jazztopia

About the Jazztopian Society

2015-05-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful world of passion, swing and joie de vivre, full of jazz and pink cocktails for a blue lady - let's get lost and the devil may care… lush life and funny valentines, pork pie hats and tailgates, sophisticated wit and the gutbucket, ghost notes and the jungle style, playin' dirty water from a swordfishtrombone -
Such sweet thunder and the ornithology of gossamer wings, and there is a howlin´ wolf at the stairway to the stars, trading fours and flatted fifths in Nica's dream, and I take 5 and the A train to be somewhere over the Rainbow room - I cover the waterfront to watch a slow boat to Cantaloupe Island, and suddenly I hear a yard bird sing in Berkeley Square which knows all about the Blues and the abstract truth, and strange fruit and fables of Faubus are just tales from a long forgotten time...

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

www.myspace.com/jazztopia

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band

2014-08-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

Jazz at the Maze - October 2nd 2009

2009-04-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Our next enchanted Jazz Night is almost here. So what? Even if Jazz was mothered in America, these days J.A.ZeZe is a world citizen. He was a bit like all the other Gringos who come here, danced with the locals and fell in love. Baby Bossa was born, grew up, hitch-hiked round the USA where everyone opened doors and ears…. and now Americans get to hear more Brazilian music than we do here in the Cidade Maravilhosa. That’s why The MAZE is here once a month with its musical orgy. Anyone who wants to jump in bed with a voice, trumpet, sax, piano, whatever, this is where he will find the delicious meaning of Harmony.

Our Jazznight was recently in the newspapers: In Extra "O Jazz sobe o Morro - New Orleans Carioca" and in Rio Show.

So we are expecting a big crowd of you!

Wolf - Tenor Sax, Lennart - Hammond Organ and Vinicius - Percussion and Vocals

www.jazzrio.com

Jazztopia at Rio Artmosfera August 8th 2009

2009-02-14T06:36:00.000-08:00

The next performance of Jazztopia will be on Saturday during the event "Rio Artmosfera" in the Rio Art Hostel, Rua Silveira Martins 135, Catete, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with Wolf - tenor saxophone and Lennart - hammond organ.
Further informations:
http://rioartmosfera.blogspot.com/

Cotton Club 1936 - New York City

2008-05-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

Plumage from Pegasus

2008-05-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

Plumage from Pegasus
by Paul Di Filippo

And I Think To Myself, What A Wonderful World

"I believe The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction appeals to me because in it one finds refuge and release from everyday life. We are all little children at heart and find comfort in a dream world, and these episodes in the magazine encourage our building castles in space."

Louis Armstrong, rear-cover endorsement, F&SF, circa 1964

From backstage at the Newport Jazztopian Festival of 1965, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Jazztopian Fiction, heard the ecstatic roar of the crowd and smiled. The band now departing the stage--The Amazing Herd, under the charismatic leadership of editor Woody Herman--was going to be a hard act to follow. That little cat on drums, Ray Palmer, was a pint-sized dynamo. But Satchmo continued to grin broadly, confidence flowing almost visibly from his bulky suited form. The lineup he was going to bring onstage was one of the strongest he had ever fronted, even going way back to the early glory days of the Hot Five. Armstrong was certain that his band would wow the crowd today, just as the magazine he headed wowed its readers monthly.

An arm fell around Satchmo's shoulder, and he turned to face the festival's organizer, George Wein.

"Any butterflies, Dippermouth?" joshed Wein, using Armstrong's oldest nickname.

"No, sir," growled Armstrong in his famous rumble. "We're fixin' to turn Newport Harbor into steam. Serve up some fine music and cooked lobster all at once."

Wein released Armstrong and his face grew serious. "Who'd have thought we'd ever find ourselves doing what we love again, huh, Louis? During all those bad years, the whole Noteless Decade, it seemed impossible that our music would ever flourish again."

"Don't forget the fiction, too, George. We can't neglect the other half of the Jazztopian program. Only solidarity got us through the hard times and brought us to where we are today."

