Recently caught live performances by Soul Rebels Brass Band, Get the Blessing, and Led Bib during the 2010 London Jazz Festival. Several hundred people who gathered at the Southbank Centre to see Soul Rebels Brass Band were so into it the show that they boo-ed loudly when the band did not play an encore....
Long before we debated what real punk-rock was, what true hip-hop was, or what made indie-rock authentic, jazz heads grappled with what is and isn’t jazz music. Now, the debate is whether jazz is dying off or not. America’s jazz audience is not only shrinking, it’s aging. Attendance at jazz performances has dropped 30%...