The news (so to speak) these days comes from Finland: to prevent young people from occupying the beaches and dirtying them, the managers play classical music from the speakers, and it seems that the ploy works, and the kids stay away.
Nothing new, already a few years ago in Berlin in areas of the city at risk of drug dealing, there was some excellent free jazz, which is notoriously indigestible for any illegal activity.
One would think that in the recent European elections, the polls saw the presence of one voter in two due to the music of Derek Bailey and Peter Brotzmann treacherously programmed by some anarchist saboteur disguised as a scrutineer.
Even the jazz festivals, which as usual flock in large numbers in the summer months, seem to have found the solution to every problem: triumphalist tones from the press officers and programs so dull, dull and pandering that it is hard to believe they are real.
Let’s leave aside Umbria Jazz, now Fantozzi’s caricature of what was once a jazz festival, but also the good part of the other festivals have taken a slope that often defies ridicule, with names that at most are suitable for the Sanremo Festival.
Then there are councilor-friendly festivals, as Jacopo Tomatis lucidly quipped in Il Giornale della Musica. In other words, these are exhibitions in which the usual names recur, Italian but also American, the most abused but also those that attract a large audience. And here, for me, an old trinarcito jazzophile, a moan rises up somewhere between a sneer and a howl: I very often read ecstatic comments on social media, as if Miles and Trane were alive again, for the thousandth (and often empty) performance of the tired heroes , while young and old musicians who perhaps would have many more ideas, freshness and quality are absolutely ignored in the programs.
It’s the fault of a lazy public, but above all of an army of artistic directors without courage, with little jazz knowledge and too much other knowledge. I read incredible names, where the border of the ridiculous has definitely disappeared, and I don’t add anything else only because of the stomach acid that these already give me.
We all have families, you know, and only a few outsiders who don’t matter allow themselves to break the eggs in the basket. But luckily no one listens to them, and so the great season of jazz festivals begins.
And long-time fans are forced to look at the few festivals worthy of attention, more numerous abroad than in our country. But by now the public that flocks to most Italian festivals has changed, it seems to an external observer, decidedly poorly informed, more inclined to the star system than to quality, prefers horrid jazz-like covers of singers and songwriters, flocks regardless based on the name and not substance, he gives up easily and ignores everything that does not fit into the foreseeable and the deja entendu. Guccini sang, and jazz isn’t doing too well either.
