We played at a 60th birthday party on Friday – no surprises there. What was surprising was that one of the young men behind the bar said how much he was enjoying our music, and told me that he and some of his mates go once a week to a Worcestershire pub to hear a traditional jazz band. Also there was a teenage boy among the guests who didn’t take his eyes off the band all evening, and at the end came up and thanked us for the great music.
This follows a gig I did three weeks ago at a pub in Bristol where the audience was mostly young people, presumably students. What’s more, they were really listening, some of them standing close to the band, obviously *feeling* the music and showing their appreciation by their enthusiastic applause. It was like going back in time about 45 years.
It has to be said that such events are rare, at least in my experience, but it shows that the potential for appreciation of our music by people in their teens and early twenties is there, given the right combination of circumstances. I took part in a school workshop recently where I had the wonderful experience of hearing a young trumpet player – a competent reader – begin to improvise as he played without written music for the first time.
Some idiot said to me once – about 45 years ago, as it happens – “Jazz is dead, innit – rock ‘n’ roll’s like taken over.” It wasn’t true then, and it’s not true now. The future is bright! Per ardua ad astra!