Music to my ears
Posted: 02/08/2007 - 03:49 PM
Author: Frankie Rhys
The annual Lord Rhaburn Jazz Festival was held at the Bliss last Friday, July 27th and it had its high points, as it usually does. The time frame, approximately 2 ½ hours, made this year’s event more compact and therefore more “audience friendly” than it has been in the past. Shows of 3+ or 4 hours or more tend to be unwieldy and harder to keep moving. Such an extended time frame eventually tries the patience of some.
There were also fewer of the Lord Rhaburn alumni corps - those ex-Rhaburn band members who had migrated abroad. In fact, there were only two - saxophonist John Moody and trumpeter Norman Ysaguirre, unlike past years where there were as many as sixteen horn players on stage at the same time. When there are that many reed and brass players, their parts really have to be written out - except for the solos - otherwise horn players will be stepping all over their colleagues, and the overall sound will be muddy as hell. The trumpet, tenor sax and trombone horn section proved to be just right for this night.
The reasons for the lack of participation from more Rhaburn alumni are not so good. Times, both in the United States and Belize are hard, and in these kinds of times, the creative arts are the first to feel the financial pinch. Almost all of the musicians who got their first real break with Lord Rhaburn’s bands and then migrated to the US have full time jobs in other fields, and employers are becoming increasingly reluctant to grant time off. In addition, the airline industry has been (or claims to be) taking a licking, therefore free or heavily discounted airline tickets, an essential component for events that feature musicians who have to travel to get here, are more and more difficult to get.
There is every reason to believe that this situation will continue. It may probably get worse. This is bad news for musicians everywhere. There are estimated to be no more than 400 or so jazz musicians in the US who are able to make a living solely by performing and writing music, even during the best of times. All the rest take other jobs in order to survive.
Vocalist Chris McNulty told me that she got far more work in the 1970’s than she gets today, even though she is a much better singer now. She also has a “9 to 5”, primarily for the health insurance it provides. Trinidad born trumpeter, Nick “Brownman” Alli, won the 2004 Canadian award as the best young jazz trumpet player, but he gets paid about $100 per night for club gigs in Toronto, Canada, his current city of residence. He only makes decent money at home when he gets studio gigs, where the substantial hourly rates (called union “scale”) are protected by a collective bargaining agreement between the musicians union, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Co.) and some private recording studios. He survives by touring as often as possible and by using his web site to sell his CD’s, a method used by an increasing number of jazz musicians to free themselves from the financial and musical straightjackets that major recording labels impose on artists who are under contract.
Record companies are very good at keeping statistics. They began doing this shortly after the first successful recordings, made in 1917, began to be sold commercially. Sales of recorded jazz quickly reached 3% of total sales, and have stayed there for about 90 years. Three percent in large countries makes for a bigger market, of course, than 3% in smaller countries, but the 3% figure appears to remain static throughout the world. This helps to explain one of the problems faced by jazz musicians in Belize. Three percent of the Belizean consumers who buy jazz CDs, and who therefore provide the pool of people likely to attend jazz events, are far fewer than 3% of the entire population of 300,000.
More than half of Belize’s population is under 19 years of age and the overall population in Belize has a smaller “disposable income” than the “disposable income” available to the overall population of a superpower. It’s the “disposable income” - that portion of the budget left over after necessary expenses; money for items such as rent or mortgage, utility bills, food, clothing, education and health care are taken care of, that is available for entertainment. If there is little or no “disposable income”, that person or family doesn’t go to clubs or music events. They also can’t afford to buy CD’s.
The problem of finding money for the arts becomes evident when we consider the funding (lack of funding is a more realistic way of putting it) for music education. The United States has a huge economy, yet money for music education is at an all time low. The people who make up the “establishment” - or the “power structure,” if you care to use that term - have little if any understanding of, or appreciation for, creative music, in spite of all of the studies that teaching music in schools leads to better overall scores and grades, particularly in mathematics. When an educational system is under attack for failing to educate young people, the response almost invariably overemphasizes the “essential” subjects - math, science, English, etc., while the “non-essential” (read “not important”) subjects - music, art, even social studies and history, receive little money and attention.
This becomes even more of an issue in small countries such as Belize, because the available resources are more limited and therefore have to be apportioned more carefully. I hope that every parent who wants to encourage his or her children to pursue their interest in music only to find out that they can’t even afford the cost of an instrument, much less the cost of private instruction, will begin to understand the real price we all pay for corruption and the consequent misappropriation of astronomical sums of public money for private enrichment and enjoyment.
Be all of that as it may, John Moody and Norman Ysaguirre can PLAY! So can trombonist Lucio Enriquez, formerly of Santino’s Messengers. Guitarist Robert Smith is a real find. He’s got me wondering how it took me so long to become aware of such a high caliber player. Jason Castillo (drums) and Eugene Card (bass) have real potential. Everybody in Belize City knows about Dale Davis, his keyboard prowess, his quality studio work and his preeminent position as the best sequencer and re-mixer currently on the scene.
