RREALITY CAN BE RELATIVE, THOUGH. Or perhaps quanti-tative.
Yes, jazz is alive in Wilmington, but jazz is still a niche genre.
There are people in town who love the music, but they are in the
minority and they don’t attend every gig by every band.
“There are some really good players, and some really good venues,
but there’s not that many gigs available,” says Julia Walker Jewell, a jazz
composer, pianist and vocalist who plays in two bands, her jazz quintet
and the Port City Trio, which plays music from the Great American
Songbook. “Everybody is playing the same gigs. You are going to hear
somebody you’ve heard before. Is that healthy? I’m not sure it is.”
Walker Jewell and her husband, Kelly, own and operate Ted’s Fun
on the River.
“I play jazz at Ted’s. But if I
didn’t own the club I wouldn’t
have many places to play,” she
says. “And if we only booked jazz
at Ted’s we wouldn’t make it. We
have to mix in blues and blue-grass
and Americana.”
In other words, even the most
talented players shouldn’t quit
their day jobs.
“There aren’t a lot of ways for
jazz musicians to make it here,” says
Walker Jewell, whose regular job
is director of music at Wrightsville
United Methodist Church.
Hill, who recently took
the teaching job at Cape Fear
Community College, is one of
the few who makes his living
solely from jazz.
“It’s hard,” he says. “For a
long time all I did was play. I
taught part-time but that didn’t
pay much money at all. It’s a lot
because you do everything your-self.
Find gigs, hunt them down,
book them, do your own promo-tion,
hire bands for events like
Julia Walker Jewell leads a jazz quintet and plays standards from
the Great American Songbook with the Port City Trio.
weddings. Each one is different.
And you have to find time to practice. It’s a lot. It can be stressful.”
Jim McFayden has similar challenges finding gigs, along with
the responsibility of paying the 17 musicians who make up the
Wilmington Big Band. But the band members, who range in age
from “high school kids to guys in their 70s and 80s” are in it for
the joy of the music rather than the reward.
“The money is nice, but you are up there for the passion,”
McFayden says. “It’s a privilege.”
Swing music played by big bands led by the likes of Duke
Ellington, Glenn Miller, Jimmie Lunceford and Benny Goodman
topped the charts in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
“The greatest generation folks that are my mom’s age and
Jim’s mom’s age, this music means so much to them,” Laura
McFayden says.
But her favorite moments come when she sees children danc-ing
to the music.
“You know you are successful when kids run out and jump
around and play,” she says. “You know you are reaching them.
There are a lot of kids who have never seen this who are inter-ested
in the instruments and the music. It’s a wonderful feeling
to introduce this to a new generation.”
That’s a common theme among jazz musicians. Whether
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trying to make a living at it
or playing for the passion
and privilege, there’s a shared
responsibility to make sure
Sebastian’s words never come
to pass, to ensure the art form
stays off life support.
“Maybe in some small way
we are charged with that,” Jim
McFayden says. “And we are
honored to be charged.”
Jazz is the most American art
form — “the world’s other clas-sical
music,” Robinson says.
It originated about 100 years
ago in New Orleans, where a
fusion of European colonial
roots and African influences
from the slavery era produced
a new kind of music played
by legends like Buddy “King”
Bolden, Sidney Bechet and
Jelly Roll Morton. Jas, as it
was then known, spread around
the country and around the
world.
Preserving that history is
always lurking somewhere in
the back of the mind of most
jazz musicians.
“I think it’s an important part of the heritage and tradition of
this music,” Hill says.
The music has evolved and morphed into many different
forms over the years — Dixieland, swing, bebop, post-bop, acid,
fusion, cool, Brazilian, free form, smooth.
The Sunday jazz jam touches on many of those styles, but
perhaps the best term is pure jazz, played for the pure joy of it.
“Sunday is the night when we can put a little air in the horn,
turn the amps up a little bit louder, hit the drums a little bit
harder,” Hill says. “Sunday night is our fun night of the week.
It’s just getting together and playing. That’s why I do it.”