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Works in progress
The second edition of http://musicwomanmagazine.com and http://musicmanmagazine.com are in production.
Our 8th CD of women’s music with 13 songs by our members is in production, also.
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Jazzwomen Directory
To date, 96 women are listed in our Jazzwomen Directory
Feel free to click on the links, watch the videos of our Amazing Musicwomen Presentation, and please share with others.
Join our global organization that promotes women musicians:
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Music – Work or Play
Music: Work or Play?
By Professor Joan Cartwright
[March 25, 2016] Most musicians begin their careers at four or five years old and continue until they die. Does the term play effect people’s thinking about what musicians really do? Does the action of playing music mean that musicians do not work?
In my 40-year career as a vocalist and songwriter, I have run into stone walls getting to the next level. I started singing at a theater in Jamaica, New York, at the age of four. By eight, I was a headliner in the annual Bernice Johnson Dance Recital. Mother doted on my Shirley Temple curls and my outfits of shiny tinsel and crinoline-lined, lacy dresses, not to mention the ballet, tap, and interpretive costumes my parents paid for.
I studied piano with a woman whose name is long forgotten. But her stern face never encouraged me to learn. I was 27 when I met Gerald Price, the musician whose demeanor catalyzed my growth as a vocalist, pianist, and composer. My harp teacher, Caliope Proios, with whom I studied for two years, listened to my life stories as she showed me the difficulties of changing pedals and string fingering.
In the seventies, my formal education involved music, but I dueled my B.A. with Communications, a new department, separate from English. Television production fell under this banner, with radio, journalism, marketing and advertising, while The Medium is the Message (1964) by Marshall McLuhan led me to do everything to get the message out that I am a musician and I have something to say.
For the first 10 years of my career, I was paid to do what I love – sing. But I was told that singing for free at benefits was good ‘for exposure’ by a singer friend. However, I decided that we would get more exposure standing on a corner, taking our tops off than performing at benefits. Finally, I told people, “I can do it, but I cannot ask musicians to work for free.”
After all, I worked (or played) with grown men and women who had children to feed and bills to pay. Every doctor and lawyer has pro bono cases in their filing cabinet that comprise less than 10% of their case load. But a musician, who plays for a living, is invited to perform at benefits at the ratio of three benefits to one gig. This had to stop and I was the only one who could stop it.
In 1990, I traveled overseas to sing in Switzerland, where I was treated with dignity. Europeans do not see musicians as people who play. Music is work. So, I was paid well and given lots of respect. When I returned to the States, in 1996, people treated me better than before I took the step across the big pond. I determined that musicians must leave the comfort of their homeland in order to be appreciated at home.
Ten years later, I had completed a five-month tour of Asia, and people in Atlanta, who never thought of me as a professional before, seemed to take me more seriously. In China, I worked at two clubs, where I did not make as much money as I did in 1990. Musicians’ pay always reduces, while the cost of living rises. That is ridiculous. People think musicians do not pay bills. After all, they spend their lives playing instead of working like other people.
The truth is that musicians do the job that doctors and lawyers cannot do. In one hour, musicians heal hundreds, even thousands of people. The right song keeps a couple from divorcing or pushes them to see that they are not right for each other, saving thousands of dollars of legal deliberation.
Music permeates the planet, bringing joy to all who hear it. People enjoy a concert more than they do a hospital stay or sitting in law office. Yet, they will pay doctors and lawyers extortionate fees and squint, when they get a high quote for a band of four or five adults to perform at a wedding or office party, where they will be enjoying themselves because of the music!
I am befuddled at what people will pay for and what they want to get for free. Learning music is not free. You pay for lessons. You pay with your time to practice. You continue to learn more music. You must stay in front of the pack in order to be seen, heard, and appreciated. Producing music is not free. Studio time is extremely costly. Paying musicians to perform your music is expensive, even if they are your friends. Mixing and mastering music is expensive (up to $100 per song). Duplicating CDs, producing videos, and marketing music runs into the thousands. But getting paid for a gig can be the hardest part of a musician’s job.
Finally, unlike most professionals, there is little in the way of retirement or insurance funding for musicians, who do not belong to the Musician’s Union, which few musicians either can or will afford. Musicians give joy to others throughout their lives and, unless they have a hit song or record, they have very little income to fall back on in their old age. Most die destitute, leaving little inheritance for their spouse and offspring.
