{"id":2309,"date":"2012-06-26T06:26:35","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T10:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=2309"},"modified":"2013-12-09T14:24:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T19:24:45","slug":"jazz-and-not-quite-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/06\/26\/jazz-and-not-quite-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"Jazz, And Not-Quite Jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Marc Ribot performing in Ottawa Sunday Night<\/p><\/div>\n

Sunday night I’m standing in line at the National Arts Centre<\/a> in Ottawa to see guitarist Marc Ribot<\/a>, and the guy in front of me is talking to his friend, lamenting the fact that “this used to be a real jazz festival.”\u00a0 And I wanted to say, “dude, you’re in line to see Marc Ribot, a musician who is anything but straight ahead jazz.”\u00a0 But I never use the word “dude” so I kept to myself. \u00a0He had his own idea of what real jazz is, and it was different than mine, or that of anyone else standing in line.<\/p>\n

But he was right about the fact that this festival is not just a jazz festival.\u00a0 He saw it as a bad thing, but I talked to others who see it\u00a0as a very good thing.\u00a0 The truth is that most of the music at this (or any) jazz festival is undoubtedly jazz.\u00a0 But to sell tickets, the harsh reality is that there has to be more than jazz.\u00a0 So, they book blues acts like\u00a0Robert Cray<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0John Mayall<\/a>, pop stars like\u00a0Janelle Monae<\/a>, and bluegrass bands like\u00a0Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers<\/a>.\u00a0 Great music, all, but jazz it ain’t.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Mayall performing in Ottawa<\/p><\/div>\n

What I really like about all of this is that the organizers are unapologetic about the non-jazz because it’s all good music.\u00a0 Since most of the music at this festival is real jazz, purists come away happy, and blues\/pop\/bluegrass fans hopefully come away thinking they should add a little jazz to their musical diet.<\/p>\n

In the end, great music is great music and each of us knows what that means for ourselves.\u00a0 Since last Thursday my mind has been opened up to some music that I wasn’t expecting to like, and I imagine lots of other people have experienced the same.\u00a0 But more than anything, this festival has reinforced my love of jazz.\u00a0 And if hearing more great jazz means listening to some killer bluegrass, as I will tonight, well I’m okay with that.<\/p>\n

The TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival<\/a> continues through Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday night I’m standing in line at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13969,13971,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2309"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7881,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions\/7881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}