Nearly two years ago, trumpeter Nicholas Payton’s blog post “On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore” stirred mass controversy for suggesting the word “jazz” bore racial undertones unbecoming of black American music. In a subsequent post in response to his critics, he, drawing from his dialectical investigation, coined the phrase and kicked off the BAM (Black American Music)! movement. “It was not jazz at its inception. The musicians didn’t call it that,” he puts it plainly in this week’s episode of OffBeat’s Look-Ka Py Py Podcast. “I think it does a disservice to the art and the artist and the audience.”
In harmony with this sentiment, the impetus for BAM! also stems from Payton’s annoyance of the in-fighting among jazz’s purveyors and pundits as to what “jazz” is or isn’t. “I am a musician, I play music, and I express that in a multitude of ways,” he says. Likewise, Payton views his blog as an extension of his art, contending, “I think…