Keron LaCroix (steel pan) is ready to become an international star. He just needs that little extra bit of confidence to allow him to take the big step up. Saxophonist Richard Pitts didn’t appear at the festival this year, but like Keron LaCroix, all that he needs to do is to open that first door. Give him a few more years and he will become a jazz musician to be reckoned with on the world stage. Mark Phillips, who also didn’t appear this year has been a quality guitarist for a long time.
My wife Diana did the festival gig while in severe pain from a serious back problem. She pulled it off anyway, doing a tremendous job. Later, I finally managed to convince her that 95% of other singers would have cancelled out if they were faced with a similar health problem, unable to deal with the pain and the effect of the pain medication on her heart rate and breath control, the latter being absolutely essential for a singer to perform properly. Then she grudgingly graded her performance as “D”; she initially had graded her performance as an “F!” That’s what is called “being a perfectionist.” She is becoming so good that it scares me!
There are without doubt other good musicians out there whom I am not yet aware of. The festival MC, Dillon Jones, made a point of reminding the audience that the majority of us who performed at the festival are members of a generation that is on its way out sooner rather than later. Lord Rhaburn is in his seventies; Norman Ysaguirre is in his sixties. I am older than John Moody by four months. Both of us are fifty-nine. Diana will be fifty-seven, two days after the newspaper with this article in it hits the streets. I believe that Robert Smith is in his forties. I know Mark Phillips is. Carlos Perotte couldn’t make this one because he was out of the country. He is thirty-six. The “babies” are twenty-four-year-old Keron LaCroix and nineteen-year-old Richard Pitts. These two guys are amazing players, especially when you take their youth into account.
Mr. Jones concluded his statement by saying that years later he would be able to tell others that he “had the honor of sharing the same stage with these legendary Belizean musicians.” Most jazz musicians - me included - are very leery of exuberant praise because it can lead to complacency, almost always fatal for jazz musicians unless diagnosed and treated immediately, but thanks for the compliment. We do appreciate audiences that recognize the amount of work and sacrifice that playing jazz requires.
George “Pete” Matthews and Bill Belisle, two legendary Belizean tenor sax men, certainly among the best, if not the best ever, are just that - legends to only a few of today’s generation. They died far too young, Pete in 1981 and Bill in 1991. The late Nelson Diamond was another Belizean musician of legendary proportions who also left us at a young age. Although he was just an average Hammond B-3 player, he had a voice to kill for! Incidentally, the Hammond B-3 that was kept in club El Patio, right off Queen St., during the early 70’s, was his. The B-3 weighs 450 lbs. The Leslie speaker, essential if you want to get that genuine B-3 sound, weighs an additional 150 lbs. “Portable” is clearly just a figure of speech when it is applied to that keyboard. I don’t know of a single B-3 in Belize today. There are lightweight modules that can approximate the B-3 sound, approximate, not duplicate it, but players can be forgiven if they choose to use such a module instead of dragging the real thing around, especially when touring.
Because there were few recording opportunities for Belizean jazz musicians during that time (a 16-year-old Pete Matthews did play some fine solos on Lord Rhaburn’s 1964 album “Tropico y Ritmo”), they left very little recorded music, certainly not enough to showcase their incredible creative and technical skills for future generations of Belizeans to learn from. Those of us who had the privilege of playing with them and hearing them play live, know all too well what we have lost, and soon we will be gone too, the last aural links to two exceptional jazz horn players. Carlos, Keron and Richard have to take our word about the level that these cats played at.
The reasons as to why any success achieved by punta and paranda players will be short-lived, are several, but the primary reason is their refusal to embrace any change whatsoever. Obviously, change just for the sake of change is not always desirable, particularly when it’s used as a substitute for genuine creativity, but it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make today’s audiences keep up a long-term interest in music that stubbornly clings to repetitive rhythmic patterns that are at least a century and a half old, probably older.
I ran up against this problem a few years ago, and as soon as I realized the depth and intensity of the determination to remain in the past and to view any change as a form of “cultural treason”, I simply stopped wasting time trying to force a concept on people who had no interest in even considering it. I suspect that a certain someone is now realizing what I was talking about back then….sometimes you have to experience it yourself before you really understand what’s going down.
I believe that in spite of all the problems we have in Belize, and we sure have some problems, bro, the level of musicianship is improving, slowly albeit, but improving. If we can get Government out of arts and culture…….this is a difficult one because I don’t see that any Belizean government can be trusted to support the arts in a fair and progressive manner, therefore it’s better for them to stay out altogether. Government could really be helpful to the arts in a small county such as ours, but the temptation to look at money allocated for the arts and for artists as just part of the slush fund for politicians and their political agendas, is just too great.
There are a number of ideas floating around in my cabeza, primarily the establishment of a big band that will concentrate on exploring the wealth of underplayed “standards” that are out there and that will begin to establish a book of original compositions - Belizean music written by musicians who have no political agenda when it comes to music, only the maximum development of their skills and the skills of their fellow musicians, the ultimate goal being the creation of a concept and sound that will enrich the lives of all who come into contact with it.
|