the dotmatrix project

Found behind a Harris Teeter in Greensboro. Photo by Zoe Alexandra.

Dear Professor Jazz,

Thank you for coming to Greensboro Wednesday and sharing your talents with this city for the EMFjazz&blues festival.

I understand that you’re an accomplished musician. Educator. Professor and Director of the Jazz Program at Duke University. That said, I wondered if you could answer something for me.

When did Jazz get so money?

The last two times I ran into local jazz musicians I was left stung by the slap of money. One said they wouldn’t show up for much without a promised paycheck. Neither would most of his friends.

The other dude asked for a few dollars after what I thought was an impromptu jazz jam. It turned out to be a gig, yes, but I thought they were playing along because they liked the music.

Instead it felt like I’d just invited somebody over to my house for a home cooked dinner, then got stuck with the check.

I get it, though. We all need to get paid.

It just mystifies me that a style of music born out of the brothels and gin houses is now almost entirely confined to refined concert halls and universities, where lanky mop-haired kids develop an elitist attitude to only playing for people dressed in their Sunday best.

More ironic is how a jazz musician can demand big bucks to play a set list full of jazz standards – songs they didn’t even write. Songs written by jazz cats who wrote those tunes years ago, who freely passed them on, and who will probably never see a dollar for it.

Are jazz institutions teaching these lanky kids “no pay, no play?” Because while the rest of the world is struggling to make ends meet, I worry that if these young guns only prime themselves to play the big time, that jazz music will remain a genre experienced only in the museum-like rooms of Carnegie Hall, University stages, and expensive weddings.

That’d be a shame.

Thanks for listening,

Molly McGinn