Now Hear This!
what's up with the Grammy jazz category this year?
2009-02-05
By Mark Ruffin

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove was robbed at cultural gunpoint by the organization that runs the Grammy awards.  Earfood, his album from last year is easily one of the five best jazz albums of 2008.   Yet Hargrove nor any other black artists are among the candidates for the best jazz album Grammy.

A year after Herbie Hancock stunned the pop music world by winning album of the year and contemporary jazz album of the year, only Ne-Yo and  Lil Wayne will be representing people of color in one of those two categories this time around.  Guess which one. It’s a reality that frequently mirrors the attendance of African-Americans at pop concerts as opposed to jazz shows.  As a recent arrival to New York City, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in jazz clubs where the only black folks are me and the musicians on stage.

“That’s not true in the mid-west,” Hargrove said to me on the subject of the seemingly dwindling black audiences in jazz clubs.  “I see black people in Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis, but just about everywhere else, you’re right.”

Two years ago I was of the notion that it was more likely that my grandkids’ grandkids would see a black president before a black jazz artist would take album of the year.  Considering the perpetual declining market share of jazz in the domestic marketplace, Hancock’s triumph may have been more improbable than President Obama’s historic victory.

In a year of incredible choices including group masterpieces from Hargrove, James Carter, Charles Lloyd and Ellis Marsalis, not one album by a black musician is deemed worthy of a jazz album of the year nomination.  Instead we have three trios, a duet and an eclectic guitarist with names that, with the exception of Pat Metheny and Chick Corea, the average black jazz fan wouldn’t recognize. The other nominees, Peter Erskine, Brad Mehldau and Bill Frisell, are all fine musicians, but in a year of excellent releases by so many black jazz musicians, it's not hard to understand why any of them would feel slighted.

When I read Hargrove the names of the nominees for best jazz vocalist, the well rounded and well connected musician said, “Who are these people?”

I did save Cassandra Wilson for last, but I wasn’t surprised that Hargrove had never heard of Norma Winstone, Kate McGarry and Stacey Kent.  Who has?

The dichotomy with the group formerly known as the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences,  that now wants to be known as the Recording Academy, is that for the most part media saturation and record sales rule with the big categories.  But in specialty fields like jazz and reggae, it’s all politics and elitism of committees that determine nominees. While that double standard makes Hancock’s victory more impressive, it also affirms that, while we may not know who Norma Winstone is, she obviously knows somebody on the Grammy jazz committee.   

Ms. Wilson should win the vocal category easily with her first album of standards in years called Loverly.  That was a no-brainer for me to vote for.  

I only re-joined NARAS because I wanted to at least try to effect the change instead of just going through the change.  It was Wilson’s 2002’s release, Belly of the Sun that caused me to resign from NARAS six years ago when I was told by a member of the jazz committee that it wasn’t a jazz record.   This from an organization that labels as much music as it can to maximize its reach and, in some cases, its power. How else to explain, for example, the expulsion of smooth jazz musicians from the jazz category into pop.  

Selling a lot of records in rap, like Lil Wayne, improves your chance for recognition from Grammy voters.  But commercial success in jazz, like say that of Wynton Marsalis, who was behind Hancock’s Grammy and racked up totals as the jazz artist with the second best selling record in 2008, and you’re snubbed.  

No doubt Herbie’s monumental win last year inspired me to look again at adding my voice and some color to the jazz voting at NARAS.  The bigger picture is still, however, somewhat puzzling.  The fact that I first met the current president of the United States at a jazz function, and that he said on "Meet The Press" that he wanted to bring jazz back to the White House is quite inspiring.   

Maybe Barack Obama can add to the other pressing issues on his agenda bringing black people back to jazz shows.

Mark Ruffin is Jazz Program Director for Sirius/XM Radio, Inc.