat magazine from 1934 on; how ‘Lawrence Berk established in 1945 what is today’s largest jazz-education centre in Boston, the Berklee College of Music’; and how ‘by the end of the 40’s, 15 colleges were offering jazz courses’ and ‘in the 50’s about 30 more colleges added jazz courses’ (157). However, it is assumed here that academic jazz education in the U.S. only became definitive after the foundation of the National Association of Jazz Educators (NAJE) in 1968. Austrian composer, musician and jazz educator. Now Leeds College of Music. Guildhall School of Music and Drama; the Royal Academy of Music; Trinity College of Music; the Birmingham Conservatoire; Leeds College of Music; the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama; and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Middlesex University London; Edinburgh Napier University and Brunel University London. Now Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, NTNU. Which would become permanent from 1982.

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37 ‘jazz was offered as part of the teaching-degree from 1984, and from 2002 as a separate performance degree’ (Fadnes 2013: 61). 38 Performance degree in rhythmic music. 39 ‘tentatively started offering year-courses in jazz from 1994 and bachelor’s degrees from 1997’. Ibid. 40 Offers chamber music – rhythmic. 41 Bachelor jazz degree. 42 Rhythmic Music Conservatory, or RMC. 43 1930–2012, Danish musician, composer and pedagogue. 44 Royal Academy of Music; and Academy of Music and Performing Arts of Southern Denmark. 45 Aalborg University; Aarhus University; and the University of Copenhagen. 46 Except the Jazz/Pop programme at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts of Southern Denmark. 47 Private university in Lisbon. 48 With founding musicians Tony Roe (piano) and Lucas Dols (bass) and Bulgarian Borislav Petrov (drums), former colleagues at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. 49 Portuguese net-label, founded by João Firmino and Dezidério Lázaro, former students from Dutch conservatories.

3  Current strategies 1 According to Wueller (2013), the ‘big six’, i.e. the major labels – Warner Music Group; EMI; Sony; BMG; Universal Music Group; Polygram – became the ‘big five’ in 2004, when Polygram was absorbed into BMG, then the ‘big four’ in 2008, when BMG was absorbed into Sony, and later, in 2012, the ‘big three’, after EMI’s recorded music division was absorbed into Universal, EMI Publishing was absorbed into Sony, and EMI’s Parlophone and EMI/Virgin Classics were absorbed into Warner. Joshua R. Wueller, ‘Mergers of Majors: Applying the Failing Firm Doctrine in the Recorded Music Industry’, Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial and Commercial Law, 7, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 589, 601–4. 2 Perhaps one of the most significant is bassist Charles Mingus’ attempt to establish an independent jazz record label, Debut Records, with drummer Max Roach, in 1952. This independent label was set to showcase new talents, free from major labels’ impositions. Though it only released 12 albums in its short existence before it was shut down in 1957, Debut issued the historical Jazz at Massey Hall, which assembled a rare and unique line-up of luminaries from the bebop era – Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Bud Powell alongside Mingus and Roach. This

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5 6

7

8

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10 11

Notes historically significant recording was made available, not by any major label that alone would have had difficulty in bringing together such prominent musicians, but by an independent label operating at the margins of the big companies (Medbøe and Dias 2014). Sarah Baker and Alison Huber (2013) designed a theoretical framework for the study of DIY institutions of music preservation in Australia. The authors have suggested the typology ‘DIY institutions’ which unfolds in three main categories: ‘cultural institution’, ‘social institution’ and ‘affective institution’. Although I do not assume DIY jazz collectives as institutions, I adopt the typology relatively to the interrelational spheres of those collectives. Research in this particular area is still scarce. About informal networks, Schwartz and Hornych argue that before ‘their potential and their importance, the lack of theoretical discussion and empirical research on informal networks and their dynamics is surprising’ (2010: 3). Using the Eurobarometer 62.2, covering a representative sample of 27 countries (Pichler and Wallace 2007). Creative Commons is a non-profit organization based in Mountain View, California, US, devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. The organization was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred with the support of Center for the Public Domain (Creative Commons.org), last accessed 24 October 2014. Björn Hartman (2004). ‘Netlabels and the adoption of creative commons licensing in the online electronic music community’. Retrieved from: http://bjoern.org/ papers/hartmann-cc2004.pdf. In 2010 Adam Porter acknowledged over 1,000 netlabel catalogues, or subcollections in the Internet Archive. As in December 2014, our research found 8,535 entries in the same platform under the same categories (netlabel catalogues and sub-collections). However, this has proved to be a very inaccurate method, for neither this nor any other search engine distinguishes netlabels’ official websites from blog posts or articles. 001 Records Netlabel has released two albums, which consist of a selection of prereleased tracks from Chilean jazz musicians. Sintoma Records offers a catalogue of original, unpublished albums from Portuguese jazz musicians. Other labels, such as British jazz label Edition Records, work mainly online, but are commercial platforms. Ref. LPMMP090. Ref. 3747538.

