how long blues

A few weeks ago, we attended a concert at a little theatre in provincial England. The band was the Ken Colyer Legacy Jazz Band. The pop world uses the words ‘tribute band’ but jazz being almost a centenarian is able to lay claim to having a heritage, or a legacy. Jazz as a music is old.

Unfortunately, so are most devotees. Mrs Dodman and I sat at the lofty back and looked down on a brae of grey heads, nodding and waving gently like a field of poppies in a light breeze. We were just about the youngest in the auditorium, except for a couple of student anthropologists earnestly taking notes by the light of a tiny torch. When the music started, heads stopped bobbing. The entire audience sat stock still, listening intently, politely. Surely, this is the wrong way round. Shouldn’t we all begin to jig about and jive a little when the music starts? This is jazz – not chamber music.

At half-time, when the queue for toilets stretched twice around the block, I reflected on the mean age of these concert goers. A quick calculation put it at about seventy-four, omitting theatre staff and the aforementioned youthful scholarly fieldworkers, but including the band. That gives another roughly10 to 12 years before the typical jazz aficionado of this ilk is conveyed away to the strains of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” It’s not long, is it?

The last time I went to Keswick Jazz Festival (two years ago) the youngest people were the bar staff, each and every one bemused and praying that the end of the shift comes soon. Most of the audience were there to scout suitable bands to play at funerals. Musicians arrived clutching not song books but lists of comfort stops en-route to Cumbria. Without a doubt, the population absorbing this brand of specialised music is ageing and, more significantly, dwindling.

What happens to the music when few are left to pay to enjoy it, yet alone with the aspiration to play it? You see, this is a highly specialised genre of jazz, known as British Trad. It’s an endangered sub-species embraced by those now well beyond the age of reproduction; their children are lamenting the passing of the Mersey sound, not New Orleans or even Charlie Parker. As far as I can see, too few practitioners and fans are following along to grasp the reins dropped from our frail and mortal fingers.

Although I confess British Trad is not my favourite genre of jazz, the loss of it would be a tragedy. Listening to Ken Colyer’s successors romping through “Hindustan” as an exuberant finale made me realise what a gaping black hole will remain if the sound vanishes. What will the exemplar “Kings’ Arms” do on a Sunday lunch-time? Glam rock is a poor accompaniment to roast beef and Woodforde’s ales.

Perhaps youngsters are practising their Dixieland behind closed doors and will yet surprise us in years to come. We need them to keep up the tradition. I don’t want to sit alone in a draughty hall listening to the last Brit Trad trio pluck their way through “How Long Blues.” And without these youthful legatees, who will play at my funeral?