For the second year running, JJA members and industry colleagues gathered for an informal January meet-up during the Winter JazzFest in New York City, preceding the Jazz Congress at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Some two-dozen jazz writers, photographers, broadcasters, videographers and promoters convened at Saigon Market, a Vietnamese restaurant near Union Square in New York City for two hours on Saturday, January 11, after a post-New Year’s decision I made as president of the JJA.
The entire membership, active and lapsed, was invited by email several days previously; the event was essentially designed to taking advantage of the draw downtown that night of Winter Jazz Fest. The JJA produced a substantive Jazz in Media summit of panel discussions for public audiences at the Jazz Gallery in January 2018. This meetup, though less structured than that occasion, was a hotbed of information exchange and connection-making across lines of geography, age, experience and other demographics.
Everyone present jazz in common, as well as a grasp of media’s power to sustain and spread jazz, and recognition that the media landscape is in constant flux. Which gives jazz journalists a lot to talk about. Of course, in my experience has never been a problem. Indeed, that may be why there is a JJA — to provide myriad opportunities and occasions to talk.
In attendance: JJA board member Susan Brink (WOOC/The Sanctuary for Independent Media), Larry Birnbaum (author of Before Elvis: A Prehistory of Rock and Roll), Pengwen Chen, (who has recently written for JJANews about jazz in China), Dana Elise (jazz writer for WBFO-FM, Buffalo) with her radio project partner Bob Davis and her friend Leah Hamilton, associate publisher of Buffalo’s Challenger Community News; photographers Enid Farber and Robert Sutherland-Cohen, Bonnie Johnson of WICN (Wooster, MA), WKCR-FM (NYC) producer/program host Sid Gribetz, Amsterdam News columnist Ron Scott and freelancers (variously writers, authors, lecturers, professors, curators, producers and program hosts) Geoffrey Himes, Martin Johnson, Ashley Kahn, Greg Masters, Allen Morrison and Ted Panken; artists’ manager Chantal Phaire and, from Los Angeles, activist-teacher-community-singer Cathy Segal-Garcia and media-savvy singer Judy Wexler.
An informal dinner, not a business session, there was no agenda beyond connecting comfortably in flow with colleagues. The venue was accommodating. Mandel spoke briefly about the ongoing value of arts/music/jazz journalism to the entire jazz ecosystem; about the JJA’s aims to sustain a networks of producers of increasingly diversified, decentralized jazz media with a journalistic foundation, and the ongoing search for new members as well as plans for leadership succession. I’ve been president of the JJA since 1994 (preceded by Art Lange).
The group was also appraised of plans for upcoming Jazz Heroes campaign — nominations are being sought, send your suggestions of “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz” deserving of celebration by their local communities to me at President@JazzJournalists.org) and the 2020 Jazz Awards.
We ate well — appetizers and multiple noodle dishes, spicy chicken and a whole sea bass among the entrees. Surprisingly little alcohol was drunk. The JJA contributed to the bill, the bulk of the cost born by the diners themselves. Evidently no one had presence of mind to take a group photo.
“Next time,” I vowed, “there will be more advanced planning.” Next time? Who? Where?
