Lagniappe Mobile Blog

As alluded to in this issue’s Artifice, Mobile’s jazz scene is vexing and slim.

In 2001, I decided to start a local jazz society. At the time, I found it strange that Pensacola, a town noticeably smaller than Mobile, had an active organization that staged an annual multi-day festival while over here you had to search hard to find the music.

My reasoning then was that if jazz sales comprised four percent of the annual national music sales, then that might translate to a couple hundred folks in Mobile who would support jazz. If a couple hundred fans made it a point to get out, to actively get involved, they could affect change.

In my steps toward coalescing the idea, I received warnings aplenty. The leadership of the Jazz Society of Pensacola told me history showed it would be nearly impossible to get such a thing going in Mobile. Members of the Mobile Jazz/Blues Circle, a support group that formed in the 1990s and fell apart after five years, echoed those sentiments. Even one prominent arts observer told me my four percent figure was outlandishly optimistic and described Mobile as a place too “hardscrabble” for jazz to take root.

My experience and research during the last seven years has told me that person was pretty accurate.

All towns have music forms to which they naturally gravitate. In Mobile, that’s traditionally been pop, country, blues and R&B. In contemporary times, hip-hop has been added to that mix as it has ascended in popular stature.

Older aficionados tell me the local antipathy toward jazz is partially rooted in racial division and in social anti-intellectualism. Yet, I don’t think that’s a complete answer.

Folks hereabouts seem to like stuff to which they can either scream/sing the lyrics while in the throes of inebriation or tunes they use as live background music and ignore. Really good jazz is neither of those things. It dares and challenges you. It is everything but comfortable and blasé.

As a result, a lot of folks are turned off by it. And I think that’s likely not just endemic to Mobile, that’s everywhere. Otherwise, Kenny G wouldn’t outsell Wayne Shorter.

I heard an excerpt from an Amy Winehouse interview where she compared the difference between London’s hip-hop and jazz clubs. She said that the hip-hop joints were more of a social scene whereas the jazz clubs were a “more personal thing,” that she would see people sitting and listening to the music above most all else.

And we all know how incredibly socially-oriented Mobilians are. They like their alcohol and they love their hobnobbing. See and be seen.

Another thing working against the health of Mobile’s jazz scene is a matter of the town’s modest size. Even in markets much larger, jazz musicians have a hard time making a living. Gigs are scarce and pay is slim. That is magnified in Mobile. Musicians possessing the chops to make better money invariably leave for more fertile ground.

Thing is, no genre exposes virtuosity or the lack of it like jazz does. You have to really know your stuff to take the incredible risks involved in playing it because it will blatantly lay all your shortcomings in plain view. I know classically trained artists who have been immersed in music all their lives that shy away from the challenges of jazz. Mediocre talent can meet a minimal level of tolerance, but it certainly doesn’t grab your attention.

As a result, a good deal of the live music heard around here is passable, but not much beyond that. Not to say that there aren’t some jewels hidden in Mobile’s scene, but they’re uncommon.

On top of all of this, you have the influence of something I feel has done a grave disservice to potential fans in the region: smooth jazz.

I will admit to a personal bias in this area but among the various sub-genres of jazz, I will listen to a great deal of it. Traditional jazz, be-bop, hard bop, post-bop, cool, free, modal, fusion, I have all of it in my library.

But smooth jazz? Well, let’s just say the stuff I have that could pass for smooth jazz is more correctly categorized as “instrumental R&B,” which is what most of it actually is.

Smooth jazz, in my opinion, is music that attempts to cash in on the cachet of something more esoteric without making the sacrifices it demands. It’s Kenny G using circular breathing to stretch a note out over a million measures without challenging himself to the inventiveness required to keep a dynamic moving along. It’s someone grooving along to a voiceless version of a Bill Withers hit with little exploration involved.

So many Mobilians have only been exposed to this, they frankly don’t know better. I’ve personally seen people who swear they don’t like what they think is jazz flip out when you play some hard-driving Art Blakey or John Coltrane for them. If you feed someone McDonald’s burgers all their days and then plop a filet mignon down in front of them, what else would you expect?

I’ve heard the allegations that I’m a “music snob” and I will admit it in some regards. I’m not going to call something that which it is not. I love Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder as much as the next guy—I think the albums “What’s Going On” and “Songs In the Key of Life” are absolute masterpieces—but while some of it may be jazz-influenced, it’s not jazz. There’s a difference.

And I listen to plenty of stuff that would never be confused with “fine arts” fare. Thievery Corporation, Suba, Ray Charles, White Stripes, Nouvelle Vague, The Clash, Chet Atkins, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Portishead, Elmore James, The Raveonettes, Regina Spektor, Hank Williams, Curtis Mayfield, Asleep At the Wheel, Neil Young and The Velvet Underground all reside on my iPod. I’ll listen to anything I feel is honest and creative and expressive.

But don’t tell me it’s something it’s not. Appreciate it for what it is.

Will Mobile ever change? Will it ever develop a greater yen for jazz? It’s doubtful. If it didn’t exist in the ‘40s and ‘50s, it’s unlikely to sprout now.

However, if there is an influx of non-Mobilians due to start coming in, especially Europeans, that might change somewhat. Oddly enough, folks from “over the pond” seem to dig jazz far more than citizens of the nation that spawned it. And if there’s any French and German influence bound for town, that would be a welcome one.

The announcement of the new airplane plant for Mobile has some of my peers turning metaphorical somersaults, but my outlook is decidedly more guarded.

I think it could possibly be good for Mobile’s arts world. Some industries like Degussa have a decent track record of investing in Mobile’s cultural scene, ponying up funds for various endeavors and institutions. Others come in and treat us like the “demi-Third World region ripe for exploitation” that the state government claims we are in their attempts to woo new industry. We’ll see into which camp the new players fall.

