Above you see prodigious drummer Nate Wood (with bassist Edwin Livingston and vibraphonist Nick Mancini in back), performing with Nick’s band, at the Angel City Jazz Festival on Labor Day.  It was an absolutely stunning day, both in terms of the weather and in terms of the festival.  The music was original, inspired, very diverse and brilliant.  Virtually all of the musicians who performed that day stayed to watch the other groups, which is unheard of and a real testament to the quality of the music that Rocco had assembled.  I consider the festival even more incredible, having some perspective on the very, very grassroots effort to put this on.  I think we needed a lot more of those roots, because the volunteer pool was stretched pretty thin by the end of the day.  “Labor Day” lived up to its title for me, cause I worked like a dog.  I really had to take a week off from thinking about anything after that, which is why this post is so late.

Was all that effort on my part worth it?  You bet.  I really felt like, for one day, that there was an actual community of musicians and  music lovers who were all on the same page, the same stage, sharing a vision for interesting music.  I am becoming ever increasingly convinced that we as musicians and artists will wither up and die unless we continue to find ways to be in the same universe more often, even as we become more diverse and spread out.  The large crowd that was at the Barnsdall Art Park that day became even larger as the day progressed, and even after it got dark and the last two shows went on, they were still there, listening intently.  Believe it or not, there is an audience for this music, but it remains a challenge to connect the two.  If you’re out there reading this blog, I’d love it if you would comment on this post with any thoughts on what we can do to make it possible to enable you to hear more of this great music.

“Ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they are brought together.”  I just heard Barack Obama say this on television as I type this.  What do you think extraordinary musicians would be able to do if we brought them together?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Artist Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.