"True, true. But you're more heavily into the written stuff than me. The music's always been my first concern."

"You got to keep the lesson of the camps in mind though, George. If we don't hang together, we hang separately."

Wein shook his head ruefully. "The camps. Nothing seems hard after them, does it?"

"No, sir, it sure don't."

And Armstrong cast his mind back some twenty-odd years to that convulsive time--so horrible while ongoing, yet a blessing in retrospect.

In early 1942, during the grimmest days of the Second World War, when the Allied cause looked doomed, the worst possible thing that could have happened to the USA--not excluding the previous year's massacre at Pearl Harbor--had occured: President Roosevelt was assassinated by a lone gunman. The assassin, who died almost immediately under return fire from the Secret Service, was quickly identified, his prints on file from a series of minor robbery and vagrancy arrests. One William Burroughs, dope fiend, petty thief, wastrel, and, incongruously, black-sheep scion of an industrial dynasty. On the assassin's body and in his tawdry apartment had been found extensive scribblings. Burrough's writings spoke of a vast conspiracy involving jazz men, hobos, pulp writers, and other mysterious lowlife figures, a conspiracy bent on subverting all authority from the highest levels on down. Some held that these manuscripts were plainly the hallucinatory work of a madman; others that they were a viable blueprint for an actual attempt by anarchists to overthrow the country.

The government of the United States, faced with attack from abroad, could not take a chance on subversion from within. Less than a week after Roosevelt's death, pursuant to special orders from President Truman, the nationwide roundup of all the suspicious types delineated in Burroughs's manuscripts had begun. By the thousands, musicians, writers, artists, and tramps were swiftly corralled and sent to the same detention camps that already held--much to the surprise of the uninformed newcomers--innocent, law-abiding Japanese-Americans.

Armstrong had been in the studio, cutting a record with Bing Crosby, when their arrest came down. He and Bing hadn't been allowed even to pack or call their families before being hustled onto a westbound train. (Apparently, Armstrong's trip to Europe in 1933 rendered him particularly suspect.) Armstrong hadn't felt this crummy since he was sent to the Colored Waif's School at age 12. Arriving at an Arizona camp exploding with construction by WPA crews in order to hold the new influx of prisoners, Satchmo resigned himself to a few weeks of being held hostage to the nation's fears. Surely this whole mess would soon be straightened out.

After the first six months of confinement, he realized his sanguine expectations might be due for revision. But even then no one quite believed that their internment could possibly last some ten years.

Life in the camp sorted itself out after an initial period into something quite different from what the authorities had intended. The prisoners were allowed by a manpower-short Federal government to manage their own affairs with minimal supervision, and soon the camp was humming with organized activities. By cooping up so many creative, talented people, the government had inadvertently created a hothouse environment where ideas and enthusiasms bred like bacteria. "The swing tanks" was what the camps eventually came to be called by their inmates, and by the few citizens on the outside of the fences who heard dribs and drabs of whispered leaked information.

Acquiring musical instruments through bribery or Red Cross charity, the musicians among the prisoners swiftly fell into both new and old groupings prone to jamming nearly all their waking hours. By similar licit or illicit means the writers incarcerated in the swing tanks glommed onto typewriters and mimeographs and continued their interrupted work, mainly in the speculative and noir genres. And painters likewise with their tools.

But neither the musicians nor the writers nor the painters any longer maintained suspicious barriers between their clans. Forced to mingle by proximity, they found stimulation, enlightenment, and inspiration in the media different from their own. Many laid down their pens and took up trumpets, and vice versa. And from the assorted tramps, bums, addicts, and hobos came an underclass perspective on national affairs that many of the middle-class artists might never have otherwise encountered.

Thus, in parallel with their secret Manhattan Project elsewhere, the Feds had accidentally built in the swing tanks a system for high-gear cultural cross- pollination.

