What We Lost at WCSB

89.3 FM, after 50 years of being a home for the true creatives both locally and world-wide, now plays “Neo-Jazz”. You will hear all the classic jazz, Coltrane, Mingus, Dizzy, big bands, Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Miles… They will only play the A-sides and non-controversial stuff. I call it “safe” jazz. The measure is if it can be played in every corporate lobby and doctor’s office in America without raising an eyebrow. Ideastream’s Neo-Jazz checks that box. It does not change 24 hours a day.

Miles Davis did not like his later music to be called jazz. He said he made “social” music. I used to think he meant party music or music that brought people together. I don’t think that anymore. I think he was talking about music in tune with what was going on in the social structure. It was music to reflect the current state of things and to actively critique, explore, and change society. It wasn’t meant to be passive or safe. It was meant to shake things up. When he changed music forever with Bitch’s Brew and again with On the Corner, it was immediately declared not be jazz by the cultural elite. It caused problems. It challenged everyone’s idea of how music should be. It described and reflected the simmering energies in the black community at the time and helped to shape black identity in the 60s and 70s.

The music that makes up today’s “safe” jazz was anything but at the time it was being played. There was little money in it. It depended on DIY clubs and record labels to survive. The establishment labels considered it too vulgar. White dominated society was appalled that it was leading to race mixing. Miles was beaten by cops outside a club he was playing for walking a white woman to her car. Cleveland’s pioneering jazz club, The Jazz Temple, was eventually burned down by racists for its inter-racial clientele. What we now know as jazz had to survive an onslaught of opposition to create an eco-system where it could be played, distributed, and grow. Jazz players and fans were a fringe element not at all accepted by society at large.

Before the coup, WCSB was a home and a catalyst for the fringe elements of Cleveland: the artists, musicians, poets, performers, and thinkers. It was a space to challenge and educate the listener. It encompassed a multitude of musical styles and forms from all over the world. It gave voice to opinion and philosophy of every stripe. It was an indispensable fount of information about the local arts and music scenes. It was a rare place where local music without financial backing could get played just because it deserved to. It catered to ethnic communities that are not represented elsewhere on the dial. It was manned by volunteers who were passionate and informed about whichever niche their shows catered to. It was a thriving cultural eco-system built by donations and support over 50 years by the un-monied fringe of this city. It won national awards every year for being one of the very best college stations in America.

As with all things that the creative community builds and nourishes, money will come along and destroy the very qualities that make it what it is. Just look at present day Tremont. The wealthy look down on the creative class unless they can exploit it. The history of artistic communities is a history of cultural colonialism. The wealthy see something not bland, not boring, and they must obtain it and change it to fit their world. “Yes, we love what you’re doing but can it not be so rough, so angry, so rude, so challenging?” They only see the surface and not the organism that makes it happen.

The Ideastream coup at WCSB is a blatant example of cultural colonialism. A million-dollar donation, secret meetings, police escorting the programmers out of the station, Laura Bloomberg getting a seat on the Ideastream board, it all stinks. Listening to the unbelievably arrogant comments from Ideastream and Bloomberg, it’s obvious that they don’t even perceive that there was an important Cleveland and world cultural eco-system that they destroyed.

On WCSB now you will hear the jazz classics and new artists that fit that specific mold. You will not hear Albert Ayler, Ben Lamar Gay, John Zorn, Mark Ribot, Jamie Branch, John Lurie, Angel Bat Dawid. You will not hear Gnawa music from Morrocco, Tuareg music from Nigeria, Afro-pop, Free Jazz, Noise Music, Experimental Music, every conceivable variation of rock/punk/pop music. All these things are reflected in Cleveland culture. I got to see Mdou Moctar, Seun Cootie, Baba Commandant and many others at the Beachland because WCSB educated so many people to this music that an audience was developed. Free jazz is growing in Cleveland thanks to organizations like New Ghosts and Cusp who rely on college radio for promotion and education. Every local band used WCSB to promote shows and to have their music played. WCSB was vital to keeping Cleveland musically relevant.

But for those to whom music is a commodity to be used as background for cocktail parties we are not seen. It’s like the French and British in Africa, the Settlers and the Native Americans, nothing here but the fringe. Irrelevant savages.

Miles Davis and his peers would be appalled at the idea that their music is being used for cultural colonialism.

Exterminate the brutes, indeed.