It is uncanny. What brings people the most pleasure, rarely sustains those who create it. But the beat goes on and, somehow, musicians find venues where they can keep the music
playing. (918 words)
References
McLuhan, M. (1964). The medium is the message. Understanding media: The extensions of man. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf
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Diva Joan Cartwright is an internationally-known vocalist, composer, and author of 11 books. She holds a BA in Music/Communications from LaSalle U, in Philadelphia, PA; an MA in Communications from FAU, in Boca Raton, FL; and is a doctoral candidate for a DBA in Business Marketing online at Northcentral University, in Prescott Valley, AZ. Since 1997, Joan has been the CEO of FYI Communications, Inc. and, since 2007, her non-profit, Women in Jazz South Florida, Inc. with 304 members promotes women musicians, globally. In 2016, WIJSF released its 6th CD of the music of women composers. Joan hosts an online radio show, MUSICWOMAN, featuring women composers at www.blogtalkradio.com/musicwoman. Joan’s personal CDs are Feelin’ Good (1995) and In Pursuit of a Melody (2005). She owns MJTV Network with her daughter Mimi Johnson and she is actor in the sitcoms Last Man and The Siblings produced at www.mjtvnetwork.info. In 2014, Joan was honored in Atlanta, GA, as the first Lady Jazz Master. In 2016, she was honored as one of the Top 25 Women of Color in Business and Leadership by Legacy Magazine. She has two children (Michael Serrano and Mimi Johnson), five grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. She is retired from music performance and resides in Sunrise, Florida. Currently, Joan is a professor of Speech Communications as Southeastern College in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Diva JC Online:
- drdivajc.com
- joancartwright.com
- fyicomminc.com
- wijsf.org
- musicwoman.wordpress.com
- youtube.com/divajc
- Email: divajc47@yahoo.com
I AM JAZZ
Of course Jazzmen are dynamic. So are Amazing Musicwomen!
Freddie Hubbard is an icon! He recorded my tune SWEET RETURN (1983) and put it in his Song Book making me historical (herstorical). I sat at the feet of Miles, Diz, Buhaina, Shepp, Yusef, Rahsaan, McCoy, and Ron Carter, learning all I could about the art of improvisation. I sat with Helen Morgan 3 years before she shot Lee. I AM JAZZ!
Joan Cartwright, Freddie Hubbard, Jerry (owner of Allotria in Munich, Germany) Jeff Chambers, lady, Ronnie Matthews circa 1993
I’ve been in conversations with Ella, Betty Carter, Irene Reid, Ruth Brown, Abbey Lincoln, and Dorothy Donegan. I was THERE at the Blue Note, Slugs in the Far East (Village) with Lee Morgan, Buhaina, Miles, Frank Foster, Charles McPherson, Bill Hardman and Joe Lee Wilson, Village Gate, at the Galleon (Bronx), and the Village Vanguard with Lou Donaldson, Dr. Lonnie Smith who recorded my first demo tape with me that got me gigs all over the European continent. Ellington’s bass player Aaron Bell first listened to my tune “Loneliblue” and said the musicians would love playing it.
Joe Lee Wilson and Joan Cartwright, Brighton, England
With Lou Donaldson at Jazz Inn, London, UK
Joan Cartwright and Dorothy Donegan, Marian’s Jazz Room, Bern, Switzerland (1996)
Abbey Lincoln and Joan Cartwright, Montreux Jazz Festival (1993)
Joan Cartwright and Betty Carter, IAJE Conference, El Paso, TX, 1993
In Philly, Gerald Price taught me composition and piano, and in New York, Barry Harris was my teacher on piano and vocals. Budd Johnson was my babysitter from 4-8 years old. Milt Hinton (The Judge) was my cousin’s Godfather and he got me my first gig in Berne, Switzerland, at Marion’s Jazz Room, in 1990. I sat on Jay McShann’s lap and asked him to marry me. I proposed marriage to Quincy Jones just before I interview him for my Master’s Thesis, The Cultural Politics of Commercial Jazz, in 1993, which explained why I had to go to Europe (1990-1998) to make a living. In July 2013, I gave my book A History of African American Jazz and Blues to Quincy with the interview I did of him in 1993, 20 years earlier, in the exact same building – Stravinsky Hall, in Montreux, Switzerland [photo].
I AM Jazz!
With Quincy Jones, Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, at Claude Nobs’ Chalet, 1993
I am the Chronicler of this music. While everyone else was PLAYING, I was documenting it. I met Quincy Troupe, co-writer of Miles’ biography. I penned lyrics to A NIGHT IN TUNISIA, TUNE UP, BLUE BOSSA, and BESSIE’S BLUES and sang them all over Europe, the East Coast of the USA, and in China and Japan. I Am the female Jazz Messenger, who sang on Jazzmobile with Buhaina, Frank Foster, Frank Wes, George Coleman, and Charles McPherson. The first person to take me on the road was Philly Joe Jones, who took me to Baltimore to perform with Shirley Scott, Arthur Harper (bass), and Sonny Stitt, in 1978. I AM the only woman in the world with a Jazz and Blues Song Book that I submitted to the Guinness Book of Records.