As best as Satchmo now recalled, it was during the third year of their imprisonment that someone coined the term "jazztopia" for the ideal state toward which all of the prisoners were striving with their art. Maybe Duke Ellington had come up with the term, maybe Dave Brubeck. It could have fallen from the lips of Woody Guthrie or Cyril Kornbluth. Whoever the originator, the term spread like wildfire. Within weeks, there appeared "The Jazztopian Manifesto," penned by a team consisting of Henry Kuttner, Thelonius Monk, Mezz Mezzrow, Fred Pohl, and Billie Holiday. Signed by nearly every inmate of the swing tanks, the proclamation became the Jazztopian Declaration of Independence.

Outside the swing tanks, the global war had stalemated. Truman was not the strategist Roosevelt had been (although historians later attributed much of the military inertia to a national lassitude stemming from a dearth of entertainers other than a few goodie-goodie quislings such as Kate Smith, Bob Hope and L. Ron Hubbard). In the elections of 1948, the electorate replaced Truman with Eisenhower, popular ex-general invalided out of active service after the failure of D-Day. Eisenhower pressed the scientists of the Manhattan Project for a breakthrough (one of the key figures of the Project, Richard Feynman, had been sent to the swing tanks for his bongo-playing, leaving the Project fumbling), and success finally came in 1951, bringing a decisive end to the war. But at his moment of triumph, Eisenhower was swept up in scandal, caught having an affair with his secretary, Kay Tarrant. Outraged, the voters in 1952 carried Adlai Stevenson into the Oval Office. Liberal Stevenson immediately used his mandate and the new peacetime conditions to dissolve the swing tanks.

Out into the general populace burst the Jazztopians, burning to bring their optimistic, speculative visions in words and music to the rest of the nation. They infected the country like a virus never before encountered by the body politic's immune system.

The 1950s, "The Swinging Fifties," were the biggest rennaisance in the nation's history. The domestic economy soared, global reconstruction got underway, and the soundtrack was Jazztopian music. Jazztopian speculative literature, marching forward arm-in-arm with the music, blossomed. Scores of magazines were born or reborn, the masthead of each boasting a musician as the nominal (sometimes actual) editor. There was Astounding with Guy Lombardo; Unknown with Charlie Parker; Galaxy with Sun Ra; Planet Stories with Benny Goodman; Infinity with Glenn Miller; and of course, The Magazine of Fantasy and Jazztopian Fiction, helmed by Louis Armstrong.

Open-air festivals became the favored tribal gatherings of the Jazztopians and their enormous flock of fans, replacing stuffy literary gatherings and smoky non-literate night-clubs. And the Newport gathering was perhaps the most prestigious.

Satchmo's reverie ended as his bandmates surged past him, heading for the stage. Each one, youngster and old friend, gave him a high five as they bustled by him. Armstrong let them take their positions. He made sure he had his big white handkerchief ready. When he heard the band start to vamp to "Jeepers Creepers," he strolled onstage.

The crowd went wild. Satchmo held his hands up for quiet, surveying the spectators, noting the various booths set up to sell Jazztopian literature and art. When the fans finally settled down, Armstrong picked up his trumpet.

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I suspect that the President and Jackie can hear you all the way 'cross the bay at Hammersmith Farm!"

The crowd roared again at the mention of the ever-popular second-term President. When they quieted once more, Satchmo said, "Let me introduce the F&JF band first. On drums, Mister Eddie Ferman! On bass, Mister Chip Delany! On sax, Mister Roger Zelazny! On vibes, Mister Gary Burton! On keyboards, Mister Chick Corea! On clarinet, Mister Barry Malzberg! And for our first tune, we're gonna hear an old favorite—

"'Hello, Hugo!”

Satchmo put embouchure to lips and began to play.

For a sixty-five year old editor, he could still blow one mean horn!

