Cuadernos de Jazz, the 20-year-old, six-issues-annually, Madrid-based music magazine, has given up print and announced that its remaining staff — “young, fresh blood,” according to outgoing editor Chema García Martínez — will sustain the publication online.
With articles in its final issue about the Spanish trio TríEZ, Vijay Iyer, John Hollenbeck (whose Claudia Quartet performed at the San Sebastian Festival), Harvey Pekar, a detailed musical analysis comparing Bach and Ellington, and reviews of records, dvds and “recommended media,” Cuadernos ran to 84 pages. It has often featured photography and illustrations in portfolio layouts, and has published jazz-inspired prose and poetry. Plans going forward include the digital archiving of back issues and new works expanding on familiar departments.
Martinez, in a column quoting Groucho Marx’s immortal phrase, “Hello, I must be going,” described himself as a “computer illiterate” and remarked on the similarly disappointing end of the Spanish magazine he had first contributed to, Quàrtica Jazz. “Nearly three decades later, Cuadernos de Jazz has fallen victim to the new order that governs our destiny and empty our pockets,” he writes. “The pre-digital era fades before our eyes in disbelief.”
In a separate column commenting on Cuadernos‘ transition, editorial director Raúl Mao, “We will miss the magazine . . . but we are as positive as we had to be in the first 20 years.”
Martinez does not seem so sure. “Do not quite understand how you can keep a journal on the Internet,” he muses. Yet his criticism of an era he calls “post-post-modernity,” he acknowledges that all is not lost. “Cuadernos de Jazz goodbye, hello cuadernosdejazz.com,” the departing editor says, then names those who rule the roost in the new “punto.com”: Enrique Turpin, Jonio González, Yahvé M. de la Cavada, Leo Sanchez, Eduardo Hojman (intermittently a member of the Jazz Journalists Association), Naiel Ibarrola, Carlos Tejeda and Jesús Gonzalo, “in whose hands Cuadernos de Jazz will remain alive.”
Cuadernos joins too much good company: CODA, Swing Journal and, more recently, Cadence. Alas.