One of the things I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?" This oft quoted cool quip, attributed to jazz composer, cornetist and pianist Leon Bismark (Bix) Beiderbecke (1903-1931), is of the sort generally used to cut a long story short. It comes in handy when you need to deliver 500 words fast to publicise one of the countless jazz festivals in tourist resorts anywhere in the world from Woodyard Bottom (Catahoula, LA) to Timbuktu.
Says a lot but says nothing. Saves time. Tells a jazz audience what it already knows, that improvisation by an accomplished musician can be exhilarating. Also, preventively, like health hazard labels on tobacco products, it warns spectators to expect uneven quality. Some performances may be unforgettable, others best forgotten. Also, quoting Bix suggests you're hip.
I mean, you must be cool to quote the guy who generated or co-generated stuff like "Davenport Blues", "In a Mist (Bixology)", "For No Reason at All in C", "Candlelights", "Flashes", "In the Dark". And Bix, who recorded benchmark renditions of "Riverboat Shuffle", "Clarinet Marmalade", "Missisippi Mud" and "Deep down south", was cool. Indeed, together with Frankie Trumbauer, he was the precursor of "cool jazz".
Moreover Bix's decline coincided with the first 22 months of the Great Depression and ended when he died, young, alone, unable to find work in the New York City area and broken by low quality prohibition era alcohol. Quoting Bix today, as the world experiences a momentous recession whose final outcome only fools dare predict, elicits pathos from the better read.
The chairman of the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, Adrian Mamo, quotes the Bix quip on the Malta Jazz Festival 2009 Blog (see http://maltajazzfestival.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/adrian-mamo-on-the-malta-jazz-festival/ ). You will recall that on the Monday before last, I invited the gentleman - qua chairman of MCCA - to reassure us that the Council he presides has not acted in a manner that contradicts a fundamental guideline set by the Act of Parliament that created it, namely, that it should "promote [...] freedom of artistic expression".
If you wish to refresh your memory regarding why I am making such a fuss over what I regard as the MCCA's behaviour and attitude unacceptable in a European country today, see http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090803/opinion/for-nations-vague-as-weed and www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090720/opinion/unbecoming-europe.
The MCCA's chairman choice not to respond to my invitation - I am not aware that he responded in this newspaper or, for all I know, anywhere else - adds insult to injury to those who feel that Malta deserves better, much better. It only goes to show how far some of us have to go to become the cool Europeans they think they are. I am afraid that down here, in Europe's deep South, culture is definitely uncool. Quoting Bix is just not enough.
To take liberties with Beiderbecke's famous words: "One of the things I don't like about our culture, kid, is that I know what's going to happen next. Do you?" Of course you do. Nothing. The MCCA should be there to promote freedom of artistic expression, an important element of freedom generally, and yet it does exactly the opposite. It's decision in the Raphael Vella case promotes a culture within which freedom of expression is not a priority. It promotes a culture wherein kowtowing to the powers that be is acceptable and unobjectionable.
Before you conclude that the problem is, after all, limited to the nine members of the said Council (including the chairman) - a very small minority of the population of Malta and Gozo, you will say, and perhaps not a representative sample - please contemplate the hypothesis the tendency to kowtow to political power is not limited to a small minority. Let me be absolutely clear, had the MCCA acted the way it did under a different government - say one led by Dr Joseph Muscat - I would still be writing what I am writing now. Kowtowing to power is unbecoming in contemporary Europe, irrespective of which party is in government.
Journalists have a special responsibility in this regard. They should lead the effort to emancipate our culture from its tendency to promote servility towards power. Nationalist Party leaning journalists and their Labour Party as well as Green leaning colleagues ought to enter into a solemn agreement whereby whichever party or parties is/are in power, journalists leaning towards the party in government will refuse to knowingly mangle or fabricate "facts" to favour "their" government. Such a pact for truth would deal a fatal blow to the fine Maltese art of kowtowing. It would certainly have prevented some of the obscenities we have witnessed in the past few weeks... no, nothing to do with the MCCA this time.
Dr Vella blogs at http://watersbroken.wordpress.com