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Saturday, May 25, 2013
DWB on "SMF": What's in a name?
by David Watts Barton, published on August 23, 2011 at 4:15 PM
Storyline: DWB: The View from Downtown
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We old-timers will likely continue to call it “Jazzfest” or even “the Jubilee” for some time to come, but as of today, Sacramento’s Memorial Day tradition for 38 years, the Sacramento Jazz Festival in Old Sacramento, is going by a new name: The Sacramento Music Festival.
The airport isn’t the only SMF in town any more.
Name changes are nothing new for the event, which began its life as the Dixieland Jazz Jubilee in 1973 and became the Sacramento Jazz Festival a couple of decades after that. But jazz has long since ceased to be the only, or even the dominant musical form at the festival, which has for years featured many blues, swing and other traditional music acts.
The festival has also found itself in a bit of a quandary in recent years, with dwindling crowds and a waning cultural presence in town, trying to stay true to its rootsy roots, beloved of its aging fan base, but watching that fan base age – and worse.
Hearing about the name change jogged my memory. I got into big trouble as a young pop music critic at The Sacramento Bee, when the editor of the paper, Gregory Favre, strongly suggested that I apologize to a member of that older set when I referred to the event in a review as “the Woodstock of the Geritol Generation.”
The offended party was not just another retiree; she was the late PR diva Jean Runyon, whose husband was involved in the production of the festival, which at the time – 1985 or so – was still going great guns and had many friends in powerful places.
That's how important that event was in the culture of the time, “Bill Bailey” notwithstanding. To their credit, the Sacramento Music Festival’s organizers have clearly seen that the future is not in traditional jazz. That they have yet to figure out that the future isn’t in traditional blues either, or for that matter, traditional rock or funk, remains to be seen. Then again, the new Geritol Generation will be made up of Baby Boomers. Double yikes.
But I’m getting snarky again. This change strikes me as a bit desperate and perhaps not the best solution. After all, this is a festival that takes place in a living museum, Old Sacramento, so the festival strays from its roots at its own peril.
The problem with a name like the Sacramento Music Festival is that it means essentially nothing. The Dixieland Jazz Jubilee is a brand, and a powerful one. By contrast, the Sacramento Music Festival is safe, broad, flexible and open to interpretation.
Or to being ignored.
The proof will come in the fall and spring, in the booking of the hundreds of acts that will appear next year. The Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Mike Testa is quoted in a press release as saying that the new, renamed festival will feature “nationally known groups from the more mainstream genres like Rock and Country.” If that turns the festival into something more like Seattle’s eclectic Bumbershoot, I’m on board.
But if the booking is as uninspired and uninspiring as this new name, we’re in trouble.
Testa’s quote scares me. Why? Is it the wanton capitalization of genres? Is it the use of the word “mainstream”? Or is it the sinking feeling that this is a desperate attempt to remake a festival whose purpose has disappeared along with its audience?
Time will tell. I would love to see this event retooled completely, to match the new name. Perhaps it will revive the ignored-and-abused-to-death Sacramento Heritage Festival that Mike Balma and Brian McKenna put together year after year in the face of official neglect and even abuse until it died long before it should have.
Sacramento has a history of quashing truly creative public events, especially musical ones, though that has changed in the last decade. What will happen with the JazzFest … er, SMF … remains an open question. But we’re not off to a great start.
What’s in a name? Well, in the case of the old name, history and identity. In the case of the Sacramento Music Festival, not much. Yet.
This column was edited after being published.
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One of the core reasons that this event exists is so that the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society (STJS) can raise money to ensure that traditional jazz is taught in our schools. The more money they can generate through ticket sales, the more ability they'll have to accomplish their mission. In theory, appealing to more than one demographic will generate new ticket sales.
I think that it’s important to look at how you portray the event in your coverage. You wrote about how you were scolded for writing about the Geritol crowd while at the Bee. You then mentioned that, for a few years now, the event has featured far more than just Dixieland on the music menu. But then you somewhat contradict that statement because, at the top of the article, in an effort to provide a visual for the event, you placed a picture of a very sweet 80-something woman walking with her parasol. The Bee used a very similar image in their coverage today, as well. Is that an accurate description of the event that you've attended in recent years—or is it an image that represents the mere traditions that the 39 year-old event continues to honor? While I won’t pretend that ladies holding parasols don’t still exist at the event, I think that the media continues to struggle with the evolution of this event, and uses file footage that they’ve always used instead of portraying some of that evolution.
To your point, the proof will be in the event's continued growth and change doesn't happen overnight. As much as I'd like to see it in 2012, the chance of the event hosting Eric Clapton or even Willie Nelson isn't likely at this point. But I believe that the commitment of the STJS board is genuine and that they're truly interested in taking this event to the next level. Frankly, watching it decline further from where it once was isn't a good solution for anyone.
As far as the picture goes, we don't have much of a photo file, and that was a picture I snapped last year at the festival. Yes, journalism really can be just THAT random.
I have heard a number of pretty good traditional jazz bands at the festival – though I can't claim to be a regular attendee, largely because it's on a weekend I generally go out of town – and I hope that it remains a part of the mix.
I don't think that a Willie Nelson or heaven forbid, Eric Clapton would do the trick. It's going to be about smaller bands that aren't necessarily names but who each draw a handful of devoted fans, treating them all well, working with what is by any measure an extraordinary setting, and build something that way.
To that end – and toward being constructive as well as critical – I would suggest talking to promoters like Brian McKenna and others who know what's going on with younger listeners - under, say, 40 – and find out what THEY think. The live music scene is very healthy on the non-name-brand level, and that's where you can make a mark. And, of course, with a healthy focus on local acts as well.
I would love to see the festival reimagined or expanded or however you want to call it. Not thrilled with the name, however. Then again, what the HECK is a "bumbershoot"? (Wait, Burg knows...)
Trying to make the festival more "mainstream" does seem counterproductive and counterintuitive--the main criticism of the festival I have heard is that it is too mainstream, and does too little to challenge the image of, well, the 80-something woman with the parasol. Rather than becoming even more generic, our biggest music festival should express something about this city, making use of our own unique sense of place, not an appeal to the lowest common denominator.
(Good one with the Geritol Generation, by the way)
P.S. What's a Geritol?