Racism in North America?
Slavery
Lynchings
and everything else
Europeans *would* have been deprived of Jazz, if the US Jazz
founders/innovators had been *Jewish* & then moved to Europe.
My point is, of course, that Europeans have little reason to
tout their history as minority-friendly, no more than anyone else.
Tony
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
on Fri, 8 Dec Evan said:
>
> By the way, I've been told that Americans really don't like jazz very
> much (and that, for example, there are better jazz festivals even in
> Canada, and jazz musicians have a tendency to move to Europe so that
> people will take them somewhat seriously). Is this true? It does
> explain at least one joke on the Simpsons that I never did get (radio
> slogan: "This is WJZZ -- 28 Americans can't be wrong!") But it just
> seems odd, given that jazz is the one American cultural contribution that
> people seem unequivocally grateful for in the rest of the world.
i don't know about americans not liking jazz, but it's true that
the best american musicians have a tendency to move to Europe for
longer or shorter periods. and that's the way it's been for years,
for decades. that's why it's always been quite easy to get to see
leading names of jazz, almost wherever you live in europe, and that's
why record stores are full (well, ok maybe not "full" exactly) of
brilliant (and not that brilliant) recordings with all the big names
of the 50s and 60s, made somewhere in europe. (Charlie Parker in
Stockholm, Chet Baker Live all over the place (he lived for years in
Amsterdam after all), Dizzie, Miles Davis and so on....) i guess
'merican jazz musicians were taken seriously, i.e. appreciated as
artist playing serious music over here at a time when "serious
american culture" didn't want to be associated with this brand of
black, popular music.
that moving to europe in the 50s also meant moving away from a lot of
the racism back home, of course also counted... dammit, Charlie
Parker was God in France at a time when he couldn't get served in a
majority of american restaurants?!
* ----------------------------------------------- *
\ Trond Buland \
\ e-mail: trond.buland@ifim.sintef.no \
\ phone:+47 73 59 25 65 home:+47 73 52 78 21 \
* ---------------------------------------------- *