The students in charge of this weekend’s JazzReggae Festival may be interested in making the event more environmentally friendly, but don’t expect anything about the music to be recycled.
Responding to the needs of fans and the general state of jazz music, the festival’s organizers have decided to shift the event’s focus in a new direction. While the title JazzReggae enjoys too much name recognition to be changed, the festival’s content certainly will be. The event will also retain its two-day structure, traditionally featuring jazz on Sunday and reggae on Monday. But this year, what was “Jazz Day” has become “Jam Day.”
“We got together at the beginning of the year and had several meetings to discuss what vision of the festival we wanted to present. We’re the only outdoor music festival of this size within L.A. County. Events like this are disappearing, so we felt that we had a calling to attract a very large crowd,” said Todd Hawkins, the 2006-2007 Cultural Affairs Commissioner.
Doing just that required a change in the kinds of artists featured in the festival. Meeting with consultants such as professors and industry agents, Hawkins and the other members of the planning team decided that the jazz scene was a bit incongruous with the festival’s 15,000-attendee outdoor setting.
“We found that jazz enthusiasts will go to great lengths to support artists, but that in general they need a seat and a comfortable environment in order to go, and we just can’t provide that. Also, other people less interested in jazz didn’t even know about the first day, and thought this was just a reggae festival,” Hawkins said.
So Jam Day was born. But the nebulous mass of musical ideas needed some direction to take shape. Suggestions spanning all genres circulated, and eventually the committee took some structural inspiration from another large musical event.
“We decided to make this more of a music festival that wasn’t limited by any genre, as we have been. We wanted to touch different tastes, and sort of mirrored the structure against Coachella,” Hawkins said.
Yet for all this the organizers had more to consider ““ namely, the roots of the festival. Beginning 21 years ago as a tiny outdoor show, the event solely featured jazz and was an outlet for students of the then-nascent jazz studies program. As the festival has evolved over the years to reach its current (and unforeseen) size, it has retained this commitment to jazz as a core element. So the question remained: How could the festival’s appeal be increased and modernized while still staying true to its jazz roots?
The answer was to ask not only what jazz is, but also what jazz has accomplished.
“All the artists we’ve selected are from different places, but they are all linked to jazz. We did research to see who embodied jazz influences, and wanted to show how jazz is still relevant and how it has influenced the development of so much other music, like hip-hop,” Hawkins said.
In some ways, the idea of paying homage to jazz by booking artists under its influence took shape even as the roster formed. New York-based jazz-funk trio Soulive provided some inspiration as to what direction the lineup might take.
“Soulive embodies the kind of artists we were looking for. They don’t get pigeonholed into any style but are clearly influenced by jazz,” Hawkins said.
According to fellow organizer Justin Mikita, a fourth-year theater and Spanish student, this sort of inspiration led to the booking of one of the biggest artists in the festival’s history.
“Jill Scott is a great R&B artist who is jazzy, but not classified as jazz, and (she) was really the pinnacle for us. We were sold on her style, and when she became a reality, we just tried to make the show cohesive,” Mikita said.
But we haven’t heard the last of jazz in the JazzReggae festival either. The genre will make an appearance through an outreach project called JazzReggae for Youth that will be held in Ackerman Grand Ballroom on Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. The event is intended to give youth from the Los Angeles community exposure to jazz and increase their interest in the genre. Students from the jazz studies program will be performing and conducting workshops.
“We want to do a little bit to see that jazz is passed on to the future,” Hawkins said.
While the festival grows musically and adapts to the times, organizer Sarah Holmgren, a fourth-year geography and global studies student, decided the festival should logistically adapt to the times as well. In an era where global warming makes the front page and an oil-based economy makes many wary, Holmgren believed the festival should take an environmentally friendly turn.
“I proposed the idea that we should make the festival more sustainable. It’s about having a good time and sharing music, and I figured it made sense to avoid hurting Mother Earth at the same time,” Holmgren said.
Among the changes put into place are the use of recycled paper for promotional materials, the use of alternative fuels to transport artists, the introduction of recycling, and the donation of proceeds to Million Trees L.A., an organization that plants trees around Los Angeles to counterbalance carbon dioxide emissions.
But transforming the festival into something completely environmentally friendly will take more than a year.
“We emphasize that this is a process ““ it’s tough to have a no-waste, zero emissions event in such a short time. So many partnerships are already in place that it takes a lot of change and analysis to get to that level,” Holmgren said.
Some anticipated changes in future years include the use of completely biodegradable eating utensils at food stands.
And to make sure future generations stay interested, the festival will provide some information about this process to attendees.
“We will have a sustainability education area at the festival. We want to spread the message to the wide community of people who attend,” Holmgren said.
CORRECTION: Todd Hawkins should have been identified as the former cultural affairs commissioner, having served the 2006-2007 term.