Google me – www.joancartwright.com. But, more importantly, I am the foremost authority on Women in Jazz and Blues and I will not be quieted about the role of women as the Mothers of the Blues and the innovators of Jazz. That’s why, in 2007, I founded www.wijsf.org to promote women musicians, globally! That’s why, since 2008, I’ve interviewed over 200 women composers at www.blogtalkradio.com/musicwoman
That’s why I created the Jazzwomen Directory that features 90 women musicians that most musicians, let alone people, do not know about and I put 40 of them in my book Amazing Musicwomen that I taught over 10,000 students (3-12 grade and college) in the U.S., Switzerland, Sicily, China, and Japan about.
I AM JAZZ!
Joan Cartwright and Dizzy Gillespie, Sunfest, West Palm Beach, FL 1985
READ my books:
Symposium on Women in Arts
These points people need to be aware of:
- Women benefit from 1-5% of public funding of the Arts. WIMUST Report
- Women pay 53% of the taxes on the planet but make 64-75 cents on the dollar men make
- Women contribute 93% of their income to their families. Men contribute 43% to their families.
- Of 134 NEA Jazz Master Awards since 1982 with a $25,000 honorarium, only 15 women received this award
- Lilly Ledbetter’s Fair Pay Restoration Act, signed by Pres. Obama in 2009 does not include women musicians
This is the interview that I talk about why I founded Women in Jazz South Florida, Inc.
- See my book Amazing Musicwomen and our Amazing Musicwomen Ensemble
- See our compilation CDs (I, II, III, IV)
- Read my paper: Conscious Inclusion of Women Musicians
Check out these women, also:
- Girls In The Band a film by Judy Chaikin interview on my show MUSICWOMAN Radio
- Ellen Seeling, Montclair Women’s Big Band (CA) See this video I made of interview on KCBS with Ellen Seeling:
- Dotti Anita Taylor former President of IWJ (NY)
- Nicki Mathis, founder of The Many Colors of Women (Conn.)
- Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn, filmmaker
- Patricia Adkins-Chiti, President of Fondazione Adkins-Chiti: Donne in Musica and photos of women composers in Europe last July 2014 at the WIMUST Conference
- See the WIMUST Report
On May 2, in Atlanta, I will be honored as the Lady Jazz Master @ www.bwijawards.com
(PLEASE VOTE FOR ME as composer and for our 4th Compilation CD at this link: http://www.bwijawards.com/final-voting.php)
JOIN US at www.wijsf.com/join.htm
Blues Women: First Civil Rights Workers
The African voice inspired instrumentalists. Vocalese was a dialogue between vocalists and instruments. Each person had an individual sound and instrumentalists imitated the voice’s cries, growls, moans, slurs, whispers, shouts and wails. Blues was the element of American subculture created by enslaved Africans, singing European music. Considered crude by classical listeners, Blues liberated singers from precise pitch and calculated rhythms of European music. Black singers emerged from Spirituals and Blues to develop Jazz. Their free-spirited songs delivered messages of liberation, signaling to Africans in America that they could be free. Blues women were the first civil rights workers because their songs symbolized liberty in its rawest form by tapping into the human spirit. Angela Davis recounted Marx and Engles’ observation that art as “a form of social consciousness [awakens] . . . those affected by it to . . . transform their oppressive environments” (Davis, 1999). Blues were popularized by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (Columbus, GA, September, 1882 – December 22, 1939), The Mother of the Blues (Cartwright, 2008, p. 9). A spokesperson for black people, she was a hero to them. She recorded hundreds of songs on Paramount, putting that recording company on the map. The most popular Blues singers established a rapport and rhetoric with the crowd. Ma Rainey took Bessie Smith under her wing and Blues tradition developed as one followed another.
This book Amazing Musicwomen has lots of information about Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Marian McPartland, Peggy Lee, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and other Musicwomen. Musicwoman Radio and Musicwoman Magazine tell the stories of Amazing Musicwomenwho paved the way for vocalists, song stylists, singers, composers, and instrumentalists. Their songs are from The American Song Book that includes original songs like Alberta Hunter’s “Downhearted Blues”, “Handy Man”, and “Rough & Ready Man” plus songs of Broadway composers of the early 1900s, Duke Ellington, Billie Strayhorn, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Fats Waller, and Broadway composers Michel LeGrande, Stevie Wonder, Burt Bacharach and Isaac Hayes. [NOTE, after Alberta Hunter, the absence of women composers. Who were they? Does anybody know?] OK, Barbra Streisand, Carol King, Carly Simon, Roberta Flack, and who else? www.lulu.com/spotlight/divajc
References
Cartwright, J. (2008). Amazing Musicwomen. FYI Communications, Inc.
