Dear Editor,

Each year around this time well-meaning critics call for the organiser of the Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival to change the moniker, suggesting Jamaica Music Festival, as they say there is no credible jazz artiste being highlighted on the international festival.

The bulk of the festival-goers are Jamaicans and, drawing on experience, Jamaicans are not big lovers and supporters of that genre of music. The festival organisers are fully cognisant of the low interest in jazz and book artistes along the line of where they get their support. Most of our jazz fans in Jamaica are we, the elderly, and only a few of us make it to the annual “Jazz” festival.

Our radio stations, 20-odd of them, do not intentionally programme jazz, a musical form originated by black musicians in New Orleans. One prominent radio programmer stated categorically that listeners are not interested in jazz. Our press, too, are not gung-ho about this music either, so jazz is meagrely represented by the rare jazz shows on the island.

Normally, when people hear the name jazz, they recoil thinking about Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, Billy Holiday, and Louis Armstrong, never of contemporary musicians like Diana Krall and Michael Buble.

Let’s agree, there should be jazz on Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival. But, alas, there was indeed authentic jazz on the final night of the just-concluded show, but it is yet to be reported in the Jamaican press, even in this newspaper.

Claude Wilson

jaclaudew@yahoo.com