news story / By Joseph Byrd

Regarding Local Festivals

Can we do better than the Redwood Coast Jazz Festival?

(April 2, 2009)  A front page article last week and a Sunday editorial in the Times-Standard bemoaning the fiscal travails of the Redwood Coast Jazz Festival got me thinking.

Over Spring Break, we took a short vacation to attend the Oregon Cheese Festival in southern Oregon. Jackson County, at this time of year, has a microclimate similar to Humboldt County. That’s something we look for. We moved to the North Coast because it has the sweetest air and the most temperate climate in the nation. Rain we don’t mind, the occasional cold spell we can take, and our power goes off less often than Los Angeles. In the early spring we vacation in Jackson County or Sonoma County — places that will become, for us, unbearably hot in the summer. Usually we don’t travel out of town in summer (what? and miss the Farmers’ Market?) or winter (what? and miss the rain?).

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That means, of course, that we miss the Ashland theater season. But that’s not why we go. We go for the excitement of discovering unique foods and experiences in unique places. We like the contrasts between the here and the there. Then there are the “local festivals.”

Located on I-5, Jackson County is generally more developed than Humboldt County, and its tourist industry is more, well, industrious, with festivals featuring local activities (folk art, wine, cheese, art, ballooning), all in addition to the venerable nine-month Shakespeare Festival, which includes not just classics, but an eclectic theatrical repertoire, even commissioned premieres.

But most rural music festivals are usually the sign of an establishment too lazy to put together something that celebrates the special virtues of a community. The Redwood Coast Jazz festival and Blues by the Bay are egregious examples.

Pray tell, what is the point of hosting an event in which almost every participant is from out of the area? Aside from the bluegrass gospel outfit Huckleberry Flint, a silent movie pickup combo and a half-dozen bands from local schools, every act that played over the weekend was an import. Jazz and blues as presented in Humboldt County festivals are not about what our community has to offer — it’s certainly not about state-of-the-art jazz, since virtually no modern jazz is played, but mostly traditional, or what used to be called “Dixieland.”

While there are a couple of genuine restorationist bands like Blue Streetand Uptown Lowdown, the imported bands are mostly amateur or part-time, second-tier or over-the-hill performers who make a little money on the circuit. And a circuit it is, including some 60 towns in California alone, from Antioch to Vacaville. Why? Well, outside of tourism, they raise money for local charities. In the case of Redwood Coast Music Festivals, about $22,000 a year after expenses (figures from their own Web site). For a full-time charitable enterprise, that’s pitiful.

The “jazz” festival also claims to be “introducing the youth of our community to the diversity of music,” but a look at the performers says otherwise.

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