When it came to celebrating Charlie Parker's birthday on Saturday, August 29, Kansas Citians had two main options: the First Annual Kansas City Yardbird Jazz & Film Festival at the American Jazz Museum and, just around the corner, the Bird Lives Festival at the Mutual Musicians Foundation.
Many people might have thought the two events were part of the same festival. But the sad truth is that the Kansas City jazz scene can't even put on a unified celebration of its most influential native son's birthday.
The Foundation's independent, shoestring-budgeted Bird Lives Festival began at noon with a group photo starring 250-plus area jazz and blues musicians. Stalwarts like Ida McBeth, Myra Taylor, David Basse, Everette DeVan and scores of others young and old, dressed up and dressed down, lined up in rows in front of the pink building that has housed the Musicians Local 627 since time immemorial. Smoking cigarettes and joking like old pals, they smiled for the camera. Many were reenacting a scenario they had participated in 10 years earlier.
The man behind Bird Lives and the photo shoot, Dawayne Gilley, had arranged a similar group shot on September 18, 1999. He'd been inspired both by Art Kane's famous Harlem 1958 photograph of jazz greats (immortalized in the '95 documentary A Great Day In Harlem) and by a 1930 photograph of Kansas City jazzers that hangs inside the Foundation.
This year, with help from Foundation director Betty Crow, Gilley - who also manages Taylor and organizes the Kansas City Kansas Street Blues Festival - programmed a two-day cycle of free events celebrating Bird.
They blocked off Highland Avenue, set up stands for vendors to sell barbecue and beer, hung commemorative banners on lamposts and booked bands to play inside and outside the Foundation for the better part of 24 hours.
During the day, on a stage in the middle of the street, the likes of Luqman Hamza, DeVan, newcomer Hermon Mehari and Lonnie McFadden got down for a crowd of 200 or so. Around 8 p.m., the jamming moved inside and continued until the wee small hours, peaking at midnight when Bobby Watson played Parker for KCUR 89.3 FM's 12 O'Clock Jump live radio broadcast.
The party at the Foundation continued on Sunday with a fried chicken dinner at 2:30 p.m. (after a saxophone salute at Parker's grave in Lincoln Cemetery) and more live music.
In short, Gilley, Crow and the fine folks at the Foundation put on a small but splendid tribute.
Meanwhile, it seemed like just another day at the American Jazz Museum.
For starters, I didn't even know the Jazz Museum was doing anything special in celebration of Parker until around 1 p.m., when a kid handed me a glossy flier as I stood watching the proceedings on Highland Avenue. The fancy postcard for the Yardbird Jazz & Film Festival, which was being put on by the Reel Images Film and Video Group in partnership with the museum. (By contrast, I first heard about the plans for Bird Lives when a musician named Toni Oliver called me on August 11.)
So I walked the half block down to the museum. Outside, a sound-system-equipped van sent by one of the festival sponsors, KMJK Magic 107.3 FM, was blaring commercials interspersed with modern R&B. Inside the atrium, people sat in chairs listening to Watson and Ahmad Alaadeen participate in a talk billed as part of the museum's Stories from the Vine series and titled "Kansas City Loves Saxophones." Though mic'd, the two indisputably great local artists were hard to hear amid the atrium's ambient noise. In a blackbox theater off to one side, jazz documentaries cycled on screen throughout the afternoon.
Past the museum's back doors, under the elegant, sweeping canvas ceiling of the Jay McShann Pavilion, groups including the All City Gold Star Youth Jazz Band played for about two dozen people. Except for the bottled soft drinks in the museum gift shop, there were no refreshments for sale on the premises.
Later, at the Blue Room, the district's crown jewel, the smooth-jazz grooves of the Grandview-based James Ward Band could be accessed for a $10 cover. The gig was not advertised as part of the Yardbird Festival.
