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Also this issue: Yeah, You Know The Philadelphia Singers The Notwist/Styrofoam Matthew Shipp/ Khan Jamal Vienna Teng Jazz Violin Summit Crooked Fingers DJ Nights |
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April 3- 9, 2003
the gig
"Bandsmen today are not just jazz musicians. They are soldiers of music." So reported Down Beat magazine some 60 years ago, at the dawn of World War II. Of course, that was an altogether different kind of war, and jazz occupied a strikingly different place in the national consciousness. Every unit and battalion, it seemed, had a house orchestra. Bandleaders and "chick singers" traveled abroad on USO tours. Some figures, like Glenn Miller, actually led bands in uniform, radios transmitting their anthems. Jazz was touted as the genuine all-American article, as critical to morale as Rita Hayworth and letters from home.
There was, at the same time, a high price to the bonds of jazz and war. Rations of shellac and rubber on the home front brought the entertainment industry almost to a halt, sounding the first death knell for an era of big-band swing. Meanwhile, the draft called hundreds of musicians into service, including many African Americans; some, like Lester Young, would never recover from the experience. October of 1942 saw the introduction of a regular column in Down Beat called "Killed in Action." Miller himself would appear in the column late in 1944.
Skip ahead, and jazz no longer occupies a place alongside C rations, to the probable relief of countless players. A music made marginal in peacetime can hardly be less so in war. In any case, it seems safe to say that troops in Baghdad at this moment have neither time nor inclination to pine for Jane Monheit or Jason Moran.
On the home front -- or, more pointedly, the "homeland" -- ambivalence reigns. Predictably, there’s been no old-fashioned boosterism, signaling both this war’s moral complications and obviously different times. Protest has not been absent from the ranks: The weeks leading up to this conflict included anti-war performances by such artists as Dave Douglas, Ben Allison and, quite notably, the Australian jazz singer Grace Knight. In Philly, Bobby Zankel appended his Warriors of the Wonderful Sound big band with a tagline: The ensemble, he wrote in a press release, was "waging peace." (Their next stand is Thu., April 3, 9 p.m., Tritone, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475.) But since the launch of so-called "Iraqi Freedom" -- in light of mounting casualties and the certainty of nothing besides loss -- the jazz community has come to maintain a mindful silence.
Perhaps that’s as it should be, at this point in time. Most artists have considered the difference between supporting our forces and condemning their orders. The jazz musicians of our century may yet weigh in on this war and its consequences, but for now, like the rest of us, they can only watch and wait.
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