Music As Culture at the Scarborough Jazz Festival

I wrote last night about the sense of camaraderie we've encountered at the Scarborough Jazz Festival and how it reinforced my feeling that music is not just about commerce and protectionism and big business but also about culture and identity, about how individuals and groups make sense of each other and collaborate to create new partnership and music.

This has again been evidenced today at the festival. There has been a workshop event this morning which encompassed two local youth jazz orchestras getting some tuition from Mike Janisch and members of his band. I watched as the musicians really got involved with the orchestra, continually stopping them, pointing out where they were doing things right or wrong or where they need more place more emphasis on a particular piece of the music. I watched as they got literally right into the musicians, making their way to the back of the orchestra to provide some one to one tuition.

And here's the rub, they didn't have to do this. The Mike Janisch Quartet understand the how inspiring it can be for younger musicians to learn from established players, how it is vital to share knowledge, to encourage and cajole, to praise and ensure that music is shared amongst us. That music is culture, and it belongs to all of us.

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Other posts about Easy Jazz Orchestra   Jez Collins   Mike Janisch Quintet   Music As Culture  

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Camaraderie and openness at The Scarborough Jazz Festival

It's beginning to get late at the Scarborough Jazz Festival. It's only the first day and I haven't really heard that much music yet. This is not because I'm disinterested but that there is so much material coming into us here at what we've called the Stagedoor that we are running just to keep up to date to make sure we capture and then upload the videos, photos, interviews, reviews and everything else inbetween.

But what I really wanted to say was that I think Tim, Dubber, Simon and I have been bowled over by the friendliness and sense of camaraderie we've encountered with other people working with and for the organisers Mike and Marian. The staff at Scarborough Spa Hall, Stuart, John and Hannah have gone out of their way to make sure we get backstage and speak to the musicians; William Ellis and Mike Jackson, outstanding photographers have been wonderful by allowing us to put their photos on this site and some of the bands have provided us with their music.

We hope we are providing you with a sense of what the festival is like and that you get a sense that music is not all about protecting what you've got and just about making money. It is about shared experiences, collaborations based on trust and mutual understanding, about a love of music, about Music As Culture. 
Other posts about Andrew Dubber   Hannah Lutkin   Jez Collins   John Rawling   Marian Gordon   Mike Gordon   Mike Jackson   Music As Culture   Simon Barber   Stagedoor   Stewart Ward   Tim Wall   William Ellis  

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Explore the festival
About 'Just Like Jazz'

'Just Like Jazz' is a collaborative project between Interactive Cultures, a research unit at Birmingham City University, and the Scarborough Jazz Festival. We're media academics who happen to be jazz fans and we're working with the Scarborough Jazz Festival to explore the ways in which jazz festivals can be portrayed online.

Rather than creating a brochure website around the festival, or simply filming the festival and putting that online, our goal is to capture the spirit of the festival using a range of techniques such as photography, text and handheld, personal digital video. We have given small, cheap, portable video cameras to select audience members, musicians, backstage staff and the festival organisers and asked them to capture whatever they think is interesting: the buzz of the audience, the surrounding environment, snippets of the music performed, and any discussions that take place around jazz.

The Just Like Jazz team
Left to right: Prof Tim Wall, Andrew Dubber, Dr Simon Barber, Jez Collins.

We're gathering together all of this video, photography and text from our contributors and publishing it live on this website as the festival happens. We're also tagging the content in order to experiment with the ways in which the characters and stories that are captured can be navigated by you, the visitor. This process gives audiences the opportunity to experience the festival in their own way and makes the event accessible to those who may wish to attend the festival in future years, or who may never have considered visiting a jazz festival at all.

Although we've worked on projects like this before, with Aftershock in Italy and with the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, we don't have a fixed idea of what we're going to end up with. We're working with a loose structure and quite a lot of improvisation - in a way, it's just like jazz.

Do come and say hello if you see us around. We hope you enjoy exploring the festival online with us,

Tim, Andrew, Simon and Jez.
http://interactivecultures.org

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