I got to thinking the other day about how much of the music I've been picking up recently has been coming from Europe. One of the major sources for my music is the Dime torrent site, where concert recordings of artists who do not object to these shows being traded are available for downloading.
Between terrestrial radio sources and European satellites, there are a ton of jazz & fusion concert recordiongs floating around out there. And while a fair amount of these concerts are by American artists (Herbie Hancock jumps to mind as an artist who has had a fair number of concerts broadcast in the past couple of years) there is also a pretty solid contingent of newer artists from Europe who are making some very interesting music. I've posted before about Eivind Aarset from Norway, and there is his cohort in the "nu jazz" scene Nils Petter Molvaer. There's the excellent Dutch sax player Tineke Postma, the eccentric Oddjob, Marc Ducret, Nguyên Lê, Wolfgang Muthspiel...I could go on for awhile here.
The sheer variety of music broadcasts from Europe are impressive, and based on what pops up on the torrent sites we just don't get much of this type of music broadcast here in the States. There are some exceptions of course - the Monterey and New Orleans Jazz Festivals have broadcast over the past few years (the 2006 Monterey set by Charles Lloyd remains a favorite of mine).
Unfortunately it seems that here in the US the media caters to the lowest common denominator - if they can't make a shitload of money off of something it's just forgotten. It's a pity and probably doesn't bode well for the future of jazz in America, which is ironic.
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