Lottery money to Arts groups
For the year 1996, the Arts Council of England committed £623 million of Lottery money to arts groups, giving half of it to just these 12 outfits: the Royal Opera House, £78.5m; Lowry Centre, £41.1m; Royal Albert Hall, £20.0m; British Film Institute, £15.0m; Stoke-on-Trent, £14.9m; the Royal National Theatre, £31.6m; Sadlers Wells Ballet, £30.0m; the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art £22.8m; Milton Keynes Arts, £19.7m; the Royal Court Theatre £15.8m and Walsall Museum; £15.8m, and not a penny has been given in the support of England's true musical culture, Traditional jazz. It's highly offensive.
Furthermore, why did the Lowry Centre receive a further £15.7m from the Millennium Commission and the British Museum, £12.1m and £30.0m from Heritage and Millennium respectively? Why not from the 1996 national purse? A glimmer of hope is that the National (jazz) Sound Archive will get a good home in the new British Museum.
The Film Industry
At the Cannes Film Festival, Chris Smith, the Heritage Secretary, gave a further £92.25m for British films. Perhaps chariots of fire, Sir David Puttnam CBE, film producer, author and ACE former advisor, with the fourth minister, Goldcrest, looms high for the change of name at the Heritage Department.
Labour Lottery Policy Change
The new government, the first Labour one for 18 years, is to earmark £30m a month "good cause" money, from the mid-week Lottery, towards four priorities, one of which is to establish a National Endowment for Arts and Science, described as a "national trust for talent, helping to turn bright ideas into successful businesses."
KJR's five applications to further the cause of Traditional jazz serve that purpose and have been well publicised in Kings Jazz Review, which has already made representation to the new government, as these fall in line with the views expressed by the Secretary of State for Heritage, and government's new lottery policy.
Will our efforts at long last be rewarded in total ?
The Editorial 9th Year No. 2. : Apr/Jun 1997
The Sunday Times
A full page focus. All right, 47.3% of it on the 16 February was taken up by a Share Offer advertisement.
Was it really honourable for the Sunday Times to print it, and did it do the paper any good, especially with this type of exposure normally associated with the tabloids?
We think not.
We refer to the article by Olga Craig, Terminal Blues about the unhappy ending of one of Britain's top modern jazz artists, Ronnie Scott, who did wonders for the London jazz scene, as being bad taste journalism.
Why over the years had the paper nothing good to say about his work and talents? He kept his private life to himself, letting millions enjoy his music, and so, was it necessary for the paper to spoil those memories of him?
We think not.
The John Dankworth reply (Jazz Alive And Well) was true, sincere and delicately expressed. Let's hope that the Sunday Times adheres to his wishes. The above comments coming from KJR, the crusader for the Traditional jazz spectrum of the music, not the scene of this very fine saxophonist, makes the shame of the Sunday Times even more poignant.
The Guardian Newspaper
An article published entitled Art Forms Of The Century was sent in by a KJR reader. If Wynton Marsalis Is Its Creative Figurehead, Then Jazz Is Dead This Time. The KJR reply (p8) was sent to the Editor who we gather has not printed it. The article gives the American side, ours the British.
We believe convention gives us the right of reply - but apparently the Guardian does not agree.
The FT
The FT published an excellent review of New Orleans that brought a letter, shown in print from
Dr Edward Black, expressing the tawdry side of the city when he visited it during 1996 on the
Ken Colyer Trust tour.
The Independent
This national comes out with flying colours for its article - Beyond The Pale - by Phil Johnson, about the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and their visit to England when they gave a performance for King George V. Yes, they also visited Hammersmith Palais - but it was not `Beyond The American Pale' for management moved the bandstand from the centre of the room to the side of it.
The National Press
Even if they don't know the wide difference between a tuba mouthpiece and a clarinet bell, it does not matter, for there are plenty of good things to be written about jazz now that England has a new jazz policy.
The Croydon Advertiser
This paper serves the local community well with jazz info.