Hot Club de France

2008-05-03T08:32:00.000-07:00

Jazz Quotes

2008-05-02T08:22:00.003-07:00

What we play is life.
Louis Armstrong

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my
right.
Duke Ellington

I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
William Shakespeare

I didn't realize our songs were so good until Ella sang them.
Ira Gershwin

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old
folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something
said long ago.
Louis Armstrong

There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what’s shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.
Thelonious Monk

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.
Jelly Roll Morton

I think that anybody from the 20th century, up to now, has to be aware that
if it wasn't for Louis Armstrong, we'd all be wearing powdered wigs. I think
that Louis Armstrong loosened the world, helped people to be able to say
"Yeah," and to walk with a little dip in their hip. Before Louis Armstrong,
the world was definitely square, just like Christopher Columbus thought.
Hugh Masekela

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give
the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.
Stan Getz

The only things that the United States has given to the world are
skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America,
they make much better cocktails.
Federico Garcia Lorca

Personally I find jazz most interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies are handled, the melodies themselves. I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing.
The most captivating part of jazz is its rich and diverting rhythm. ...Jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for modern composers and I am astonished that so few Americans are influenced by it.
Maurice Ravel

I have a letter from a violinist who worked in my first band, a string quartet based jazz band. And he wrote me a letter saying that he had gone through all the conservatories he could think of. And he thought he knew somethin' about music by the time he joined my band.
He said he learned more in the first rehearsal than in all the years he'd been playing violin. Because I was talking about music, not about notes -- not about how you play them -- but where they fit in with the rest of the band. You're playing with other people.
Artie Shaw on Classical vs. Jazz music

Thou shalt not bore.

Billy Wilder

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. They are taste,
courage, individuality, and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to
retain in my music.
Stan Getz

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.
Lou Reed

It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that
intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. (When asked
about the theory of relativity)
Albert Einstein

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible, is
music.
Aldous Huxley

Anyone can learn what Louis Armstrong knows about music in a few weeks.
Nobody could learn to play like him in a thousand years.
Benny Green

Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a
picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and
senses in the universe.
John Coltrane

When I first heard jazz, the music had all the harmonic complexity, richness and level of musicianship that classical music had but it also had a few elements that classical music did not have, for instance improvisation, and most importantly, it sounded bad, like it was on the dark side! As a sixteen year old, that was entirely compelling. It had all the right ingredients! Hearing singers such as Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day and Betty Carter, I was shocked by how personal and intimate their statements were. They seemed so completely in control of their art form. I dove into the music.

Holly Cole

...it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem.
It's not. It's feeling.
Bill Evans

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it.
That's all I know.
Billie Holiday

One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to
happen next. Do you?
Bix Beiderbecke

Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying 'yes'.
Eddie Condon on Bix Beiderbecke

This is positively not an album to play while you do a doctorate thesis on
"Bergson, Webern and Charles the Vicious, Paradox or Ambiguity?"
Bob Brookmeyer

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.
Francoise Sagan

Jazz is the music of the body.
Anais Nin

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away
by it. If you're swept away by it you can't wait to do it again and the same
magical moments always come.
Bobby Hutcherson

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live
it, it won't come out of your horn.
Charlie Parker

Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.
Dizzy Gillespie

It's like an act of murder - you play with intent to commit something.
Duke Ellington

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There's also a negative side.
Hunter S. Thompson

It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music,
and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the
possibilities that lie within the human spirit - enable them to see visions
and dream dreams.
Eric Anderson

If I'd known I was going to live to be a hundred I'd have taken much better
care of myself.
Eubie Blake

Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.
Henri Matisse

Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion.
Jimi Hendrix

If you're going to make a mistake, make it loud so everybody else sounds
wrong.
Joe Venuti

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the
right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.
Johann Sebastian Bach

Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be
described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in
music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo Tolstoy

Jazz is not dead - it just smells funny.
Frank Zappa

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.
Ludwig van Beethoven

There is no virtuosity or volume for its own sake, no selfindulgence; just a superlative artist who still believes in the power of beauty instead of finding beauty in power.
Leonard Feather on Stan Getz

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.
Miles Davis

Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.
Steve Lacy

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.
Madeleine Peyroux

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry
martini.
Paul Desmond

Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness and life to everything.
Plato

If music be the food of love, play on -
William Shakespeare

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington - Jam Session

2008-03-16T05:05:00.000-07:00