Empty Air
So, I have tracked it down. The public perception of any genre or art form is as promoted by the media. Whatever is pumped out of the mincer at a newspaper is governed by one major factor, income. If it has no importance to them in terms of goodwill or income, forget it.
However we do have an unbiased media handed down to us with the grace and power of the great unfettered custodian of the pure. Well, that WAS the idea. The BBC.
Jazz Art Form is going through a period of high energy input and encouraging development of interest; up go the audience figures, totalling 6.6 million, an eighth of the artistically minded population.
Over the years, the BBC had been at the hub of promotion of Jazz.
YET since 1978 things have changed dramatically. Support has dwindled until the final blow of axing Jazz Awards and its annual Big Band Competition. Jazz on Radio now consitutes 3 % of its output. Radio 3 as a whole is heading for disastrously low numbers of listeners at 1.3%. Broadcasts are more often than not placed in some ungodly hour to be stifled by the sound of the midnight chimes.
The whole issue came to a 'head' 5 years ago, as a local BBC 'Boss' described a local Jazz broadcast as as a 'ghetto' programme, and it was axed; it was one hour every Sunday evening. Eversince the whole of the 'South West' has been utterly devoid of Jazz on the radio. In fact Mike Collier goes on to add that no commercial station has offered Jazz since Plymouth Sound in 1970. Well, if the programmes that are on offer indicate the level by which the BBC measure the audience - all I can say is that someone up there is being extremely rude to 'us down here'. We don't all go around dressed in hay smocks and sucking a stick of barley. The image thus projected by the small minded BBC is that no one likes jazz as it is something that only hippies and drop outs want. The fact is that there are many types of jazz. It is a highly complex art form. I enjoy all forms of music, but jazz is immediate and it hits direct into the soul. The order of Classical and the high art of the Great Organ is wondrous, but bring me a good plate of extemporisation now and then, keeps the brain active.
This is what BBC Radio 3 offer weekly.
Monday 2315-0100.
Saturday Jazz Record Library 1600-1700
Jazz Record Requests 1700-1800
Sunday Jazz Line Up 2345 -0100. Live groups.
This is nothing compared to the great concerts BBC used to host.
BBC can broadcast endless hours of music from the gutter (or was that ghetto), of sounds that have no quality or inspiration, endless hours of empty meaningless drivel. Incidentally I am not down on all 'pop music' It is that we need more performers like Avril Lavigne. She brings out the best in me. Real contact between pedal extremities and gluteus maximus. Yeah!!