Re: the King article: Since when is refusing to pay someone & publish his work in the context of a privately-run journal censorship? Crouch is perfectly free to voice his opinions--it's not as if there's a lack of venues for expressing opinions; but Porter is perfectly free not to have to print them at his own expense.

Nate, exactly.

CENSORSHIP is not a word to toss around off-hand, I agree. But Porter's chosen course of action as it pertains to Stanley's firing seems less than courageous to me. Jeez, why not challenege Stanley's columns in the pages of your own magazine, if that is how you feel. If I too wrote for JAZZ TIMES, I would take this episode as a bad omen.

Anyway, the idea that JAZZ TIMES could silence Crouch is preposterous anyway. I love how Crouch's -- not his grudging supporters -- main defense is his own celebrity. The soul of Leonard Feather must have touched Stanley as it left the learned father's body and made its slow descent into the afterlife. The thing is, Crouch is absolutely correct, because he will always be able to survive in publishing. He has a reputation, a name, and even a bad reputation is better than no reputation at all.

But... as much as I disagree with Crouch, and as much as I do believe he has done much to retard the development of jazz criticism, his writing does posses some value. The man is often right for the wrong reasons, or, to, put another way, would coerce you to accept a good idea with every rhetorical manipulation at his disposal rather than allowing the clarity of the idea itself to serve as it the best argument in its favor. So Stanley, if he's allowed to keep at it, performs a valuable service. He's a wholly negative exemplar -- here's how NOT to write (epecially fiction, for those of you unfortunate enough to have skimmed DON'T THE MOON LOOKS LONESOME); here's how easily writers can be misled by their own ideas; here's how ideology can take all the joy about of any aesthetic experience; here's how damaged the discourse on race in America has become. As a writer, Crouch is his own worst enemy, and I think most readers perceive that. The hell of it, he has to be given an outlet, a forum, perhaps even a sinecure, in order for us to know just how dangerous he really is.

Al, first off I gotta go on record as taking some issue with the initial comparison made in your post. I can see where that NYT film critic was coming from re: Blackhawk Down and largely share his sentiments. That's a film ripe with racist overtones & seriously flawed when it comes to a fair representation of the Mogadishu populace it purports to depict. The action sequences are well choreographed and visually bracing, but that's about all the film has going for it. A Somali friend of mine here in Minneapolis did much of the voiceover work for the film and regrets it to this day after seeing the finished product. Also, to the best of my knowledge Corbett doesn't write for JT.

All that said, I'm skeptical about the racist reasons behind Crouch's dismissal too, but the the hypocrisy inherent in Porter's handling of the issue speaks volumes to the opportunistic (and some might say exploitative) nature of JT. More than most mags, they're shameless controversy mongers. They've allowed soapbox space for Crouch for sometime and reaped the rewards (publicity, magazine sales, etc.) that his polemical attitudes regularly incite/invite. To break company with a trite e-mail and a backpedaling justification seems completely remiss to me. And why choose now as the termination date? I'm not buying the bogus 'late copy' reasoning. Not that Porter really owes anyone an explanation, but his behavior strikes me as unprofessional on a level akin to that of Crouch. As far as it being a case of censorship- certainly not. Nate said it succinctly and rightly- Stanley's free to shop his wares anywhere he likes. It'd be nice to have him in the Bagatellen bullpen. I'd pay good greenbacks to see our man Milazzo take him to task.

Hi, all

I'd like to encourage everyone to write or forward letters to editor@villagevoice.com and letters@jazztimes.com

Thanks,

Daniel King

As I said over at JC, instead of thinking so much about how much he's been wronged, Crouch might do well to ponder (yeah, right) just how lucky a bonehead who writes poorly and almost never has any idea what the hell he's talking about has been to get as many pages to spread his baloney as he's gotten to date. I don't know anything about Porter and don't really care. But Crouch is a jerk.

Maybe if Crouch recanted about 80% of everything he's ever written, I'd change my mind about his current tsuris. But don't hold your breath: he's never been wrong about anything, as far as I know.

As per the larger issue of a white jazz establishment, I feel this is entirely true and that there is a tendency to promote the "white flavor" of the month. I also feel that many white critics have little reverence for "the tradition" and don't appreciate the enduring values of blues and swing. What we've seen over the past 20 years I think is that white critics have been actively and steadily reshaping the terms for what "jazz" is, to the point that it is becoming little more than an umbrella term for any stripe of improvisation-based music. On this note, I find it no coincidence that people who argue for the primacy of blues and swing are vehemently dismissed over and over again as having an "old way" of thinking by these same critics. One of the keys to reshaping terms in one's ideal is to delegitimate any competing belief system. It's clear to me that some are determined to extinguish the idea of blues and swing (as being defining characteristics of the music) from the public discourse. "Innovation" and "improvisation" will be the only established criteria in the future, and these of course will be judged by the white critics. The bottom line I guess is that white musicians won't have to prove they can swing anymore. If the critics have their way, white musicians are going to be let off the hook from having to face that old spectre, never to face it again. Blues, swing- oh, how corny!!! A relic of the past, yes? Sure. Whatever you say.

"What we've seen over the past 20 years I think is that white critics have been actively and steadily reshaping the terms for what "jazz" is, to the point that it is becoming little more than an umbrella term for any stripe of improvisation-based music."

This is absurdly top-down, as if jazz's history were decided by the critics. The point is that _musicians_ above all have been actively and steadily reshaping what jazz is.

Gerard, thanks for chiming in. I have two questions for you: "What is jazz?" and "Why must it swing?"