Notes 12 13 14 15 16

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Ref. CF300LP. Ref. WEIRD-063. Ref. ECM 2399. Ref. ROKU007. Marie-Claire Melzer, ‘Zappen als creatief process – Tin Man & the App’, in Jazzism, Sep. 2013: 66–9. 17 As noted by Sykes (2009: 2), ‘The ‘Celestial Jukebox’ is referred to in Lehman (1995: 222) and discussed by Goldstein (2003: 184–5 and 187, first published 1996)’. 18 Napster was a p2p file sharing service created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker in 1999. ‘Napster.com can be regarded the premier example of information exchange referred to as peer-to-peer file sharing. Aggregating more than 10 million users in the first six month period and attaining a growth rate of 200,000 new subscribers in a single day, Napster became the noisy centre of a new social reality that struck terror into even the most sturdy of music entertainment executives. Behind this threatening new reality stands a type of software combining the convergence of mp3 music files with an Internet relay chat feature and an informational website. Coordinated by a couple of central server computers, they enabled not only community, but also free access to and download of up to 100 million copyrighted songs archived on the private hard drives of up to 100 million subscribers worldwide. Napster’s file sharing system constitutes an emancipative consumption scape leaping over the constraints of the music market’ (Giesler and Pohlmann 2003: 95). 19 ‘The ‘Big Four’ refers to the four major record labels: Universal, Sony BMG, TimeWarner and EMI’ (Sykes 2009: 3). 20 Peer-to-peer. 21 In 2000, Karl Taro Greenfield (Time Magazine) wrote: ‘Love it or hate it, that’s what Napster has done: changed the world. It has forced record companies to rethink their business models and record-company lawyers and recording artists to defend their intellectual property. It has forced purveyors of “content,” like Time Warner, parent company of TIME, to wonder what content will even be in the near future. Napster and Fanning have come to personify the bloody intersection where commerce, culture and the First Amendment are colliding. On behalf of five media companies, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued Napster, claiming the website and Fanning’s program are facilitating the theft of intellectual property. Most likely the blueprint for the future of the entertainment industry will be drawn from this ruling’ (Time Magazine, Oct. 2, 2000). 22 In Stan Getz – Jazz Samba, Verve Records 1962, ref. 74 082.