The Internet
ACE should now call KJR to hand, and award a grant for us to set up an intranet system for Traditional jazz clubs.
Forthcoming KJR edition.
The Best of Barber & Bilk CD, (LAKE LACD73) review has come over the net from David Cross who is teaching in Benin, West Africa. He also now runs a Traditional jazz band there.
The Editorial 9th Year No. 1. : Jan/Mar 1997
England's Jazz Policy
Apart from the unfortunate CLAUSE 13 aberration, the Arts Council of England (ACE) Jazz Policy published at the end of November 1996, is very, very commendable. Now for the record; if CLAUSE 13 has been included with strong intentions, then we have to point out that it is not only naive but blatantly inaccurate. In whatever walk of life one finds oneself, it is certain that a border will exist.
The Modernists, in pressing ACE as they must have done to have a border mentality snide remark against the Mouldy Figge Traditionalists included in the Jazz Policy of England, have marred the content in what otherwise is an excellent policy document.
We therefore advise our readers to make light of the ACE oversight, ignore the remark, and adopt a forthright and sensible approach to the future of jazz in England.
The Policy hits the ball openly into your court for you to return the serve to the National Lottery fund to score points, and therefore make an effort to win the match. Watch out! for the court net has been set to its highest level if you are a contestant in the match. If you are not in the running, or even worse, should you choose not to partake in the proceedings, then waiting in the sideline courts are the Granthams and Tinklebells all set to oust you out of your clubs.
For details:-
Jazz
A Policy for the support of Jazz in England,
ACE, 14 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 3NQ.
tel:- 0171 333 0100.
The Editorial 8th Year No 4 : Oct/Dec 1996
KJR is entering its 9th year and subscribers will be well versed in the knowledge that we have played a solid part in keeping Arts Council staff gainfully employed and also stemming boredom in their jobs with the unending flow of our (rejected) requests seeking support for Traditional jazz over the years. We can recall that one official, no longer in this world, telling Ian King that his non-sycophantic approach
was not doing Traditional jazz any good!
Still awaiting the outcome of the Review Of Jazz In England survey, (published 25/11/96 - see Home Page) its chairman, Gail Thompson, landed £1.3m for her Digeridoo Jazz. Whether or not MacBagpipes jazz will top that sum has still to be tested - meanwhile,
(see A Canterbury Tale elsewhere in this edition).
As a member of the National Lottery Board, Cleo Lane OBE landed £2.7m for her Wavendon centre, run with her husband saxophonist John Dankworth, for Modern jazz. Credit to Dankworth for staying loyal to his kind of jazz since his young Croydon days.
Also a member of the National Lottery Board, Sir David Puttnam CBE, film producer who has recently resigned from the Board of the Chrysalis media group, landed £160m for his industry. That is more than three times the amount sought by The Traditional Jazz Jazzitoria for its castle, and was Chariots Of Fire a flop?.
The Media and ACE
The managing editor of jazz UK received £400,000 which turned the Brecon Jazz Festival into a success, wait for it, again for the Modern jazz fraternity. We note with appreciation that the festival did include the Uralsky All Stars from Russia
(see a review in this edition of KJR),
and one other British top Traditional jazz group in the line-up.
Wales, the land of song, choirs and opera, now has a voice for jazz with the Cardiff-based publication, produced under the umbrella of the government supported Jazz Services, which claims under 9 criteria, to be a non-specialist, free-issue journal. The editorial in its No 11 edition gives sound sentiments with which we have no quarrel, but when it purports to have no single view, but seeks to spread the appreciation of the music, then it seriously ought to change its title to musicUK (if not noiseUK), without distinction. That's not to say that it isn't a good magazine, it is, and it serves well a part of jazz, but in trying to be all things to all types of music, it is bound to fail and land itself in a bouillabaisse of a mess.
If this country has an Arts Council of England and it fails to recognise and support its own true musical culture with distinction, then England should not support any art form at all, but act towards all art groups in the same way as it treats Traditional jazz - badly.
