Digby Fairweather, one of our most respected jazz musicians, presenters and writers, has written a well crafted piece in the Daily Telegraph on the decline in popularity of jazz over the years pointing the finger fairly and squarely at the media and the BBC in particular. I find little to disagree with his arguments and it would be interesting to hear what others think although I'm not holding my breath.
Read the full article here. I'm grateful to The Jazz Breakfast blog for drawing this article to my attention.
Lance.
2 comments :
Excellent article - I particularly like the suggestion of a "Classic FM"- style Jazz radio station, to re-introduce (or simply introduce) audiences to Jazz via the immense back-catalogue of accessible recordings from the last 95 years. God knows there's enough there to guarantee interesting programming!
I'm usually quite pessimistic about the future of Jazz, certainly of Jazz styles pre-dating the late 1950's, but I was recently reminded that by the end of the 19th century Mozart was all but forgotten in this country, and very rarely performed until Thomas Beecham, amongst others, took up the torch and re-introduced his music to the concert hall, and therefore to the conciousness of the public. Old Wolfgang's not doing so bad nowadays, so perhaps there is some hope?
good interesting post!!!
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