| MATTHEWS: | My name is Edsel Matthews and I'm the general manager of Koncepts Cultural Gallery which is a cultural center located in downtown Oakland. Before I start my remarks I want to comment on something discussed earlier. You (Assembly Member Murray) said at one time there were 10 jazz clubs in the Los Angeles area, now there are none. The reason for that is very simply economics. The economics are not there for a commercial business to present jazz and make a profit on it. I'm from the bay area where there are four major clubs that present the national music (jazz)--Kimball's East and Kimballs, Koncepts Cultural Gallery, and Yoshi-s. The fact is none of the people who own these places rely on jazz as their primary source of income. Because they have income from other sources, they are able to present the music. Jazz is basically presented in the bay area because people have a commitment to the music and not to the money that's involved in presenting the music. |
| MURRAY: | Do they have a viable jazz club in the bay area? |
| MATTHEWS: | Kimball's East is doing very well. Well, I shouldn't say "very well", but Kimball's East is a major jazz club that presents major national commercial acts even though over the last few months, I've noticed that their program has changed. They are doing a lot more commercial and pop-type acts... |
| MURRAY: | They don't present pure jazz shows? |
| MATTHEWS: | No. Not on a full-time basis. |
| MURRAY: | How many days a week do you see pure jazz? |
| MATTHEWS: | They present their shows about 4 or 5 nights. They present in segments. For example, when they bring in an artist, they bring him in for 4 or 5 nights at a time. |
| MURRAY: | How often is that? Is that once a month? |
| MATTHEWS: | They present every weekend. It's a fulltime club. |
| MURRAY: | What portion of their presentations is devoted to jazz? |
| MATTHEWS: | Probably about 60-65 percent. It's just a figure off the top of my head. On our organization, Koncepts was founded in 1984 by myself and a man named Kimathe Asante who was a jazz musician at the time. Basically we started by talking about the music and the way musicians were treated. We wanted to create a situation where jazz musicians would be treated with respect and dignity, and the music could be presented as the main thing. One of the problems is that in most instances jazz is a secondary consideration when people go out. People primarily go out to socialize. Against this background, the music is presented in bars and in nightclubs where people are not always there to hear music. We wanted to present jazz in a place where the music and the art came first. Koncepts opened up as a small hall which could seat about 85 people comfortably. Though we were small, we used to fantasize about the musicians we would attract there, and over a period of time we did attract a number of musicians--Buddy Collette, Sun Ra, Randy Weston, Horace Tapscott, Muhal Richard Abrams, Joseph Jarman from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Andrew Cyrille, Billy Harper, and Steve Lacey. All of those people played in our club. Since we opened in 1984, our mission and our program has grown. We've gone from just being a jazz club to being the more full-scale arts development agency. In addition to our music program, we also publish a magazine which includes articles on jazz, interviews, and commentaries on music. We also have an art gallery program where we allow artists around the area to show their work at our place. We do a Blues-In-The-Schools program where we bring musicians into Oakland high schools as resident artists to teach the blues, and we sponsor a series of blues concerts in the junior high and high schools. Over time we have looked at the issue of what it takes to preserve jazz. We've had a lot of discussions about it with a lot of musicians. The first thing people talk about is the need for more money. This is true, but we also need a lot more to move the music forward. It's very easy to put money down, but it will take more than that to preserve jazz ... |
| MURRAY: | What did you come up with? |
| MATTHEWS: | That's what I'm getting to now. First and foremost is what has already been said: Educational programs have to be developed. The key to acceptance of the music is to educate people and expose them to it. We would like to see programs developed that bring jazz into the schools. Our Blues-In-The-Schools program is great. We bring blues musicians and blues artists into various public schools. Schools should love it, but our experience has been resistance from school administrators. Sometimes we are treated as if we are making or creating hassles. One of the things they fail to realize is how important it is that their students get exposed to jazz--not just in black schools but in white schools also. That's the first thing that we would like to see. We would also like to see programs to raise