If England, in using an "arms length approach" to the arts, has been misguided in so doing, then waiting in the wings is the body set up under the Lottery Board rules to put that to right - the Traditional Jazz Jazzitoria.
The Editorial 8th Year No 3 Jul/Sep 1996
Readers will know in their hearts and minds that KJR does not revel in castigating England for failing to support its own musical culture, Traditional jazz, in favour of lashing out our X Marks resources through the Made in Taiwan machines, on the multifarious, disparate types of music.
Gosh, that's a long time, but you see, KJR has been tenacious in its crusade in the hope that someday the Arts Council of England (ACE) will take on board its administration team, someone with sense and mores to grasp the folly and the real consequences that will evolve from adopting a policy of neglecting it's own musical culture.
On the 4th April, the very day before Good Friday, Jeremy Newton, the director of ACE, informed the Traditional Jazz Jazzitoria Limited that his Council has no desire at this stage to approve the £1.5million application to directly support Traditional jazz throughout England, based on the premise that the 8 criteria, as published in the KJR Apr/Jun quarterly, 8 Criteria did not satisfy any of the ACE criteria of assessment set out in its booklet Detailed Guidance to Applicants. Furthermore, the Jazzitoria was given what appears to be a stern warning, not to re-submit any application earlier than April next year.
As the criteria rejection runs counter to the ACE's previous observations about them, it is perhaps in the interim that KJR has touched a raw nerve to cause this complete turn of mind.
KJR's advice therefore, is to ask all Traditional jazz clubs to submit separately an application for, say, £6,000 of lottery money, and if they find the forms too much of a hassle to fill in, KJR will do it for them without the need to enrol in a course of study to do so. Funny that the total sum will amount to £1.5million, so the figures do add up then ! Well well now !
This Green paper is, to say the least, a great disappointment (see pp 12-16 of this KJR edition - our response). Having taken three years to produce the document and thus curtailing jazz funding during that period, it is unquestionably unforgivable. Moreover, ACE having awarded £1.5 million to an organisation, "Musicworks," in which the lady chairman of the Jazz Working Group responsible for the Review has an interest, positively warrants the need for some questioning.
In the early 1930s, Germany paraded its streets with grand aplomb to the refrains of Traditional jazz, and to marches produced by its fine composers, whose works are listened today in opera houses the world over.
In the 1940s in the USA, to the snide remarks of "Uncle Tom" by peer groups to Traditional jazz musicians, Minton's Playhouse, New York was the scene of the development of Bebop-Bop-Rebop, its principle creators being Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. For reasons well documented, Germany decreed jazz a forbidden music - in effect Bop. Reith of Stonehaven, director general of the BBC, took up the cudgel and prohibited jazz, including the element of it which is today England's true musical culture, the music which upheld the morale of the British people during WWII. A year after VE Day, the British government set up an arts establishment and for fifty years onwards it has discriminated against its own true musical culture.
Unashamedly, the BBC reveals in the Beatles Anthology, and we quote, "Look, it's German music and we're fighting them." Much worse, in recent years the descendants of those who fought back a powerful force of invaders have, inexplicably so, been indoctrinated that all the foreign cultures the world o'er must be imported at speed to make England a better (music) cultural place to live in. Past chairmen of Arts organisations have a lot to answer for over this propaganda - governments too for their "hands-off" the arts approach to this national injustice. While Queen Juliana of the Netherlands knighted Peter Schilperoort, a very fine exponent of our kind of jazz, government to this day blindly continues to neglect England's musical culture in favour of financing "tinkle bell" and other types of music, and has done now for 50 years, as this Green Paper appears to purport.
The soft-touch England; for its generosity, what does it get in return? It gets cans of paint chucked all over it. Surely it is time for England to recognise Traditional jazz - its heritage.
10 Regional Arts Boards -
Six have replied to our question asking who has received grants for our kind of jazz? The London Arts Board neatly sums it up . . . "that grants given for New Orleans, Dixieland and Traditional jazz - none have been awarded." END