Andy Edwards - YouTube discussions/rants on the nature of Jazz

[CGR]

Has anyone else come across the drummer Andy Edwards on YouTube?

He posts long videos of himself pontificating on Jazz and ProgRock. His views on race and Jazz have created a bit of a stir.

See: https://www.youtube.com/@AndyEdwardsDrummer

[anorak]

I've watched quite a few videos by Andy Edwards. He obviously has his jazz and rock favourites (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, 70s prog rock and fusion, etc) but he also covers a lot of other non-mainstream music from the jazz world, including references to free jazz and early jazz. His videos on the disputed origins of jazz with writer and film-maker Ben Makinen have been informative and intelligently structured, though some people have found them controversial.

[Ian Thumwood]

There was an article online last week about saxophonist Martin Speake being suspended feom a teaching position at one of the London colleges following a private email exchange with a student that was leaked. Speake appeared to have questioned the quality of the younger jazz musicians feted by the media but unfortunately this appears to have judged along racial lines.

[Serial_Apologist]

There was an article online last week about saxophonist Martin Speake being suspended feom a teaching position at one of the London colleges following a private email exchange with a student that was leaked. Speake appeared to have questioned the quality of the younger jazz musicians feted by the media but unfortunately this appears to have judged along racial lines.

Is there any way of sourcing that article, Ian?

[anorak]

Here's the link to Andy Edwards' comments on the Martin Speake leaked 'private email', not so private now...The email is reprinted in the comments list at the top under "MARTIN SPEAKE's EMAIL"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4BSsLnj7F8

[Ian Thumwood]

I feel that the leaking of the email was completely out of order but, by the same token , I think it is indicative of the problem that has always existed in British jazz. White British jazz musicians gave always lauded their black counterparts but historically they have been perceived as not quite being 'serious.' Set aside the likes of Joe Harriot, black jazz musicians in the uk rarely get the kudos of the likes of Mike Osborne , Mike Taylor, Tubby Hayes etc have historically received. The uk jazz scene sometimes feels a bit sniffy.

I can appreciate why Speake is dismissive of more contemporary jazz even if his language was unfortunate. As Bruce has argued in here recently, the concept of what is valued in today's scene has shifted markedly. I just feel Speake is grumbling because he is now old hat. A lot of post bop in the uk does seem to be going the same way. Not surprised Speake feels like this and it is the counter view if writers like Chris May.

Interesting to hear what Tony Fordhams opinions are now given the fact that the Euro jazz he raved about now seems old fashioned too. Modish jazz writers seem a bit tedious these days.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think Andy Edwards is right - though I can't stand the bloke frankly - when he posits class rather than race as being always the key factor shaping jazz, as it does all cultures. We've discussed this in relation to how that endemic process manifests today in the kinds of jazz we have, whether promulgated by media agencies or otherwise, my main argument being the younger input being fostered at Laban or other music colleges being defined by the bank of mum and dad, irrespective of ethnicity. But I'm not sure he knows what he is talking about in speaking of "class" - rather the way feminists used to say the "main agent of oppression" was the male sex or gender, not class; but we've now had more than fifty years of women breaking the glass ceiling, during which time their numbers have not greatly reduced the gender gap in the company boardroom, because "we" have forgotten that the roles we wished women conscripted to are those where success is measured in capitalist terms of efficiency and competitiveness. In other words virtues high in the American value system blacks had to measure up to or, like capitalist enterprises, go under: capitalism rules, all must abide by its dog eat dog survive or go under ethos. Jazz always defined the contradictions between musical working practices predicated on interactivity and celebration on the one hand and competitiveness at the cutting edge on the other, until free jazz came along and changed the ethical co-ordinates - British jazz of the 1960s and 70s (and other non-American forms the music took at that break point) took on more collectivist principles than the previous American models had encouraged, maximising then-opportunities provided by state subsidisation more generally in the state education sector, as Ian Carr pointed out in "Music Outside" and Duncan Heining in "Trads, Mods and Dirty Boppers" more recently. The Gary Crosby/Jazz Warriors axis will enhance the factors maintaining jazz as more than generically compromised versions of earlier styles as long as it protects its organisational integrity - - without submitting itself to lobby fodder for the academic institutions by safeguarding prioritising its "street cred", and it will be that which proves the true measure of what is worthwhile; race is secondary.

[anorak]

[QUOTE=Ian Thumwood;n1307855]I feel that the leaking of the email was completely out of order but, by the same token , I think it is indicative of the problem that has always existed in British jazz. White British jazz musicians gave always lauded their black counterparts but historically they have been perceived as not quite being 'serious.' Set aside the likes of Joe Harriot, black jazz musicians in the uk rarely get the kudos of the likes of Mike Osborne , Mike Taylor, Tubby Hayes etc have historically received. The uk jazz scene sometimes feels a bit sniffy.

So where is your evidence that UK based black jazz musicians "have been perceived as not quite being 'serious'"? Or don't get the kudos of white British jazz musicians? The black jazz musicians (the Blue Notes) from South Africa who settled in the UK in the 1960s were/are taken very seriously - Louis Moholo, Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, Mongezi Feza. As you suggest (I think) Joe Harriott is an important part of post-war British jazz history, so too the black members of his quintet - Shake Keane and Coleridge Goode. And let's not forget Harry Beckett and Dizzy Reece. All these black jazz musicians were/are taken as seriously as white British jazz musicians. Personally, I've never noticed a "sniffy" attitude among the many British jazz musicians I've encountered over the years. Far from it. They've always been keen to spread an interest in British jazz to anybody who'll listen.

