An Open Letter To The JazzTimes Staff:

I want to start by saying that I am really pleased to hear about the survival of JazzTimes. The initial news of your production halt really put a damper on the jazz world’s spirits, and the new report of your continued publication turns things around completely. You’ve served the jazz world as a steady advocate for decades now, and the loss of your presence would significantly alter the state of jazz promotion. I applaud Madavor Media for their avid support of the JazzTimes, and I look forward to the application of their publishing expertise onto the JazzTimes brand. I’m impressed with their foresight to keep Lee Mergner and other JazzTimes staff members on the team, indicating that a connection with the jazz community interests them. I’m excited about a long and successful future for the magazine.

You might look at this hiccup as an opportunity to make a fresh start, and I’d like to suggest that this might be a good time to reevaluate your coverage of the Latin Jazz world. There’s been an unprecedented outpouring of creativity and significant cultural statements in the Latin Jazz world for several years now, and honestly, I haven’t seen that reflected in your pages. Artists are pushing the music in an unbelievable number of directions, resulting in major statements that beg for overdue attention. Besides a continuing progression in the firmly established areas of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian influences, musicians are integrating traditions from Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and more into their art. While some musicians continue to use simple chord progressions from Latin dance music, others investigate bebop, hard bop, modal, and avant-garde improvisation approaches. Their statements range from easily accessible and danceable to extremely academic and thought provoking, but one thing remains true – the Latin Jazz world is currently thriving artistically. A lack of coverage seems like a crime; any major jazz publication, print media or online, needs to regularly feature Latin Jazz in order to honestly represent the modern day jazz world.

I wanted to make sure that I was speaking on facts, so I looked back at the cover stories from the past eighteen years. Your cover stories provide a significant amount of publicity to artists, and logically, you should offer this opportunity to a fairly even spread of straight-ahead jazz, Latin Jazz, fusion, avant-garde, and more. Over the course of 184 issues, you covered two contemporary Latin Jazz artists that hold a major impact upon today’s scene. Poncho Sanchez held the cover of the November 2001 issue while saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera sat on the cover during 1999. Both of these artists have significantly spread the popularity of Latin Jazz around the world, and their output consistently reflects strong musicianship. Dizzy Gillespie fronted an issue in April of 2005 on Latin Jazz that covered his era with Chano Pozo. As a jazz publication, the balance between coverage of the past and present can be a challenge, so I’m glad to see that you went back to the music’s roots. Danilo Perez, an outstanding artist that has spent a piece of his career referencing Latin styles, appeared on the cover of your 2008 educational supplement. Los Hombres Caliente, a side project from Bill Summers and Irvin Mayfield, earned the cover of the May 2003 issue. That’s a total of 5 cover stories for Latin Jazz, an unusually small amount considering the enormous artistic impact of the music. If we were talking about a couple of years, this might be a reasonable number, but we’re talking about eighteen years - you published 184 issues, and during that time, you placed Latin Jazz artists on the cover five times. That’s a completely unacceptable amount of coverage towards the Latin Jazz world.

Based on your cover stories in the past eighteen years, I feel like you’ve focused your energies upon a limited number of artists, distinctly ignoring Latin Jazz musicians. For example, Pat Metheny, Wynton Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, and Diana Krall each sat on four different JazzTimes covers. Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Sonny Rollins each graced the cover of JazzTimes five different times. Joe Lovano found his way into four different cover stories, and your first issue back in publication will present him for a fifth time. Miles Davis, a major jazz artist by any standard, landed on the cover of your magazine a grand total of six times in the eighteen years past his death. John Scofield gained a total of five covers stories in the past and your second issue back to print will place him on the cover for a sixth time. Ten artists formed the cover story features over the course of forty-seven issues of JazzTimes – at ten issues per year, that’s a little less than five years worth of magazines. That number also resonates with me as nine times more cover issues than Latin Jazz artists have received over the past eighteen years. I don’t mean to create the wrong impression; I believe that each of these artists has made important contributions to the art form and they deserve publicity. Still, you have chosen to repeatedly return to a small number of artists while burying a significant jazz genre, Latin Jazz. You’ve chosen widely accessible artists to focus upon, which must make some JazzTimes sales. I understand the need to sell magazines - that’s where you get your powerful ability to promote artists. Still, I find this imbalance of publicity fairly irresponsible and damaging to the Latin Jazz world.