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4  Giving voice to ground players 1 European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 2 Swedish jazz promoter, director of the Umeå Jazz Festival. 3 German jazz promoter, director of jazzwerkruhr and jazzplayseurope, two European jazz networks that promote exchange concerts and tours, and artistic residences. Jazzwerkruhr has established regular collaborations between German and Polish musicians. Jazzplayseurope was created in 2007 by eight jazz organizations and festivals from seven neighbouring countries – JaZZus, France; Music: LX, Luxembourg; Music Centre, Slovakia; Trytone, The Netherlands; Jazztopad Festival, Poland; Jazz Lab Series, Belgium; Domaine Musiques, France; and jazzwerkruhr, Germany. 4 Executive director for the Finnish Jazz Federation (FJF). At a national level, the FJF offers information services for jazz musicians; leads the Jazz Finland 2020 Vision – a jazz cultural policy working group; promotes the Andania Award for the promotion of Finnish jazz music and culture, and the Yrjö Award for Finnish jazz musicians; organizes the annual National Finnish Jazz Convention; and endorses national tours and jazz festivals. At the international level, the Federation produces the Young Nordic Jazz Comets competition for young Nordic jazz musicians; has created the Finland Jazz website, which offers a comprehensive database for Finnish jazz professionals; has developed the Heimojazz exchange project with the Estonian Jazz Federation, and the Vapaat åånet exchange project with the French Culture Institute. 5 Head of Secretariat for Jazz Denmark. 6 BBC 3 Radio reporter; covering 12 Points, both in Porto 2012 and Dublin 2013. 7 Director of the Moers Festival, board member of the EJN, member of the music advisory council to the City of Cologne, radio and television producer for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Deutschlandfunk and Deutsche Welle. 8 Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo, in Porto, which grants undergraduate and graduate courses in jazz performance. 9 The Grammis Awards, the Swedish music awards, inspired by the American Grammy Awards. 10 Orquestra de Jazz de Matosinhos. 11 Slovenian saxophonist. 12 José Dias Quartet, 360, Sintoma Records, 2013; José Dias, Nuno Oliveira, Alexandre Alves, Magenta, Sintoma Records, 2013. 13 Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo, Porto; Universidade Lusíada, Lisbon; Universidade de Évora, Évora; Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, Lisbon.

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14 Schools not granting graduate level diplomas, operating across the country. Escola de Jazz Luís Villas Boas e JBJazz, in Lisbon has a larger student body, approximately two hundred students each year. 15 Clean Feed, Tone Of A Pitch (TOAP), JACC Records, Creative Sources. 16 Such as Estoril Jazz Festival, Cascais; Jazz em Agosto, Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Festival Internacional Douro Jazz, Porto; Funchal Jazz Festival, Madeira; Angra Jazz, Azores; Festa do Jazz, Lisbon; SeixalJazz; Almada; OutJazz, Lisbon. 17 ‘Cinco Minutos de Jazz’ (Antena 1 – national public radio station), Monday through Friday; Jazz a Dois (Antena 2 – national public radio station), Monday through Friday; Zona Groovy (TSF – private radio station, national broadcast), Sundays; Radio Europa, a branch of France International, which exclusively aired jazz (2006–2011). 18 ‘Jazz.pt’. 19 Trem Azul, in Lisbon. 20 Desidério Lázaro. 21 Record label created in 2010 by Portuguese jazz association Jazz ao Centro Clube, based in Coimbra. 22 American alto saxophonist and composer. 23 John Scofield – American guitarist and composer. 24 Available from http://www.pordata.pt/, accessed 29 January 2015. 25 Pianist; one of the most successful and internationally acclaimed contemporary Portuguese jazz musicians and composers; has extensively worked with Portuguese singer Maria João. 26 English rock band. 27 Kurt Rosenwinkel – American guitarist and composer. 28 Joshua Redman – American saxophonist and composer. 29 Lisbon based jazz label, it has become internationally recognized as one of the most important labels working with contemporary, free jazz and experimental music. 30 Tone Of A Pitch (TOAP), independent jazz label, based in Lisbon, existed from 2001 to 2014.

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Index African-American culture 21–2, 27, 123 America (United States of America) 2, 18–19, 23–4, 34, 82, 88, 119, 125, 129 American democracy 15, 18–19, 21–2, 26 American expansionism 24, 28 American Jazz 4, 20–1, 23–7, 29, 34, 48, 53–4, 66, 78, 118, 122–3, 126, 128–9, 144 American culture 18, 20, 22–5, 34, 45–6 Americanization 2, 6, 18 audiences 6, 10, 16, 18, 33, 38–9, 43–4, 46–7, 49–50, 53, 57–9, 61–2, 64–5, 67–8, 70, 72–3, 82–94, 96–8, 105–6, 110, 121, 124–5, 129, 143–4, 146 Austria 30–1, 44, 48–9, 55, 113 Belgium 29, 125 cultural policy 3, 9, 16–17, 31–2, 34–5, 37, 39, 41, 45, 60, 81–4, 100, 102, 104, 106, 111, 118, 136–7, 143–4 Cyprus 78–9 Czech Republic 30–1, 78–9, 124 Denmark 44, 54–5, 86, 96–7, 108, 111, 117, 123, 125, 127 discourse 9, 13, 126, 144 on and of the European Union 2, 16, 18, 29 60 on jazz 1, 5–6, 21, 26, 28, 29, 32, 39–40, 89 dissemination 2 digital 43, 58–9, 61, 65, 69, 73, 138, 140 of music 3–5, 9–10, 20–1, 23, 25, 49, 121, 135, 144–5 education 17, 45, 55–8, 82, 88, 95–6, 133, 143, 145 music and jazz 3–5, 7, 25, 38, 50, 53–8, 83, 91–102, 104, 113, 130, 133, 138, 144–5 Estonia 78–9, 109, 120