the awareness of jazz in this state. We would like to see something like a national jazz month or national jazz week where people focus on jazz and focus on California's contributions to jazz in the United States. We would like to see programs that recognize the accomplishments of the many musicians that have come from California. As Buddy (Collette) said earlier, they leave California to get the recognition they deserve. For example, Koncepts recently presented a group called Brass Fantasy which was organized by Lester Bowie of the Arts Ensemble in Chicago and which had just finished a European tour. While they were in Europe, they played at stadiums in front of 10,000 to 15,000 people. In the bay area, which is supposed to be one of the most sophisticated jazz audiences in the country, we couldn't even get 400 people to come see Brass Fantasy. This goes back to that whole issue of jazz being more popular outside of this country than it is in this country. Primarily people in Europe and Japan are much more aware of jazz. Art Sato, my associate, spoke to Billy Hart, a drummer who had just toured Japan, about this. Billy was awed by the knowledge Japanese students possessed of jazz. They knew the musicians, they celebrated their birthdays, and they had a tremendous knowledge about the music. |
| MURRAY: | Why do you think that is? Could it be that it's just new? |
| MATTHEWS: | No. Outside of the United States, jazz is recognized for the art form that it is. Here in this country, jazz is in a situation where it has to straddle two worlds. On one hand, it has to survive as a commercial entity, but the economics are not there for people in the music business to present jazz. On the other hand, it's an art form that doesn't have the support and the infrastructure that's needed to prosper in the same way that symphony, ballet, or dance has. I just attended a conference called the Western Alliance of Arts Administrators in Oregon. Basically these are the people who carry the culture forward in this society. These are the major, nonprofit art presenters in the western half of the United States. This was a booking conference where all of the people who purchase talent gather. They discuss various artists and musicians, block booking, and their programs for the coming year. I sat through the whole thing while they discussed dance, symphony, ballet, and other art expressions. The conversations were real animated. They were telling inside jokes and spreading all the latest gossip. But when they got to jazz, there was nothing. I mean nothing. No one knew anything about the music; they couldn't even come up with 15 groups that people might be interested in booking. To me that goes to the heart of the problem: the people who are responsible for bringing the culture forward in this society don't know anything about jazz. They are intimidated by the music. |
| MURRAY: | How can we overcome that? |
| MATTHEWS: | First, the notion must be created that they have a responsibility to present this music. Some of them work at state colleges and control a tremendous amount of public funds. They must be prompted to present and promote jazz just like they do symphony, opera, ballet ... |
| MURRAY: | These are nonprofit presenters? |
| MATTHEWS: | Yes. I believe the future of jazz does not exist in nightclubs. Jazz should be presented on symphony stages and in concert halls. This will inspire public respect and put it in the quality environment it deserves. Europe and Japan present it this way, and it should be presented similarly in this country. The nonprofit presenting industry, such as those at the Western Alliance of Art Administrators, hold the key here. They are responsible for presenting the culture to the public. If they don't know about jazz, how can we expect the general public to appreciate it? There were people at the Western Alliance of Art Administrators' conference who are aware of this problem and are committed to a resolution. But it's not just jazz. We are here to talk about jazz, but included in that is the whole spectrum of art forms of people of color. We see a situation where the resources and the energies are more concentrated on preserving the symphony, the ballet, and the opera than with preserving art forms of people of color. The problem spans the spectrum here. One of the first things we have to do is raise the awareness and the understanding of people in the presenting industry to these art forms so that they can begin to make informed and intelligent decisions about presenting jazz. |
| MURRAY: | How do you think we might do that? |