But true to my reputation at Lagniappe Central, I remain skeptical as to the depth and length of any impact. Why? Because I’m a history buff–it was my major in college–and I’m well familiar with Mobile’s backstory.

For centuries, Mobilians have always awaited the intervention of outside forces to save the city’s fortunes like some benevolent hurricane showering good fortune on all. There is a distinct complacency here that keeps folks from realizing their true power.

Following the rise and fall of the Cotton Boom, Mobile has hung its hopes on project after project.

“Well, when the feds fix the shipping channel, we’ll really take off.”

“Well, when the state builds new docks, we’ll really take off.”

“Well, when the shipyards are improved, we’ll really take off.”

“Well, when the Department of Defense finishes that air base, we’ll really take off.”

“Well, when the federal government finishes the Tenn-Tom Waterway, we’ll really take off.”

“Well, when they open that naval homeport, we’ll really take off.”

“Well, when the convention center opens, we’ll really take off.”

“Well, when the cruise terminal gets opened, we’ll really take off.”

The latest projects to start the mantra again have been the RSA Tower, Thyssen-Krupp and now EADS.

The RSA Tower sits mostly dormant. We keep hearing new tenants are coming, but it’s been almost a year since the big unveiling and most of the floors are obviously vacant as evidenced by the nighttime views into the windows. And I’m still trying to figure out why all these new tourists David Bronner foresees are suddenly going to be headed for Mobile. To go to Bellingrath Gardens?

Thyssen-Krupp hasn’t opened yet, but its distance from town puts its impact in doubt. A few decades ago, a host of chemical plants opened just south of Tillman’s Corner and their combined employment opportunities and economic impact was comparable to what is boasted for the T-K project. They were much closer to town yet they in no way “reshaped” Mobile. When one factors in the rapidly escalating cost of gasoline, it becomes even more doubtful residents on the Mobile-Washington county line will be coming into town with any daily frequency. I mean, we currently see West Mobilians who think going six miles into downtown is somehow arduous so think about those who live 50 miles away.

Granted, Brookley Air Base impacted Mobile but basically in population numbers. It provided the impetus for expanding city limits but not much else. Sure there are many who try and paint a picture of Mobile as an effete oasis prior to its contamination from the hinterland hordes who worked at Brookley, but that is little more than myth and perspective. If you asked the great majority of poor blacks and white citizens who provided the grist for Mobile’s economic mills whether Mobile was more “civilized” in those days, their answers would likely be less rosy.

Essentially, those emigres didn’t change Mobile culturally. Did they eradicate the trappings of Mobile’s Creole roots? The Catholic archdiocese is still here and just as powerful. Mardi Gras is bigger than ever. Lord knows, the racial and socio-economic divisions of the past still haunt us.

Let’s face it, the only way Mobile is going to intrinsically change will be if the residents alter the most mysterious frontier: the one between their ears. The very thing that keeps Mobile a backwater is the perspective of many of its residents. Not everyone here is provincial, but a vast majority are. Until Mobile can become more than a suburban rookery, a place where people withdraw to raise children in isolation from outside influence and cosmopolitan mindsets, where those that are “different” feel estranged and alienated, where criticism is eschewed instead of digested and defensiveness is reflexive, no change of value will ever come to Mobile. That Mobile needs to go the way of malaria epidemics and paddle-wheelers.

The days where a cloistered group of Mobilians “kept it small and kept it all” should pass into the dusty bin of history.

I know so many people who would have made this a far more interesting place to live but opted to move over the last few decades. They went on to form successful recording labels, work for international entertainment entities, record hit songs, succeed in the film industry, just on and on and on.

That’s why despite my expectations, my actual hope for this town-that-is-almost-a-city is that these new projects not only flourish but succeed in bringing in many, many thousands of new residents who don’t hold the prejudices and predilections common to native Mobilians. The mindset that has marked this place for the last three hundred years HAS TO CHANGE or nothing ever will. The best, brightest and most creative will continue to leave for more vibrant environs otherwise.

I took a quick tour of the new digs for Space 301 this afternoon. There’s still lots of construction going on, the dust and lack of elevators played havoc on my emphysema but curator Clayton Colvin was pretty patient with me.

The place is going to be really nice when it gets going but I still feel a twinge of nostaglia for the old industrial feel of the its original incarnation. This will be nice but more suburban and polished like the museum in the park. I don’t want to give too much away as this will all be in my next column.

Shortly before heading for the gallery, I sat in my parked car alongside a Jackson Street curb under the shade of trees in Cathedral Square as an NPR interview with the late William F. Buckley, Jr. finished. I saw a hawk deftly sweep up a dove not 30 feet away and carry it to a tree branch right above me as the patrician voice of the “father of the modern conservative movement” drifted from the radio. The scant pedestrians strolling ten feet below were oblivious as the raptor picked at his lunch.

Nothing like metaphors in the afternoon.

Will this make me a slut? Will you promise to respect me in the morning?

For anyone expecting this be just about arts, think again. I get enough of that on the printed page. There’s a whole universe of material ripe for exploitation, waiting to be used as fodder for my evil ramblings and subhuman palaver.

Sure we can talk about art, but we could just as soon discuss Rob Holbert’s weekends spent bathing and delousing the homeless people who sleep in his garage, or Ashley Toland’s clandestine career as an old school break dancer (poppin’ and lockin’, baby), or Kinnon Phillips’ sizable rep as the number one, lunch-rush fry-station master at the McDonald’s on D.I.P., or David Trimmier’s collection of vintage McGill-Toolen uniform skirts, or how Boozie got that certain “tattoo.” You know, just about any old thing. But nothing too perverse…unless you have pictures and appropriate addresses for extortion purposes.