Eurocentric 22, 24–5, 29 Europe Jazz Network (EJN) 8, 29, 32–5, 41 and academic research 145 audiences 43–4 funding and sustainability 36–40, 51–2, 120 European financial crisis 50, 77, 102, 105–6, 111, 113, 115, 133 European Jazz 1–3, 7, 25–9, 32–5, 66, 77–82, 86, 88, 115–16, 118–29, 132, 143–4 European Union 2, 17, 32, 52, 57, 78–9, 118–22 Finland 48, 92, 97, 102–5, 108–9, 111, 127–8 France 36, 44–6, 48–9, 79, 81, 83, 86, 102–3, 113, 119, 122–4, 132 funding 3, 6, 9–10, 18, 32, 36–8, 40, 42–3, 47, 50–2, 70, 89, 97, 101–5, 107, 111–13, 121, 137, 144 Germany 30, 54, 79, 85, 89, 95–6, 98, 104, 113–14, 132 global 12, 14, 20, 25, 40–2, 49, 96 Hungary 30–1, 78–9 identity 26–7 collective and group 60, 62, 64 cultural 22, 41–2, 45, 60 European 15–18, 26–7, 121, 143–4, 146 jazz 21, 105, 121, 128, 144 national 5, 126 Ireland 49–50, 77, 79, 86–7, 120, 125 Italy 36, 116, 123 Jazz Studies 5–7, 28, 42, 55, 132, 146 Latvia 78–9, 120, 124 Lithuania 30, 78–9

188

Index

local 8–9, 11, 14, 25, 33, 39, 41–2, 48, 51, 57, 66, 78, 80, 89, 97, 99–100, 106–7, 110–11, 125, 143, 145 media 1, 3, 5–6, 38, 43, 46–9, 53, 61, 68–9, 81–2, 85, 88–9, 94, 115, 120–1, 146 mediation 25, 59–60, 74 mobility 2, 29, 38, 43, 56–8, 63, 95, 100, 115–16, 118, 121, 144 music industry 3, 10, 21, 35, 40, 43, 58–60, 64–5, 67, 69, 72, 83, 102, 113, 129, 133–4, 136, 139, 141, 144–5 Netherlands 44, 54, 56, 64, 98, 105, 122, 132, 135, 137 netlabels 3, 67, 132–4, 137, 139–41 Norway 44, 51–2, 55, 78, 81, 84, 89, 92, 96, 100–1, 108, 111–12, 114, 117, 122–3, 125, 127, 129

Poland 31, 78–9, 106–7, 117, 123 Portugal 44, 49–51, 55–6, 77–9, 81, 110– 11, 114, 116, 120, 122, 132–4, 136–7 promoters and promotion 1, 4–10, 17–19, 24–5, 29–34, 37–8, 39–41, 45–7, 49–53, 56–8, 60–4, 67–8, 77–91, 93–100, 102–3, 105, 108–11, 113, 115, 117–18, 120–1, 128–32, 133–4, 136–8, 139–40, 141, 143–4, 146 Scotland 44, 53 social media 87, 89, 94, 120, 136 Spain 44, 49, 51, 55, 78, 102–3, 116, 122, 124 Sweden 48, 78, 83, 93, 100, 103–5, 108–9, 112–13, 119, 125, 127 United Kingdom 44, 46–7, 51, 55, 57, 60, 68, 79, 81, 103, 111, 113, 123, 126–7, 129, 132