| MATTHEWS: | We need to find where the professional associations are and develop programs to educate people. There are professional associations out there and there is a desire to present jazz. Somehow these should be put together. One encouraging thing about my trip to Oregon is that I found a lot more interest in jazz than I realized existed. There are people out there who would like to present jazz but don't know anything about it. The term "jazz" is a very intimidating term. In reality the word jazz means nothing more than interpretive music that comes out of the African American experience. We got classical jazz in the form of the Modern Jazz Quartet to the most "out" jazz in the form that Sun Ra used to play. In between that you have the whole spectrum of music. So when you say "jazz", you are really saying black music because it encompasses a wide spectrum. If people understand this spectrum, they can understand the music and appreciate it as an audience. Another problem is where jazz is presented. There are very few jazz acts that can fill up a hall of 2,000 to 3,000 people. We need alternative ways to present the music besides the traditional music hall. |
| MURRAY: | Let me ask Juan (Carrillo) a question. Could the Arts Council or state government influence the universities in the kind of programs that they present? |
| CARRILLO: | The connection that I tried to make in my presentation is that the Arts Council supported Koncepts' (Edsel's) trip to Portland. We are involved with statewide organizations of presenters ... |
| MURRAY: | That's not my question ... |
| CARRILLO: | The education process is what I am addressing. We are in the process of educating this network of presenters to jazz. We see people like Edsel as educators who can influence this network of presenters who don't know anything about jazz. They admit their lack of knowledge. They want to be educated. |
| MURRAY: | No. I don't think that was the answer to my question. Fresno State presents programs, for example. Could we--the Arts Council or state government--direct them to include jazz in their programs? |
| CARRILLO: | We would hesitate to do that. We try to educate them so that they would want to present jazz. There are voices in those communities that want to see jazz presented and we need to prepare that field to make it happen. |
| MINICUCCI: | One of the ways you could do it, conceivably, is through fee support. The touring and presenting program appropriates money according to specific considerations such as what is proposed and where it is proposed to be presented. So incentives could be built into the existing appropriation process. I agree with Juan, the state arts council has never acted as a directorial agency with regard to presenters, but some incentives should be looked at ... |
| CARRILLO: | Currently, the Arts Council has a set aside fund of $50,000 in the touring and presenting program for jazz and traditional folk music to make sure the money is there when the jazz presenters ... |
| MURRAY: | In other words, encourage them by funding incentives and not by directing them to do it ... |
| MATTHEWS: | I'd like to say that Phillip Horn who heads the touring and presenting program and Patty Milich are very committed to increasing the level of jazz in California. Their actions and their words have definitely given me the feeling that it's what they really want to do. I know Phillip has really been on me to participate in California presenters and western alliance of arts administrators in order to help prod this situation along. So I think they are doing a good job. I just want to make a point about the touring and presenting program particularly in relation to jazz musicians: the program does not support jazz musicians, it supports proposal writers. One problem, from a jazz musician's standpoint, is the requirement to provide a schedule for the following year. I don't know any jazz musicians, except for the really high level ones, that can tell you where they will be playing three months from now, let alone 12 months from now. The amount of paperwork and the amount of screening required tends to discourage musicians that make their living on a gig-to-gig basis from applying to the California Arts Council's Touring and Presenting program. It's a major problem. |
| MURRAY: | So you believe jazz musicians should not have the same requirements as other musicians? |
| MATTHEWS: | I want jazz musicians to have some support. |
| MURRAY: | Do you want them treated differently than the others? Do concert musicians have to submit their schedules? |
| MATTHEWS: | Classical music is organized that way, jazz isn't ... |
| MURRAY: | Because of the difference in the structure? |
| MATTHEWS: | Yes. The structure and the way that the talent is purchased and sold is very different for jazz than it is for classical musicians. We had the same problem at Koncepts. They wanted us to send in our schedule for 1993 when we hadn't even started booking February of 1992 yet. Because of the way jazz is booked in this country, it just isn't possible. So the California Touring and Presenting program doesn't encourage a lot of jazz on their roster because of this. |
| MURRAY: | Thank you very much, Mr. Matthews. |