Author: Dubber

I’ve been doing some research into the ways in which different national jazz agencies around Europe use the internet as part of what they do.

At the 2011 Jazzahead conference, I interviewed delegates representing music centres and national jazz agencies from the UK, Netherlands, Slovenia, Iceland, France, Hungary, Finland, Estonia, Catalonia, Denmark, Belgium, Norway and Sweden. From those interviews, I was able to discern a number of shared concerns, overlapping strategies and common goals and approaches that these organisations have used to think about their online offerings.

While each national agency is essentially interested in the promotion and propagation of the jazz music of their own country, this basic commonality of intent is not uniformly reflected in the strategies each brings to the Internet in order to achieve that aim. In fact, in many ways, the approaches differ substantially. In part, this is attributable to the various differences in the cultural, economic and political objectives that underpin the activities of these organisations, but it also reflects differences in audience demographic profiles, access to financial, technical and human resources to develop the online offerings and the levels of online experience (and interest) staff members of the organisation possess.

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Anne’s research centres around festivals and what makes them special for audiences, for musicians and for the spaces they inhabit.

In the context of a discussion around the connection between festivals and places (specifically, places in Europe), we got into a conversation about what festivals mean for people – but also what people (and particularly political people) use them to mean.

What do you think about the connection between festivals and places. Are they reducible to tourism and local identity, is there some greater meaning – or even transcendence to be found within, or is the fact that it’s more complicated than that the thing that is interesting here?

A conversation in which questions are raised about the relationship between the state of jazz in a particular country – and the policies and expectations of the institutions that educate the musicians.

Is it important that musicians rebel against what they are taught in jazz conservatories?

As part of our discussion at the research team meeting in Lancaster, our Project Leader Tony Whyton raises this issues of the official national jazz agencies and the extent to which they might be more protectionist than promotional.

Is there a role for national jazz agencies in actively blurring the lines and fostering collaborations across Europe?

Three years almost to the day after I interviewed Steve Lawson about Twitter for musicians, we thought it might be appropriate to update and reflect. Here’s the original video: Twitter Sucks, So Change Your Friends.

A discussion between members of the Rhythm Changes research team in which Anne Dvinge questions the value of doing transnational research within national settings – and whether it might actually be a bit more complicated than that.

Be great to hear what you have to say on the topic.

Professor Tim Wall, who is what we call a ‘critical friend’ to the project, offers some interesting provocations about the relationship between British musicians and European jazz.

Your thoughts, of course, are most welcome.

In the interests of sparking conversation and spreading ideas more widely, we thought it would be good to capture a flavour of some of the discussions we’ve been having at our research meeting these past few days, and make them available for you to watch, overhear and respond to.

Think of this series of short videos as conversation starters, an invitation to engage and discuss ideas, as well as just an insight into some of the debates we’ve been having ourselves around these topics.

There are a few of these on the way on a range of different topics. In the above video, George McKay talks about some of the ideas he explored in Circular Breathing – the book he wrote about cultural politics and British jazz.