Jilted by Jazz: On Jazz at Lincoln Center's Opening Jazz Talk
I adopted the late Mary Lou Williams as my patron performer a few years back. I am still learning her catalogue but with little urgency. It's not like that is entirely what drew me to her. I am intrigued by women creating culture in challenging circumstances especially women doing what few other women are doing. Jazz was Mary Lou Williams' field and she plugged away at it never succumbing to sexism but certainly suffering on its account.
As this is a moment of possibility in politics, last Thursday Jazz at Lincoln Center considered whether it is also moment of possibility for women in jazz, why there aren't more women cut from Mary Lou Williams' cloth flourishing in jazz and how there could be more. Cellist Akua Dixon and saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom were joined by journalist Lara Pellegrinelli and moderator Lewis Porter for Jazz at Lincoln Center's Jazz Talk Series opener.
The absence of women on jazz club bandstands is painfully obvious to any jazz head and the panelists bandied about solutions, failed and prospective, while considering the very real barriers to success. Dixon recalled integrating Broadway orchestras early in her career and the basic lack of facilities for women like restrooms and dressing rooms. Jane Ira Bloom relayed a recent conversation with the famously broad-minded legendary pianist Herbie Hancock who accounted for women's absence in a saxophone competition they were judging to their lack of "aggression." But it was Rutgers Professor Lewis Porter who provided the most damning evidence of the sexism in jazz past and present. He showed vintage footage of late bandleader Buddy Rich sporting a piggish disdain for female musicians except for the cute ones and a skepticism of their talent before reading a quote from Branford Marsalis where he bragged to JazzTimes magazine that he had a "no bitch band."
Marsalis' slogan was wholeheartedly trounced as an abominable position to hold and erroneously attributed by Pellegrinelli and Porter to Marsalis' hip hop sensibilities but his younger brother, JALC's majordomo, took some blows as well given the persistent absence of women from the center's venerable orchestra.
What Dixon and Bloom also made clear was how social exclusion diminished their professional opportunities. Hiring of small jazz groups is often done informally by word of mouth or through hanging out and as Porter summarized, "It's harder for women to hang out." Plus, if you're banished from the bandstand out of some wrongheaded hypermasculine idea that it will benefit the music, it almost precludes the opportunity for other work. Jazz gigs beget jazz gigs.
It was a unlikely start for the Jazz at Lincoln Center's Jazz Talk Series, especially given that recent activism around gender equity in jazz has centered on their all male house orchestra and that a solution to women's under-representation still escapes the community. Somber as the notes that were rung, the panel brought out a good deal of women musicians from International Sweethearts of Rhythm vet Carline Ray to seasoned pianist Bertha Hope to up and comer Sarah Manning and shed some light on the music being made by women on the lower frequencies.
Tags: Jazz, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Women
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