by Harold McMillan

As we move quickly through May and head on to June, I am knee deep in pre-production for our annual Jazz Festival. After nine years of Clarksville Jazz and Arts Festivals, this year we christen a new name and location for what I think is Austin's best jazz program of the year. From June 5 through 14 the Austin Jazz and Arts Festival offers live performances -- by local, regional, and national/international acts -- in Austin's finest jazz venues and (on June 13-14) downtown at Waterloo Park. This 10 year anniversary is an important one for the festival. It signals persistence, longevity, growth, and dedication to the idea that Austin -- and our music community -- deserves an annual celebration of jazz culture and all of its various musical antecedents and permutations. Even the Live Music Capital of the World needs to acknowledge and celebrate America's own brand of art music.

For nine years we did what we could to draw positive attention to the culture and history of Austin's Clarksville neighborhood. Clarksville -- that area west of Lamar between 12th and 6th Streets, east of Mopac -- and its social history, continues to provide an appropriate metaphoric parallel with the story of Jazz in America, in Austin,Texas. The story is one of struggle and adversity, and finally, a story of evolution and survival. Both Clarksville and jazz music have their deep roots in the culture and history of African America. Through pressures and change from inside and out, Clarksville the neighborhood, the extended family, still face an unsure future in the Austin community. From an 1870s Freedom town of former slaves to one of Austin's most gentrified high-hipness-factor residential areas, Clarksville struggles to maintain its cultural connection to the founding African American families who settled the west side community more than 100 years ago. With jazz in Austin the dilemma is very much akin.

The questions beg the asking: "Can an Austin community, or a form of expressive culture, based in African America, survive and flourish, with cultural integrity intact, in the Austin of the 1990s...and can it do so without totally losing its connection to its cultural roots? For Clarksville the neighborhood, it will continue to grow and change. But will it do this with a respect for preservation and heritage, regardless of who the residents are?

For jazz in Austin the question is much the same. Will the Live Music Capital of the World recognize and appreciate that jazz is America's own art music and deserves the interest in preservation, the respect, the support of the community, regardless of who its originators are?

As hard as I try, as deeply as you might consider the questions, it's really hard to deal with potential answers to these questions without also looking at Austin and how it deals (or does not deal) with issues of race, culture and provinciality.

European Classical Forms, European Art Music is important. No argument. What is American Art Music? We got any in Austin? Is it important? Do we support it in the same fashion as European Art Music? Is European Art music considered "white music"? Is Jazz black? Is Jazz supported in Austin by supporters of Art Music? Is Clarksville, or Central East Austin, considered black? Do black folks support Black - Jazz - American - Art - Music?

If this stuff is so important to some folks, if this American stuff is so important to folks in Europe, if this black stuff is so important to white folks, if this stuff is so important to folks at Lincoln Center and Wolfe Trap, if this stuff is so important to folks in Corpus Christi, if this stuff makes the visitors bureau in San Angelo work hard to get folks to come into town to hear it, if this stuff just doesn't make sense to the folks at the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau...why, oh please tell me, why these high-hipness-factor Austinites, why large numbers of Austin's black folks, why those folks in positions to be helpful, just don't get it? Is it about race? Is it about being provincial? Is it just business as usual? Is it about not knowing, not caring, not having a clue? Is it an Austin thang?......Hep me, hep me.Please!

Given the tone of this rant, you can guess where this leads when discussing the politics of neighborhood preservation. So, I'll stop on that one. We have moved our focus to downtown. Jazz is urban music. It should be showcased in the central city, spread all around, given its due. We changed the name of the festival for this reason. We attract attention from many places outside of Austin. It makes sense, in our 10th year, to identify Austin's Jazz Festival just that way.

As we move into our second decade, the challenge of the festival becomes more than just programming good shows. We do that. And we have identified an audience who supports and appreciates jazz and all of its musical cousins. But there are other segments of Austin's populace that we must reach, educate. DiverseArts' (we, our) recent experiences with two top flight, Grammy Award-winning touring jazz acts -- Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton -- illustrates our "Austin jazz dilemma."

Our Hargrove show (one helluva show, I might add) did not get the audience I think it deserved. The show came together very quickly because of tour routing. We just couldn't pass it up, ESPECIALLY during SXSW week. And although we were up against the opening of SXSW and the Awards Show, I don't think the bulk of Austin's jazzheads were in attendance at the the Awards Show. And, I also don't think that out-of-towner-jazzhead SXSW attendees were in attendance en mass at the Awards show nor at other showcases that night.