I realize that your publication contains much more than the cover story, so just to be fair, I dug a little deeper into the magazine contents, only to find similar results. I uncovered a total of 39 references to Latin Jazz artists throughout the past eighteen years, again a very small number. Granted, I’m not including CD, DVD, or book reviews; I understand these can be good sources of promotion for Latin Jazz artists. I believe that you’ve regularly reviewed major Latin Jazz albums, and I greatly appreciate that fact. The thirty-nine articles that I’m referencing range from the half page blurb to the multiple page cover stories. These articles provide a bit more meat, and in my opinion, they more often drive your readers towards the support of the featured artists. Several of the more popular Latin Jazz artists made repeat appearance such as Arturo Sandoval, Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Jerry Gonzalez, and more, shrinking that actual number of Latin Jazz musicians that found themselves in the pages of JazzTimes. I estimate that depending on the depth of your coverage, you could easily include six to ten artist features per issue, and most likely more. This puts the total number of artist articles over the past eighteen years at a low number of 1,104 and a high number that could reach 1,840 and beyond. Within those articles, you included Latin Jazz artists in your coverage 39 times, giving the Latin Jazz world at best a meager representation. Once again, I find this imbalanced and unfair, disregarding all the important work done by Latin Jazz artists.

I’m not asking you to dismiss artists from the mainstream jazz world - they are important musicians that deserve publicity - but did you ever think about the message that a lack of Latin Jazz coverage sends? By making the music invisible to your readers, you send the message that it’s not important. Most jazz scholars would agree that Latin Jazz is an important piece of the jazz world, and many of them would go into depth about the extent of its impact. I would find it hard to believe that your knowledgeable staff of jazz journalists actually believes Latin Jazz isn’t important, and I assume that they would gladly cover it. Overlooking Latin Jazz also sends mixed messages about your views on race. In every form, jazz sends powerful messages about culture and identity - Latin Jazz speaks volumes about Caribbean, Central and South American culture. References back to folkloric forms, and the use of traditional songs symbolize cultural pride while the mixture of jazz signifies an evolving identity. Aren’t these interesting issues that your readers would like to explore? Isn’t this the meat of the artistic process that we’d all love to be a part of? We’ve heard about it from Wynton, Lovano, and Scofield, why can’t we hear about it from Latin Jazz artists? By marginalizing Latin Jazz, you state that the extensive jazz contributions of Caribbean, Central and South American artists don’t matter. Again, I question if you really intend to give your readers this impression.

I’d like to see a more regular coverage of Latin Jazz and I’d love to see the magazine look at a broader spectrum of the ever-expanding world of Latin Jazz. You might consider a monthly article dedicated to Latin Jazz that keeps your readers aware of new artists and changing trends. I’d suggest a cover feature for a Latin Jazz artist at least once or twice a year. I believe that your magazine needs to dig more deeply into the modern Latin Jazz world and discover the many artists waiting for attention. Established Latin Jazz artists like D’Rivera, Sanchez, Palmieri, Sandoval, and Gonzalez surely should get continued coverage, but your focus shouldn’t end there. Look into artists experimenting with combinations of traditional South American music and jazz such as Gabriel Alegria, Eric Kurimski, Yuri Juarez, Sofia Koutsovitis, and Edward Perez. Investigate the strong but often overlooked West Coast Latin Jazz scene and feature artists like John Santos, Bobby Matos, Jose Rizo’s Jazz on the Latin Side All-Stars, Mark Levine and the Latin Tinge, John Calloway, and Wayne Wallace. Explore every inch of New York’s long established Latin Jazz circuit and you’ll find musicians like Papo Vazquez, Chembo Corniel, Andrea Brachfeld, Annette Aguilar, and Bobby Sanabria. Look even further and you’ll find Charlie Sepulveda, William Cepeda, Venissa Santi, and Felipe Salles. This is a short list of ideas, perhaps a starting point for a few alterations. I don’t think that these changes would move your magazine away from its original focus; in fact, I think that it would simply balance your coverage.

For many years, you have exerted a major influence over the jazz world, and you have the power to make a bold statement that people will hear. Your audience believes what you write, they listen to your suggestions, and they follow your lead in their support of the jazz world. At the same time, they ignore what you choose to ignore, leaving the Latin Jazz world in a lurch. I honestly hope that this can change quickly. Maybe its time to make the statement that Latin Jazz is important, and that artists from the Caribbean and South America are making powerful statements that rival their American born counterparts.

Just a thought, but I hope that its one that you will take into consideration as you look at the future of JazzTimes. Thanks for listening, my best wishes to the success of JazzTimes.

Chip Boaz
The Latin Jazz Corner

———-
Check Out These Related Posts:
Is Latin Jazz On It’s Deathbed? A Need To Reach The Younger Generation
Celebrating Women In Latin Jazz: 5 Top Female Artists
7 Unforgettable Latin Jazz Bass Solos
Supporting A Growing Latin Jazz Scene: The Jazz Institute of Chicago

———-
Click here to have these posts delivered via email. Or, click here to subscribe to the full text RSS feed and never miss another post!

Stumble it!