Straight
Ahead: A Comprehensive Guide to the Business of Jazz (Without Sacrificing
Dignity or Artistic Integrity) by Marty Khan, non-fiction, Outward Visions
Books,
(an abridged version was previously published at Big Bridge)
“Better get it in your soul,” penned Charles Mingus when amongst us, and he was on to the Big Powerful Something about this music: it can change your life. Although gettin’ it in your soul is the destination of jazz, the music industry historically has preyed upon the recording and performing jazz artist, so there is much to celebrate in this insider’s look on how to survive and thrive in the contemporary environment of all too many musicians looking for all too few gigs.
Straight
Ahead: A Comprehensive Guide to the Business of Jazz (Without Sacrificing
Dignity or Artistic Integrity) by Marty Khan is a watershed work, a summing up
and a moving forward with his eye to the jazz tradition as embodying a living
spiritual presence, not merely selling a dead commodity. Like hearing John
Coltrane, “whose message and spirit have been the primary inspiration in my
life’s work” (from Khan’s dedication), reading this book changes the reader at
the cellular level. For one thing, it’s clear on every page that the music has
changed Khan’s life. He started out as a teenage fan in the
mid-Sixties, learned the alto sax, dropped out of college to play and study
with Sam Rivers, “graduated” to record distribution and artist management,
pioneered the use of the non-profit organization for the self-empowerment of
jazz musicians while forging a new circuit of performance opportunities for an
array of avant-garde artists such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, George
Russell, the World Saxophone Quartet and Sonny Fortune before branching out to
dancemaster Alwin Nikolai and composers Steve Reich and John Zorn.
The
exploitation of art and makers of culture has not been limited to the
shenanigans of the music industry suits. What makes Khan’s book so worth reading is
that it’s both a monstrous wake-up call to the facts and a call to arms with a
non-stop series of ingenious tactics to reverse the trend at the personal
level. In this sense it is an intriguing read for any performer, but it holds
particular significance for the literati, especially those MFA-ers who graduate in large number but have no clue to the racket or how to build an audience, market a
book, create a tour or work collectively with other artists to serve the
existing literary needs of a community.
However,
for all his can-do style, Khan is tough and serious-minded; he goes against the grain of the typical
contemporary how-to guide, which generally is cut to fit the size of a sixth
grader’s mind with an additional purchase in the wings like a seminar, a second
title, a thousand spin-offs. Khan believes too deeply in the transformative power of the music
to make us buy twice or to sugarcoat the funky details that hem in
today’s musician. Furthermore, even though much has happened in the industry
since the book was published, one needs no other guide to help navigate any of
that. By the time one gets to the last section of the book, “Strategies,
Recommendations, Solutions,” one won’t be thinking about any issue in the same
ol’, same ol’.
Hey,
one can’t get through Chapter Two, “Ten Disturbing Facts That Must Be
Understood,” without checking a lot of personal baggage at the door. Cutting
right to the chase, here are a few of those facts: “There is an enormous amount of money in
jazz, produced by an economy that is based on failure.” How about: “The entire
economic structure of the music business---artist and publishing royalty rates,
CD prices, etc.---is a fabricated reality that bears little resemblance to its
real economics.” Or: “Jazz professionals
distrust musicians even more than musicians distrust professionals.” Or: “Virtually everyone on the business side
of jazz is a failed musician.”
Khan
has distilled in these 432 pages his 35 years in the game. This is where
the revolution has gone, not televised but hybridized, joined with other art
forms, street legal with a 501 (c) (3), ready for anything, capable of
navigating every opportunity to perform and get paid---even inventing new
venues along the way. So the reader isn’t
getting conjecture about what might work for an individualistic, idiosyncratic (alleged
non-commerical) sound but what has worked, when, how and why---and what the
next step is to take.
In addition, the guidebook
is highly organized, making it easy to find everything---and everything is the
key word: complete, exhaustive and thoroughly explored from every angle! His
anecdotes about clubs, musicians and the scene aren’t bad either. His succinct
prose style owes a great deal to Raymond Chandler, but his brains are all
Coltrane: he sees every permutation in an unfolding event and how it connects.
So in sections like “The Artist’s Team,” there are descriptions and stories of
what to look for in a manager, agent, attorney, roadie, rekkid producer,
engineer, publicist, consultant, fundraiser-grantwriter, band member. Ditto the major labels, execs, A & R,
indies, art and marketing directors, radio promo and every aspect of the
performance---clubs, managers, bookers, concerts, fests, venues of all sizes,
promoters, line producers, house crew, sound tech, audience.
It is more, however, than
just an ongoing artist empowerment strategy, a welcome attitude adjustment, a
new “skillful means” way to do business, a method to replace alien-nation with
jazz-nation that roots and grows through one’s own labors. It’s also the
antidote for that “gimme a gig” mentality, among the mistaken entitlements that
Khan socratically scrutinizes. The sixteen questions he asks and answers in
Chapter 1 are worth the price of the book alone. To check out his interview
about how the book came to be and to access for free “Seven Keys to Empowerment
and Productivity,” click www.outwardvisions.com/straight_ahead/
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