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Re lack of exposure: LA Times article

Posted by M. Lucky (A) on March 22, 2011 at 08:57:18

In Reply to: Right Next to the Classical Audience............ posted by Todd Krieger on March 21, 2011 at 17:13:48:

Interesting article in the LA Times on arts attendance. It focuses on a pair of studies, one of which links decline in attendance at arts events (of all kinds, not just jazz) to the defunding of arts programs in schools that began around 1972. The other suggests that the dearth of younger people at arts events is a product of there being fewer younger people now relative to the total population and that the real problem is the lack of arts "omnivores" who attend all sorts of events and who used to account for some 60% of ticket sales.

All pretty interesting, as are some of the further observations about how race and income play into this. But none of it addresses what I think is the fundamental phenomenon: basically, people are spending a lot of time online, playing computer games and visiting social media, and watching their hi-def big screens, and they're not spending as much time learning to play instruments, listening to sound-only recordings, or going out to hear live music.

I think a lot of analysis misses for the forest for the trees here. People look at jazz clubs closing down and they say, "what's wrong with jazz?" Or they look at orchestras going broke and they say "why is classical music declining?" If you step back far enough to look at the big picture, you realize that a lot of things, from television viewership to visits to our national parks, are way down over the last 10-15 years. To me, it seems obvious what's changed: people are living their lives online, spending hours every day in front of flickering screens, and there are quite a few things they used to do that they aren't doing as much anymore.

All of this hits jazz especially hard, partly the jazz economy (ha! that phrase always make me laugh) was so small to begin with that once you decline by a few percentage points, you're left with practically nothing, but also because the soul of jazz is live performance. More than any other genre, jazz needs to be played and heard live.

But, as Yogi said, if the people won't come, you can't stop 'em.`

• LA Times article   (Open in New Window)

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