In a couple of weeks’ time, on April 30, it’ll be the UN-sanctified International Jazz Day. (IJD https://jazzday.com/.)
The event had been destined for its first African host city in 2020: Cape Town. Sadly, Covid put paid to that. But it returns to Africa this year, with the host city of Tangier in Morocco.
The programme for the international concert is an impressive one, reflecting the diversity of sources, styles and generations that make up jazz, from Gnawa drumming to avant-garde trumpet and from blues guitar to Spanish/classical harmonica. The southern African flag is held high by saxophonist Moreira Chonguica and vocalist/trumpeter Mandisi Dyantyis. You can access the concert via a YouTube stream (2023 is already up at https://www.youtube.com/@Jazzday) – and you should.
You’ll also be able to find also multiple in-country events, including in South Africa, although the UNESCO link (https://jazzday.com/events/2024/south-africa/) so far, lists only a few of those here that I know have been scheduled. Come on, organisers – this is one programme you definitely need to get with. It costs nothing to register your event and have it posted on the IJD website.
IJD is a great initiative, and the website offers all kinds of information and resources that jazz educators and promoters can draw on, as well as video of the previous global concerts. It really only falls short in one dimension – gender.
As in all previous years, the global concert bill features a minority of women musicians: six out of 31 artists; just under 20%. Over 49% of the world’s population that UN bodies such as UNESCO are supposed to represent is female. Of those six, only one, reed player and composer Lakecia Benjamin, is an instrumentalist; the rest are vocalists.
And, as you can see, the official poster at the top of this page portrays four male instrumentalists and a woman singing. (As it happens, a remarkably skinny woman in a thigh-split dress, but we really don’t need to have that conversation again, do we?)
So, in venues and education establishments all across the world that use the official poster, professional female instrumentalists are invisible, and jazz-aspirant young women are told that their only role in the genre can be to wear a pretty dress and sing.
That message was probably unintentional – although making selections for a concert bill is a 110% deliberate and intentional process. And in terms of conveying a message, a picture is worth 1000 words.
Research demonstrates that all across the world, women musicians feel marginalised, exploited and unsafe. Now, South African research – more when it’s published – backs that up too. The cumulative impact of posters such as the IJD one is to naturalise the situation: to imply that what it portrays is the only way things can and should be.
It would have been so easy to do things differently: to create silhouettes that were gender neutral, or 50% female, or even – perish the thought! – 80% female. (At which point, no doubt, the neanderthal whines about “wokeness” would have sounded loud.) But go to the IJD website, and you’ll see that quite a few events have chosen not to use that poster and to feature female instrumentalists, not only graphically as an abstract idea, but photographically: the real women already playing jazz instruments professionally in localities worldwide.
Maybe we could make a start in South Africa by – in the best jazz tradition of improvisation – riffing on that poster and using one that looks like this instead?
sisgwenjazz 