Further hinting at the rift between the Jazz Museum and the Foundation was a mayoral proclamation read at Parker's graveside on Sunday afternoon during an otherwise moving ceremony. Full of WHEREASes and signed by Mark Funkhouser (absent), the proclamation recognized Charlie Parker's contribution to local culture and promoted - you guessed it - the First Annual Yardbird Jazz & Film Festival. Though there was a biographical reference to the "Musicians' Protective," the proclamation made no mention of the Mutual Musicians Foundation as a living entity.
There were, however, lofty and official-sounding props given to Magic 107, the Mazuma Credit Union and the Full Employment Council.
Though the MMF put on just about everything you'd want and more in an underfunded local all-night jazz party, it pisses me off that the big Jazz Museum around the corner, with its salaried staff and government dollars and fancy pavilion out back, chose half-assed competition over solidarity.
After all, Parker did actually play at the Foundation.
[Note: blue text indicates a correction that was made or a piece of information was added after the initial posting.]
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Bird flu is a serious illness that affects birds. Especially chickens, that can be spread from birds to humans and that can cause death. Recently the breaking out of bird flu has taken us aback. We could never think of such kind of problem in our country. However thanks to the Almighty that it could not break out in an epidemic form because of the timely intervention of the government and people's consciousness about the matter. The cause of bird flu in our country could not be detected. It was thought that it might have been carried and spread by the imported chickens from our neighboring countries like Thailand and China. Because the breaking out of bird flu in an epidemic form has been seen in China and Thailand. Poultry farming has had a positive effect on the social economic condition in our country. It helped many rural poor women to break the chain of poverty and see better days to their lives. But the recent breaking out of bird flu has shadowed their smiling faces into gloomy ones and clouded their foreheads. It has emptied their fertile farms and turned the firms into barren hands. We have seen the hearts. However, it is heartening that our government has taken an all out efforts to give loans to the people engaged in poultry farming on easy terms to keep their income generating industry on and to bring about better days and see the gloomy faces glowing with beatific smile and keep their heads above all consuming poverty.
Bird flu is a serious illness that affects birds. Especially chickens, that can be spread from birds to humans and that can cause death. Recently the breaking out of bird flu has taken us aback. We could never think of such kind of problem in our country. However thanks to the Almighty that it could not break out in an epidemic form because of the timely intervention of the government and people's consciousness about the matter. The cause of bird flu in our country could not be detected. It was thought that it might have been carried and spread by the imported chickens from our neighboring countries like Thailand and China. Because the breaking out of bird flu in an epidemic form has been seen in China and Thailand. Poultry farming has had a positive effect on the social economic condition in our country. It helped many rural poor women to break the chain of poverty and see better days to their lives. But the recent breaking out of bird flu has shadowed their smiling faces into gloomy ones and clouded their foreheads. It has emptied their fertile farms and turned the firms into barren hands. We have seen the hearts. However, it is heartening that our government has taken an all out efforts to give loans to the people engaged in poultry farming on easy terms to keep their income generating industry on and to bring about better days and see the gloomy faces glowing with beatific smile and keep their heads above all consuming poverty.
Thanks for correcting me, Charles. I'll make sure that's more clearly delineated when this story runs in print.
One thing that isn't mentioned here is that the Yardbird Festival held at the Museum wasn't actually a Museum event at all; the event was put together by the Reel Images Film & Video Group.
The Museum was billed a "partner" probably because they allowed the outside group to use the space for free. The convo w/Bobby and Alaadeen is part of the Museum's "Stories from the Vine" program, but all other activities that day were definitely not Museum-sponsored or organized.
All that being said, it's still no surprise that the MMF gig was more true to the cause.
I learned a lot this weekend. The MMFers are pros at the bootstrapping/shoestringing, etc, but they shouldn't have to be. The place is a treasure and should be treated as such.
It is very sad that there is still a division. It seems the M.M.F. honored and celebrated Bird in the perfect way with lots of diversity, taking it to the streets, open to all, free, festive, and fun. It doesn't necessarily have to cost a ton of money to tribute our history, but being supported in all ways in essential. Too bad the M.M.F. had to function on the shoe string budget, but then again they have always functioned that way so they are pros at making the very best of it. Congratulations to the Mutual Musicians Foundation for a great celebration and tribute.
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