One of the top reasons that I thought the Hargrove show was needed during the conference was because jazz programming is so lacking at SXSW. This seemed to me to be a prime opportunity for locals and jazz travelers alike to hear one of the brightest young voices in jazz today. My intent, indeed, was for this to be a SXSW showcase event. As a conference showcase (open to badges, wristbands, and ticket holders) this show would have surely been one of the jazz highlights of this year's conference. And, as soon as I began conversations with Roy Hargrove, I also called SXSW, discussed their need for jazz programming, and invited the conference to participate in producing this show. They declined.

My point regarding identifying our audience is not intended to sound as if we have no audience. Thank God, there is a jazz audience in Austin. To compare, in parallel, Austin's jazz audience to the college radio or top 40 alterna-rock audience, however, misses the message of our work. What we seem to be lacking is the kind of unified support-base that exists for jazz in other cities. There are scores of jazzheads out there and they will support live jazz in Austin. But, jazz is not, nor will it likely be in the near future, as hot a commercial product as rap music or alterna-rock. That is not the point. Finding ways to support the form, keep it growing, and ensure its survival in particular ways that fit the Austin scene, is the point.

And for that to take place, we (and you, and The Chronicle, Statesman, KUT, KOOP, KJAZ, KAZI, the Musician's Union, and etc...) have our work cut out for us. It's about cultural education. The music community, arts organizations, schools, the media, and corporate supporters have to realize that Jazz, much like the symphony and opera, needs a broad base of support to survive and thrive in this market. And, in some situations, jazz should be separated from the kind of market-driven craziness of the rock and roll world. Just because Austin is a fairly small, provincial city, doesn't mean that this important cultural treasure should be ignored by those in the best positions to support it.

Just as Austin DESERVES to have a quality opera, Austin deserves access to the best and brightest local and touring jazz programs. It's a cultural necessity, which, once realized, will translate into tourist dollars, whiskey sales, hotel reservations. Diverse cultural development begets economic development. Austin should support such goals, not because they relate to my work, but because Jazz is the fundamental art music of America.

European Classical Music doesn't sell many records, but its series and festivals get corporate support, sponsorships, and annual galas that raise lots of private dollars. Isn't America's Art Music worth some of that respect and support, too? If Austin continues to miss opportunities to support America's own art music, the claims of our cultural and social progressivism must be viewed as mere lip service. If Austin's corporate community continues to miss opportunities to show support for cultural forms (and likewise, cultural communities) other than those steeped in Classical European forms or Texas Country Culture, then the allegations of provincialism, cultural chauvinism, and bigotry start to sound right on target.

All of the musicians and other folks who sweat blood living and working in the non-profit arts world know that jazz is no commercial cash cow. If it were, we'd probably not be needed. But because of the cultural importance of this music, many of us want to do all we can to keep this stuff alive in Austin. Folks like DiverseArts, the Creative Opportunity Orchestra, the UT-PAC, and other non-profit cultural organizations are the ones who feed Austin's appetite for world class jazz. And they (we) do it because there is a need, not because we are out to make buttloads of money producing live jazz. And that means that a good portion of our mission will continue to be educating audiences, the media, the corporate community, and potential private supporters on the merits of cultural diversity in the Live Music Capital of the World.

DiverseArts recently presented McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Smith, James Clay, Roy and Nicholas, Chucho Valdez, Frank Lacy, Cornell Dupree, Kenny Garrett, Kenny Kirkland, Sebastian Whittaker, Jeff Watts, Mark Whitfield, Kermit Ruffins, Ellis Marsalis, Marchel Ivory, and many other world-class young lions and legends...my point? At each of these shows, and every Jazz Festival performance, there were appreciative folks who encourage us to continue our work. No other organization, promoter, or venue in town (and there are many who are more financially equipped to do so) consistently works to address this market.

It's sad but true: If the non-profit cultural arts organizations (DiverseArts, the PAC, Creative Opportunity Orchestra, and a few others) finally go broke and stop producing the stuff, the Austin jazz scene will suffer dearly.

For the present, Austin does have a jazz audience. But when you consider the offerings and tastes of most commercial promoters and event sponsors, Austin looks like a smooth - country - Texas - folk - rock town . As we move into the next century, the face of Austin's cultural offerings really should begin to more reflect the cosmopolitan image the city has of itself.

In the meanwhile, there is lots of work to do. And it's work I love. As long as we can continue to serve a need in this community, as long as we keep getting new folks at our shows and at the Austin Jazz and Arts Festival, we'll keep swingin'. In time, the support base will broaden. If it doesn't, I'll just have to find something else to do.

[Harold McMillan, Director of DiverseArts and Publisher of ADA, now has a new job. On April 19, 1998 at 12:49am, he was promoted to MacDaddy -- father of Hayes Michael McMillan, 7 lbs. 14 ozs., 20.5 inches long. Mother Grace and baby are happy and healthy.]