by Harold McMillan

It don't mean a thang, if it ain't ...Got that swing?

I do. I got it. And it's actually beginning to look like a lot of Austin is swinging too. There's a buzz about jazz in Austin again. The thing is, I think, there just might be a new swing to it, a new groove. It's not the same old jazz scene, not the same old players, not the same old audiences, and not the same old music, either.

To be honest, some of that truism is a bit troubling to me and other old heads in the scene. But, like it or not, there is a new under -- current in the scene. Over the years that I've been in Austin there have been these "movements" that come and go -- martini & cigar jazz, Stray Cats-Frank Sinatra swing, acid jazz, smooth-move-radio jazz. As a commercial enterprise, the swing stops as soon as whiskey sales slow. Now we are apparently in the middle of another scene maturation swing. The change. Maybe this one is analogous to mid-life mood swings. This one, this ripple might be more significant than many of the others that have occurred during the course of the last ten or fifteen years. A new Austin jazz paradigm for the new millennium?

Now one of the things that I know the most about is that I am sometimes wrong when I make these grand pronouncements about the cultural life of Austin. I keep making such statements in public because I too have been right on target a few times. So, here I go. I'm making a grand pronouncement of my observations, generalizing them, and claiming special insight based on my experience. As far as I know, everybody who pays attention to this kinda thing will simply see me as stating the obvious. Others will, once again, point out that I am off-base, dead-wrong, and ill-informed as to the significance of my musings.

Anticipating this, I freely admit now that everything I posit to you here is simply information and insight I got directly from conversations with my 15-month-old son, Hayes. As far as I can tell, he knows as much about what's going on with this jazz scene as the next commentator. The major difference is that he never lies, never bores me with details of HIS next project, is perfectly comfortable giving direct, emotional responses, and is genuinely interested in non-competitive cooperation for the health of the scene as a whole. He, without hesitation, true to the tradition, swings on 2-and-4. Know what I'm saying?

"So Harold," you might ask, "what is this new paradigm?"

The biggest thing, most significant change in the scene lately is that those of us who have been producing live jazz here for the past several years are no longer the only ones trying to make a go of it in the market place. To my way of thinking (and Hayes') that is really the news here. And that is also probably the most positive thing happening in the scene right now.

Don't get me wrong, I do want to protect, preserve and perpetuate control of my part of this turf. I need my shows to make, I need the Austin Jazz Festival to continue to be the biggest jazz week of the year, I still want and need market share. But, the way I see it, Austin is in the process of growing up as a city. It can't continue to be a one-horse-jazz-town. And it pretty much has been that for the last several (many) years. You know, it can't keep it's designation as the Live Music Capital of the Cosmos with one jazz booking agent, one group of jazz players, one jazz club, one set of Austin-style jazz standards, one segment of the potential jazz listening/paying audience. More producers/presenters/players means that the scene is growing, maturing, appealing to a broader cross section of the jazzheads in Austin.

Maybe you happen to be an 18-year-old college student who got turned on to jazz while you were at a party where a bunch of Groove Collective-like stuff was on the box all night long. Maybe you are a 28-year-old BMW-owning young professional who works at Dell Computer and is really into Boney James' and Kirk Waylum's smooth jazz CDs. Maybe you are a young artist-type, would-be film maker who got turned on to avant jazz because you were at a screening of films with Golden Arm Trio doing the soundtracks. Maybe you just love the new generation of jazz divas and go to every Women in Jazz performance. Maybe you are a retired corporate exec who is really into Dixieland and hangs out with the Traditional Jazz Society of Austin. Maybe you are a music journalist who only listens to the newest stuff from the New York underground. Maybe you are a lonely guy who has everything Cecil Taylor has ever recorded, go to New York and hang out at the Knitting Factory and who has lots of money to spend on noisejazz. Maybe you are a real academic music head and really love European concert music, classic third stream, and big band arrangements. Maybe you are almost 50-years-old, matured taking acid, listening to the Grateful Dead, and got turned on to Ornette Coleman by way of Jerry Garcia.

The big news is that, for the first time since I've been on the scene here, you can now find all of that stuff here. In terms of the big picture, and that is what I spend some amount of time looking at, that is the beginning of a real bona fide, true to life, diverse, mature jazz music scene. And that is what we need here, need to nourish, need to cultivate, need to promote. And -- this is for you folks out there who can afford to and should support this work -- this is what is deserving of corporate sponsorship, good audiences, and positive karma on the street.

I can't get out of this without just doing a little commercial for our work here at DiverseArts. The Austin Jazz and Arts Festival, true to form for a real celebration of the various traditions that make up the genre, touch on all of what I've mentioned here. We are not an every-night-of-the-year jazz night club. We are a celebration of the Austin Jazz Community, as a whole. We need your support, your gifts, your participation.

That's what Hayes told me, and I'm sticking to it.