We didn't learn a lot from the report by Kansas City's Human Relations Division on the tiff between DJ Jazzy Jeff and the folks running the Power & Light District.
Civil Rights Manager Mickey Dean couldn't decipher who was telling the truth -- Jazzy Jeff, who claimed he was booted for playing hip hop and rap, or P&L's management, who claimed Jazzy Jeff was about to blow the P&L's sound system during his June 6 concert.
Wait, we have a civil rights manager? Yep, Dean has
been on the job since 1991, and he has the power to investigate issues
just like this one.
Dean tells The Pitch that he really wanted to talk with Jazzy Jeff's stage manager, a man named Darnell (whose last name Dean didn't know), but no one in Jazzy Jeff's crew would talk.
"This stage manager is the one who told Jeff that the Power & Light
officials said, 'We don't want you to play rap,'" Dean says. "And from
what we were able to determine, this stage manager ... was the only one who
was really in direct contact with the Power & Light people.
"Assuming that he [Darnell] said what everybody said he said, it still doesn't tell us anything about who was telling the truth," Dean says. "A lot of times in investigations we want some independent confirmation of one side or the other, and we just didn't have that in this case."
Dean did interview folks with P&L, who shared receipts showing a little less than $3,000 in damage to the sound system. His report mentions a lot of sound equipment techno talk of "limiters" and "drivers," but the claim is that district staff couldn't override Jazzy Jeff while the system was "redlining."
Dean says his office was just trying to figure out who was really telling the truth.
"When
someone files a complaint, obviously, we have to come to some
conclusion. Either we find discrimination or we conclude that the
evidence was not sufficient," Dean says. "In this case, nobody really
filed a complaint. In fact, there was some question whether this was a
censorship issue or whether it was a race issue, but since it involved
the Power & Light District, since we know the problems that we've
had there, we thought we would look into it to see if we could
determine what really happened there and report back, especially to
some of the council people who have been concerned about this issue."
Prime Buzz posted the full report, which you'll have to download to read.
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