Unpacking Big Ears: Tennessee

 

The Big Ears Festival is held every year (covid allowing) in the City of Knoxville, Tennessee. The recent expulsion of two Black legislators from the Republican-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives reminds us of both the racism still present in that state, the birthplace of the KKK, as well as the growing embrace of fascism and partisanship by the Republican party. 

Knoxville, though, is a college town (University of Tennessee). It's the site of the 1982 World's Fair. It's not Nashville - it doesn't self-identify itself with country music and the Grand Ol' Opry. And Big Ears is an international festival celebrating, among other genres, jazz - the home-grown invention of African American musicians. 

Yet I still had an uneasy, squeamish feeling throughout this year's festival. The performers were all so white! The first act I saw on the opening Thursday night, Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, consisted of two white performers, and then I saw the (white) electronic music pioneer Phill Niblock and later the (white) prog-rock band Rich Ruth.  

The festival closed with an all-star performance of John Zorn's game piece COBRA.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to put together a 14-person, all-star jazz band without a single musician of color? Somehow, Zorn accomplished just that. I'm not suggesting Zorn, who embraces his Jewish heritage with his klezmer-based band Masada, is racist, but his extended family of musicians and collaborators sure is awfully white.  To be fair, the ensemble he put together to close out Big Ears included three women (21% female) and one performer of Asian descent, but other than that it was exclusively white males.

This wouldn't have raised my eyebrows if this set were an anomaly. But Brian Marsella's Gatos do Sul included several Latinx musicians and a Filipino-American saxophonist, but no African Americans.  The other acts I saw that Friday (Mary Halvorson's Amarylis, Ava Mendoza, Pino Palladino & Blake Mills, and Lesley Flanagan) were often female-fronted and/or included Hispanic and Asian artists, but no Black musicians.  Only (white) guitarist Marc Ribot's trio, the Jazz Bins, included not one but two musicians of color.      

I don't want to name-drop the entire festival and, frankly, it feels kind of creepy to go through every band and try to pick out the ethnicity of each performer, but if I did, the results would not be that different for Saturday and Sunday than for Thursday and Friday. 

Now, the fault here lies as much with me as with Big Ears, or with Knoxville or the State of Tennessee for that matter. I picked out the acts I wanted to see from a mind-boggling menu of options and choices, and I overlooked many all-Black or Black-led bands with more inclusive lineups.  I didn't consciously do this (and suddenly I feel a need to defend my choices). I concentrated my selections on the extensive slate of performances by John Zorn and his collaborators, who incidentally tend to skew white, on the English post-rock band caroline, and on legendary icons of the electronic-music avant-grade like Niblock and Morton Subotnick.  But through four days of listening and I-don't know-how-many sets, I saw so few African-American musicians that if I counted them on my fingers, I'd have enough left over to give a double bird to the Tennessee legislature. 

The representatives expelled from the Tennessee House will likely be re-elected and returned to Nashville, although it is presently unclear whether the bigoted legislature will swear them back into office. I can easily imagine all kinds of condescending "I think they've learned their lesson" press statements if they are allowed back.  

But Tennessee should be sanctioned somehow and punished for their misdeeds.  If I were producing a film to be shot in Tennessee, I'd give serious consideration to another site.  If I were organizing a professional conference, I'd likely choose some other state. I know this will never happen, but if the legislators aren't readmitted, the state should be hit where it would really hurt and Tennessee should be expelled from the SEC. Vanderbilt, too. 

Should Big Ears move out of state?  I don't think that would necessarily hurt the feelings of the good-old-boys over in Nashville, but it would negatively impact the economy of Knoxville, including its minorities and citizens of color. And it would reduce the number of otherwise close-minded locals who might attend a performance or two and have their eyes opened a bit. 

And where would it move to?  Show me on the map where there's no racism, partisanship, or political shenanigans. It's probably so far away that I wouldn't be able to afford to travel there.