Radical Jazz and Mau-Mauing the Check Cashers

The transformation of U.S. metropolises into microcosmic failed states out of the Third World sometimes goes unnoticed because it does not all happen overnight; rather, it happens gradually, the change never acknowledged publicly for what it actually is, as a largely tedious trickle of overly polite TV, paper, and online news reportage obscures the realities of black crime, incompetence, and general dysfunction. A story out of Kansas City this week furnishes just one small example of a process of literal Africanization.

“The conversation over what to do about Kansas City’s ailing American Jazz Museum shifted into a more dramatic key […] when Councilman Jermaine Reed introduced an ordinance that would give the city – the Parks and Recreation Department, specifically – oversight of the museum and its assets,” Kansas City’s The Pitch reported on a proposal that was ultimately rejected:

Under Reed’s plan, the city would throw another $225,000 at the AJM to keep it afloat through next spring. And a task force would be convened to figure out a strategic plan for the AJM. “It is clear business as usual will not suffice,” Reed, who has already announced his candidacy for mayor in 2019, said yesterday a statement. […] When Reed says “business as usual,” he’s referring to the estimated $1 million in debt the AJM has accrued under the watch of Executive Director Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner, who was appointed to lead the organization in January 2016. Much has been written about this year’s Jazz and Heritage Festival, which stumbled out of the gate by rushing its announcement that Janelle Monae would headline the event. This came as news to Monae, who had not committed to appear and ultimately did not perform at the fest. A rainy weekend and a low marketing budget (just $35,000) compounded the problems. In the end, the festival lost $450,000. Bounced checks to performers and vendors ensued. The debacle required a city bailout – an advance of more than $100,000 from next year’s budget – and an extension of the AJM’s credit line. Such missteps have consequences: A few weeks ago, the AJM laid off three longtime staffers. But the dire financial straits the AJM has found itself in are not alone the result of an overambitious festival. An invoice obtained by The Pitch shows that, in April of this year, the AJM paid $18,000 to fly pianist and Late Show With Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste to Kansas City to receive the AJM’s 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Last year, just after Kositany-Buckner’s appointment to head the museum, The Pitch had interviewed her and insisted that “when she says that 2017 will be ‘a key year for the jazz museum and the 18th and Vine district,’ there’s reason to adjust expectations for a part of the community more talked-about than visited.” Indeed, 2017 has been a key year – albeit not in the way the Kenyan-born affirmative-action hire had forecast. Kositany-Buckner, the recipient of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City’s President’s Award and the local NAACP chapter’s Lucile H. Bluford Special Achievement Award, had previously “led digital inclusion efforts” at the Kansas City Public Library, was open in her characterization of the American Jazz Museum as an “African-American institution”, and expressed optimism about the unique energy and experience she could bring to the troubled venture:

At the library, she led digital inclusion efforts, bringing broadband access outside the library to Kansas City School District students, and supervised design and renovation of the library’s L.H. Bluford Branch and the Truman Forum auditorium at the Plaza Branch. She points to a pink hardhat sitting on a shelf in her office. “I was the lady in charge,” she says, smiling. Now, she’s in charge of a museum that has earned an unwanted reputation for worn and unchanging exhibits that don’t always work. […] “Yes, some things did not work,” Kositany-Buckner admits. “But it’s like a child. If a child makes a mistake, you don’t disown him. You try to walk with him and guide him. I think right now, the stars are aligned. You have the city behind us with some reinvestment in the district. I think with my leadership and my passion and my excitement, my risk-taking and my connection to the larger community, this is the time to come together and make this succeed.”

