This city has always produced fine jazz musicians, but the scene has had its ups and downs. In the 1990s, D.C.’s jazz landscape was very different. This was a time before the resurgence of U Street and Adams Morgan as centers for live music, and it also seemed as though there was a dearth of young talent in the city. While top notch national acts always came to the Kennedy Center and Blues Alley, the local scene was suffering. Since then, several venues featuring live jazz have opened and UDC, Howard, and the University of Maryland, as well as some fine high school programs, have made great strides in developing young talent. D.C. jazz will never equal that of New York, and for that matter no city will, but D.C. has all the elements in place to have as vital a jazz community as any other city in the country.
One area in which the D.C. jazz community is still lacking is its web presence. Unlike local rock acts and clubs, the city’s jazzers are far behind in utilizing the Internet for promotional purposes. Web sites such as DC Jazz do a commendable job in trying to create a web based jazz community, but many of the “Artist Suites” on the site are outdated. Given the emergence of MySpace and the relative ease with which today’s artists can record their work, it is practically mandatory that musicians establish some sort of web site that showcases their work. Unfortunately, it seems to be happening at too slow a pace within the jazz community. Even more discouraging is that many venues, such as Cafe Nema and Columbia Station, which feature some excellent musicians, do not have web sites that list basic calendar information.
DCist has not been covering jazz for very long, but it is our hope that the jazz content on this site will eventually be on par with its other content. As a matter of practicality, we are much less likely to list an artist who has no web site to which we can link. It is our goal to expand our coverage to include more of the local jazz scene, but D.C.’s jazz community needs to do its part in order to take advantage of new media outlets.
Photo by LaTur