[Serial_Apologist]

[QUOTE=anorak;n1307874]

I feel that the leaking of the email was completely out of order but, by the same token , I think it is indicative of the problem that has always existed in British jazz. White British jazz musicians gave always lauded their black counterparts but historically they have been perceived as not quite being 'serious.' Set aside the likes of Joe Harriot, black jazz musicians in the uk rarely get the kudos of the likes of Mike Osborne , Mike Taylor, Tubby Hayes etc have historically received. The uk jazz scene sometimes feels a bit sniffy.

So where is your evidence that UK based black jazz musicians "have been perceived as not quite being 'serious'"? Or don't get the kudos of white British jazz musicians? The black jazz musicians (the Blue Notes) from South Africa who settled in the UK in the 1960s were/are taken very seriously - Louis Moholo, Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, Mongezi Feza. As you suggest (I think) Joe Harriott is an important part of post-war British jazz history, so too the black members of his quintet - Shake Keane and Coleridge Goode. And let's not forget Harry Beckett and Dizzy Reece. All these black jazz musicians were/are taken as seriously as white British jazz musicians. Personally, I've never noticed a "sniffy" attitude among the many British jazz musicians I've encountered over the years. Far from it. They've always been keen to spread an interest in British jazz to anybody who'll listen.

That's right. I think there was something of an attitude among British jazz musicians that treated the few black musicians on the scene as musicians first, and "of colour" only a long way down in consideration terms. One well-known acoustic bass player I talked to - whose name he might not want revealed! - was highly critical of the "black factor" given prominence in the jazz and mainstream media at the time of the Jazz Warriors' inauguration That said, the net was to be widened - I don't believe Gary Crosby has ever deliberately excluded non-blacks from his ensembles and teaching courses; his main aim at the time was to offer black people in general a positive role model chance to study and play jazz, almost in the spirit of the AACM 20 years previously, and in that he has succeeded heroically, in my view. Nobody has sought to draw equivalences between the aetiology and circumstances of black American and black British jazz, and it would be quite wrong to do so. Those same black musicians have been at frequent pains to point out the rooted nature of the stylistic differences as common to all genre of black popular music this side of the Pond,

[Ein Heldenleben]

There was an article online last week about saxophonist Martin Speake being suspended feom a teaching position at one of the London colleges following a private email exchange with a student that was leaked. Speake appeared to have questioned the quality of the younger jazz musicians feted by the media but unfortunately this appears to have judged along racial lines.

It’s a very interesting email but I bet he wishes he’d written it less clumsily. I don’t know much about current racial issues in British jazz as there is virtually no live jazz or indeed much of a racial mix where I live . If any of the names mentioned above and in the email came down here I would be ecstatic . I can only say it did strike me when I lived in South East London how much arts council money went into one of my passions -opera - which was almost exclusively white and how very little went into my other- jazz - which is so rooted in African/ American (and I hope British/ Afro Caribbean) culture . I can only assume that the Arts Council didn’t think jazz was art or was in some way “commercial.” I don’t begrudge any of the arts council money *now being spent on the talented Musicians mentioned - there are plenty of other talentless things they waste our money on. On the income and class note I also wonder how many young Londoners (of whatever race) can afford a night at Ronnie’s these days. It’s become a rich man’s activity.

* I bet it’s tiny.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Richard Williams on this (from his Blue Moment blog in March). He didn't name the individual at its centre.

"He claims, in passing, that his own career has been hindered by discrimination in favour of black musicians, and it would not be hard to imagine that this sense of grievance may lie at the heart of his more general complaints.

These include the suggestions that because so few black students study classical music, a disproportionate number are allowed into the jazz courses in order to meet overall equality and diversity quotas within the institutions, and that white bandleaders employ black musicians at the expense of superior white candidates simply because their presence helps them get gigs and grants.

Anyway, his classes at Trinity Laban, the Guildhall and the Royal Academy of Music have been boycotted and he is currently at home on sick leave. While his supporters have been disparaging the students as woke snowflakes and getting up a petition to demand his reinstatement, his critics have set up a counter-petition calling for his permanent removal.

My view is that what he had to say in the email is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. Towards him personally, I’m old enough to feel a kind of sorrow tinging the hot anger with which his students have understandably responded. No doubt he thinks that he was simply being honest. But there had to be a better, wiser alternative to creating divisions where none should exist."

[Ian Thumwood]

I am broadly of the same opinion as Bluesnik although I feel that the issue I far more complex. I do not feel that the values of what constitutes 'great jazz ' are the same as in the 1980s when Speake made his name. However, I have mixed feelings about alot of the newer names in the uk jazz scene and can sense why Speake made the call he did. I wondered if anyone else thought that the likes if Speake are culpable of churning out the bland jazz we have encountered in the uk the past two decades. The musicians have bags of technique yet alot of the newer names are bland to my ears. This I why I welcome the likes of Cassie Kinoshi who I feel is an important. That said, a lot of the current black jazz musicians are producing more populist music which maybe reflects the Soul Jazz movement of rhe late 1960s but with a modern twist. I do not dislike it but then feel that there are others musicians like Orphy Robinson, Pat Thomas , Denys Baptiste or Tony Kofi who should be lauded far more.

All in all, I think Speake has destroyed his career and will be seen as a pariah in the jazz scene in the uk. The first jazz musician to be cancelled?