The world of Jazz, one of the great forgotten in the pandemic New York

New York, Mar 8 (EFE) .- Although jazz was born in New Orleans, with the passage of time it is New York that has come to be considered the mecca of this appreciated musical genre, which has nevertheless been one of the sectors most forgotten in a pandemic year in which intimate, closed spaces and live music were banned in the Big Apple.
“This has been a temple of music for 71 years. It is the backbone of New York. So I did everything possible personally to keep it alive for 10 months,” explains the owner of the iconic Birdland, Gianni Valenti. , in front of a deserted stage and surrounded by empty stools.
His reddish-toned venue, where about 100 musicians passed a week before the pandemic and where jazz giants such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday have performed, was very, very close to disappearing in January, but Valenti decided to launch an SOS that alarmed New York.
Thanks to a GoFundMe campaign and a solidarity concert that Bill Clinton, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Joel joined in, he managed to raise $ 500,000 that he believes will last until the fall, when he hopes things have returned to relative “normal”.
Of course, Valenti makes it very clear that Birdland has been saved thanks to the solidarity of music and jazz fans, and affirms that the state authorities have practically abandoned them to their fate.
“Music is what we are, it is our life. And I think that (the authorities) of the city and the government of our country have not paid attention to what is happening to the artists,” he says.
And it is that while restaurants have been able to serve customers with home deliveries or in outdoor spaces a good part of the pandemic, museums were able to open their doors at the end of August, and the stadiums vibrated again at the end of February, the small and Intimate jazz venues remain practically without an audience.
This same week, they saw a ray of light at the end of the tunnel when the state of New York announced that as of April 2, musical events will be able to be held in closed rooms, but at 33% of their capacity, something that for Valenti it is not enough, since it is not economically feasible to open to accommodate only a few.
The “Jazz Standard”, one of the most important jazz venues in New York, could not hold out like Birdland, and last December 3 announced its final closure, while other venues such as Smalls have also seen “death up close. “, and has managed to survive thanks to concerts broadcast over the internet.
Apart from sporadic fund-raising campaigns, some private entities, such as the Louis Armstrong Foundation, have thrown huge numbers of life jackets into the sea, which have been caught by more than 1,200 New York jazz musicians.
The institution, founded for educational purposes by the unique trumpeter Louis Armstrong, decided to dedicate a million dollars of its funds to help 1,000 jazz musicians with scholarships of $ 1,000, and after learning about their initiative, they raised an additional $ 200,000, so in the end, the number of artists benefited was 200 more.
The idea of ​​helping only and exclusively jazz musicians, explains the director of the Louis Armstrong Foundation, Jackie Harris, comes from the fact that the community of this musical genre is very small, and they do not have the support of the masses. .
“The only ones who organize concerts and who support jazz are jazz lovers, while for example the communities of ‘Rythm and Blues’ (R&B), of music ‘country’ or of pop are much larger,” says Harris .
Some of the musicians who received part of the funds, Harris said, burst into tears at the good news, saying they had run out of food, since most jazz musicians have no other source of income than beyond the concerts.
“Some are also teachers, but the schools also closed,” he recalls.
Harris also complains about the government’s lack of action, but also points, without hesitation, to the private sector, to large companies that have continued to record colossal profits despite the pandemic.
“There are so many zeros in their profit margins that it is difficult to conceive. What is it for them to spend half a million dollars supporting musicians who do not have a job and have not had a job for a year?”
“We are all in this together, and that is not just a slogan. It is a fact,” he says.
Among the beneficiaries of the Louis Armostrong Foundation is Joe Dyson, a young drummer who started playing at the age of 2 and who a few years ago decided to move to pass his luck from New Orleans to New York, where he has played with important musicians such as Dr. Lonnie Smith, Ellis Marsalis or Jon Batiste.
With the energy that his 31 years give him, Dyson confesses that the institution has helped him a lot, and that despite the pandemic, with the support of the foundation he has been able to “take a step back and figure out how to move forward.”
“The nature of this music is always to turn a ‘nothing’ into something. I see many great musicians and great minds that are part of this community, and they are always finding creative ways to present music and continue to bring it to the public,” he says.
Helen Cook

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