Exporting Jazz

A friend who works for Wynton Marsalis (the great) of Jazz on Lincoln Center (jalc) described projects at jalc supported by govt grants that send Jazz performers abroad to expose other countries to Jazz, or in my words, Jazz diplomacy (I am tempted to use the word diplomatics which is so wrong in meaning, and so right in cadence).

Alfred Spector, ever the Socratic thinker, asked, just how does one export Jazz? Indeed. Jazz is not a well-dressed quartet in a shiny room. It is smoky rooms, dirty drinking glasses, dilapidated chairs, voices raspy from drinks, raspier instruments, and men with a few alimony checks under their belts, indeed, men who need belts. How does one transplant this from the basement of Smalls in the village to the barren Kazakhstan?