Jazzkalender #290

LET'S TALK ABOUT JAZZ ... AND RACISM
While the prosecco-swilling ladies enjoy their slight buzz and sigh mischievously at the rude charm of Don Shirley's swashbuckling chauffeur Tony Lip, we ask ourselves whether a two-hour road movie like "Green Book" - which invites us to feel good and ends in the cozy, expected haven of friendship - doesn't mystify rather than shake us up. The impression is given that racism is now a thing of the past and that, should things turn out differently, it can be overcome by eating deep-fried chicken breasts together.
Of course, it is cynical to make such a judgment about Peter Farrelly's film (opening 31.01. at Passage Cinema and elsewhere), which shows the beginning of the friendship between pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his chauffeur (Viggo Mortensen) on a concert tour through the south of the USA in 1962. "The Negro Motorist Green Book" serves as a guide for the constantly hungry and, thanks to his chicken breasts, always fat-fingered Tony to find the places where a person of color can at least count on a bed for the night. Because as the light fades, the unspeakable "daylight rule" takes effect and prohibits all those who are not white from spending time outdoors. Although we do not recommend "Green Book - A Special Friendship" without reservations, we are grateful for the food for thought: is jazz still a synonym for freedom and rebellion, an expression of cosmopolitanism, a music that does not have to explicitly convey political content in order to be intrinsically political? Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite" was released in 1960. Nina Simone angrily sang "Mississippi Goddam" and also commemorated the African-American activist Medger Evers, who was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. Absolutely worth seeing and freely available online on the homepage of the Federal Agency for Civic Education is the documentary "I am not your Negro". Based on a text fragment by James Baldwin, it spans the arc from the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement of the present day. Also highly topical and well worth listening to: a podcast by Christian Eichler, who talks to Wolfram Knauer, Director of the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt, about the questions raised above. In the knowledge that freedom and equality always require the courage to stand up for them!
Your Jazzkalender editorial team
The whole current issue as PDF.