“Kositany-Buckner said visitors will notice changes soon after she takes the job,” Jazz Iz related after the museum’s board of directors announced her appointment in 2016. Among those to notice the changes were the musicians whose checks from the American Jazz Museum bounced harder than Big Joe Turner after this year’s Kansas City Jazz and Heritage Festival, as KCUR reported this summer:

On Wednesday, Hammond organ player Chris Hazelton wrote on Facebook that he’d heard checks to some performers had bounced. “I was told two weeks ago that they would mail me a new one,” he wrote. “Here we are a month after the festival and they’ve stopped replying to my emails.” Other musicians chimed in, including one who wrote, “I still haven’t been paid.” In a follow-up email to KCUR, Hazelton said he deposited a check the day after his large group, Boogaloo 7, played at the Festival. According to Hazelton, the check bounced the same week. Hazelton said he sent three emails that were “largely unanswered” to request payment. Hazelton’s social media post on Wednesday paid off. “Cheptoo (Kositany-Buckner, the American Jazz Museum’s executive director) called me this afternoon to offer sincere apologies and assurance that a check was being mailed to me today,” he told KCUR. The American Jazz Museum, which organized the festival, said on Friday that 10 performers were affected, including eight local musicians, and that two checks were re-issued this week.

“Although no one asked them whether they wanted to, Kansas City taxpayers shelled out at least $117,000 to bail out a check-bouncing jazz festival sponsored by the ill-fated Kansas City-based American Jazz Museum (AJM),” regional conservative watchdog website The Sentinel complained:

The city has been pouring good money after bad into the American Jazz Museum since the museum was first conceived. In 1998, the New York Times did a surprising astute analysis of the museum. ”What this property has successfully done,” then Mayor Emanuel Cleaver said told the Times, ”is transcend the obstacles of race, geography and ethnicity. It is the kind of thing we need to replicate.” […] The most inept of the political moves was the city’s purchase in 1994 of a Charlie Parker saxophone for $144,500. “This is an important and exciting moment,” said then Kansas City Mayor Emanuel Cleaver, “It is only appropriate that Bird’s alto sax come home to Kansas City.” Now perhaps it would be more appropriate to hock the sax and pay back the taxpayers.

The Kansas City Star pointed to whites’ (of course, totally irrational) fear of blacks for the disappointing turnout, another embarrassment for this year’s Jazz and Heritage Festival:

Bill Brownlee, who reviews music for The Star, suggests that a popular music act can pack a venue in the Crossroads. But take that same act 10 blocks east to the Gem Theater in the heart of the 18th & Vine District, and the crowd withers away. Brownlee’s theory: It’s fear of crime. Many Kansas Citians don’t fear it west of Troost. But go east, and it’s a different story. “I’d say more than one-half of the white jazz audience over the age of 60 would not voluntarily go to the jazz district because of the perception of crime,” he said. “They’re not racist. They’re just afraid.” […] Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver points to another issue: racism. “There’s no crime (at 18th & Vine), so what else is there?” he asks. A lot of people don’t mean to be racist, Cleaver said. But for some, hesitancy to visit the district is linked to the notion that it’s a predominantly black area. New Orleans seems to have gotten past this. So has Memphis, the congressman said. But not Kansas City. “It’s amazing that after all these years, we haven’t erased very much,” he said. […] For now, don’t count on another major jazz festival next year, at least not on the same scale. The evidence is clear: Not enough people will drive over to 18th & Vine. What a shame.

The Sentinel, in typical cuckservative fashion, then countered, “Yelling racism where it likely doesn’t exist only serves to hurt those who may be actual victims of racism. Shame on them.”

Kansas City’s 18th and Vine District, as one reader of the blog Tony’s Kansas City suggests, has an identity problem:

The 18th & Vine Jazz Historic District suffers from MIXED MARKETING MESSAGES. Is the district a Historic Jazz & Entertainment District or is it now an ADULT Entertainment District? Note latest promotional piece for The Juke House. On the same weekend the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is sponsoring its annual Family Friendly Festival for children 13 and under a few feet away Halloween “TAILS” is slated. The festival was moved to Friday night probably to get away from the Adult Halloween party . . . One event will attract families the other likely will attract bullets … It has been an interesting week for the Vine, $250,000 more taxpayer $$$ provided to the American Jazz Museum to finally pay some of the people who have not been paid for Jazz Festival Memorial Day Weekend . . . And now another controversial gathering.

The city need not be in any doubt about the neighborhood’s identity, however. Its identity is “African-American”. “So when you are really talking about a true American Dream,” boasts Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner, “I am it.”

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

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