I haven't posted here before, I'm a saxophonist, I'm white, and a few months ago I read Crouch's latest book called "Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk," which is more a reevaluation of W.E.B. Du Bois's entire body of work than his famous classic. Crouch contributes only 70 of the 256 pages, and I have one or two disagreements with the co-author, Playthell Benjamin, but Crouch's contribution amounts to some of the most brilliant writing of his that I've read, so I strongly disagree that he's either a bad writer or a negative influence. Maybe his novel is bad, I don't know, I haven't read it, but as an avid reader of black literature, I believe that a lot of great work by black authors goes unrecognized for a variety of reasons, which I won't get into, except to say that it sometimes reflects a different cultural perspective. I take a lot of what Stanley Crouch says with a box of salt, as do some black people I've discussed him with, but at least he shakes things up and creates a dialogue about issues that we, as jazz musicians, are supposed to be on the cutting edge of.

I've read the Stanley Crouch editorial in question, ostensibly the one for which he was fired, "Putting the White Man in Charge," and I'm willing to talk as best I can about specific ideas contained therein, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, but I won't be bamboozled by this Porter cat when he says:

"And just because it didn't work out with Crouch and Baraka," says Porter, "it doesn't mean we will stop reaching out to black writers or any group that is under-represented (sic) in jazz journalism."

Come on, he just canned the two leading black writers in jazz, and he's invoking "diversity"? Give me a break, he just pulled off a "diversity double play," a little "spring cleansing" if you will. Personally, I think HE'S the opportunist and the race huckster here, not Stanley (although I'm interested in derek's idea of mutual exploitation). I think we should be asking whether he merely hired Crouch and Baraka for the publicity, intending to fire them later on, whether this is a manifestation of the Sister Souljah syndrome -- stealth blaxploitive egalitarianism -- or whatever. Okay, look at Crouch's current tsuris (I love it!) in these terms: what if Porter had fired Nat Hentoff and Gary Giddins at the same time instead of Crouch and Baraka, and assuming that Hentoff and Giddins are both Jewish (although I don't know that to be the case), Porter had made a similar statement which included the phrase " or any group that is underrepresented" (arguably an offhanded slur when there are probably few or no black editors at jazz magazines). It would be a joke. Yeah, Stanley will be okay, and Porter is going to hire some black writers who don't get too "dicty" (uppity) about their own musical tradition, therefore alienating his advertisers. But, you know, a few months back, a black writer named Ron Wynn wrote a Jazztimes feature article called "Where's the Black Audience?" and one of his "solutions" involves publications like Jazztimes which contain black viewpoints like Stanley Crouch's -- incisive, often controversial, and more diversified than anything currently on the market. And he adds:

"It is unfortunate, but until the society reaches that mystical point in time like the Star Trek bunch, there are segments of various communities that will respond more favorably to a publication reflecting what they feel is their experience and sensibility than those they feel don't."

You may disagree, but I think that Porter is a Marge Schott wannabe, so, rule-bound anal retentives take the hindmost. We're all well aware that King Porter owns the rag and has the right to stomp all over the plantation as he sees fit. Good luck in your jazz careers, I know I could use some in mine. Thanks for the opportunity to express an opinion. This is extemporaneous, so don't cut and paste me.

Extemporaneous? Yes, all my own postings are too, but it had never occurred to me that that meant they deserved to be treated gently, especially when (like the above) the posting is long, opinionated & strongly worded. Anyway, you're in luck: I'm off to Victo tomorrow afternoon so I won't reply in detail & can't participate until Tuesday. However, a more general point: I think Al is mistaken in his original posting to brusquely dismiss matters of race as irrelevant. Racial issues in jazz are deeply important & the matter of a virtually all-white critical industry writing on a strongly black-identified music is troubling & not to be simply dismissed out of court. But this is an issue that must be separated from Crouch's opportunistic _use_ of such issues. The real issue seems to me: we really need more black critical voices in jazz--but why is it the best we've got so far is supposedly Crouch & Baraka? Ugh! (King has got to be kidding that the turgid prose Baraka turns out is "poetry". Yeah RIGHT.) OK, so who are the black critics now writing worth reading? Why aren't there more? It's very important to not pretend that I'm speaking from some "neutral" position as a critic--I'd be a fool to ignore my (white) (middle-class) background's permeation of my own aesthetic judgments. But my response to that has got to be, not self-hatred, nor a pretense that it's not the case, but a strong interest in rubbing up against other critical judgments, hopefully from other backgrounds. I think we should be all VERY reflective about the extremely lopsided demographics of the jazz audience, of jazz musicians, of jazz critics. Doesn't it bother anyone, for instance, that there's virtually NO female jazz critics? It's an even worse unbalance than the notoriously lopsided gender balance among jazz musicians (barring vocalists). Jazz is an intensely masculine music, & this is something we should all be aware of & worried about (not least because it might well explain the marginal status of jazz today among the music audience: how can a music be popular when one half of the population is drastically less interested in it?). If you want the statistics to back up my claims, take a look at Scott De Veaux's useful little book analysing the results of an across-the-board arts survey, & at the mastheads of all the current jazz periodicals: _Coda_ for instance has only one regular female contributor, _Cadence_ none. -- I'm digressing, I know, but I'm not really: what I'm trying to say is that before we pretend that matters of identity politics are irelevant to musical merit, writing skill, critical discernment, &c &c &c we should be more honest about the mass of counterevidence. This is not to agree with Steve's post above, which I find silly, but that we'd better come up with a better response to the issues raised more thoughtfully (if still I think tendentiously) by King than to imagine they don't exist.

Sorry for the screed. If anyone's going to Victo, I'll see you there maybe.... --N