Davis, A.Y. (1999). Blues legacies and black feminism. New York: Random House.
©2014 Joan Cartwright, M.A.
Why are there no good jazz gigs?
Regarding an article posted on a UK Blog – THERE ARE NO GOOD JAZZ GIGS, I would like to address some of the comments in this article:
1. The huge increase in the number of jazz festivals over the last decade as proof that it’s not nearly as bad as some people would have you believe. D C Dowell of www.apassion4jazz.net says that the number of jazz festivals has increased tenfold over the last decade and www.jazzfests.net has over 1,000 jazz festivals listed for Europe alone. MOST OF THESE SO-CALLED JAZZ FESTIVALS USE THE WORD “JAZZ” TO KEEP THE COST OF INSURANCE LOW. THEN, THEY BOOK ARTISTS THAT ARE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING JAZZ ARTISTS – THEY ARE R&B, ROCK, REGGAE ARTISTS – BUT THE WORD JAZZ IS USED TO ATTRACT A MATURE AUDIENCE. IF THEY SAID IT IS A R&B OR ROCK FEST, THE INSURANCE WOULD BE SKY HIGH.
2. Much of the jazz musician’s malaise probably stems from his own experiences – playing an endless round of background music gigs where he is largely ignored or at conservative venues where he feels obliged to play standards in a mainstream style. These gigs often form the majority of his performing life and venues that actively promote jazz seem to be depressingly few in number. THE MAJOR PROBLEM IN THIS COUNTRY AND IN EUROPE IS THAT JAZZ IS A “HE/HIS” GENRE – A GOOD OLE BOY CLUB. WOMEN PAY 53% OF THE TAXES ON THE PLANET BUT WOMEN’S MUSIC REAPS ONLY 1-5% OF THE $27.5 BILLION IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND FROM PUBLIC FUNDING. THIS IS A HUGE IMBALANCE. I SEE GREAT OPPORTUNITY IN THIS AS THE FOUNDER OF A NON-PROFIT THAT PROMOTES WOMEN MUSICIAN’S – www.wijsf.org
3. Going to jam sessions is the only ‘self-promotion’ that they do. They’re clinging to a hopelessly old-fashioned paradigm of the music business and are doomed to failure and frustration if they refuse to change. THE JAM SESSION IS WHAT HAS KILLED NOT ONLY THE JAZZ SCENE BUT THE MUSIC SCENE. OPEN MICS WITH HIP HOP AND RAP ARTISTS HAS MADE IT SO THAT ENTERTAINERS (I DO NOT CONSIDER HIP HOPPERS AND RAPPERS MUSICIANS) PERFORM FOR FREE. CLUB OWNERS HAVE GOTTEN USED TO THE PARADIGM THAT THEY DON’T HAVE TO PAY FOR ENTERTAINMENT BECAUSE OF THE DESPERATION AND EGO OF THESE AMATEURS WANTING TO GET UP ON A STAGE TO DISPLAY THEIR SO-CALLED TALENT, LEAVING PROFESSIONALLY TRAINED MUSICIANS OUT IN THE COLD. ORIGINALLY, JAM SESSIONS TOOK PLACE IN THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING, AT ONE OR TWO CLUBS, AFTER THE MUSICIANS GOT OFF FROM WORK. TODAY, THE JAM SESSION IS THE GIG, WITH THE BASSIST AND DRUMMER GETTING PAID (MAYBE) AND OTHER MUSICIANS AND VOCALISTS COMING UP ON STAGE TO DO A SONG OR TWO. IT’S PUT MOST MUSICIANS IN THE POVERTY CLASS.
END PATRIARCHY NOW: MESSAGES IN WOMEN’S MUSIC
WAKE UP WOMEN. Understand how you are controlled!
The main issue is that women who are not musicians do not consider this an important cause. It is very important because society gets its messages from cultural producers and, if women’s music is not being heard and received, then society-at-large is losing all the way around. While women in other professions make 75 cents to the dollar that a man makes, women musicians only make 64 cents. GET IT? This is how the patriarchy continues – by blocking the messages in women’s music. WAKE UP WOMEN. Understand how you are controlled.
Help us to promote the music of women composers and musicians, who are terribly marginalized in the $27.5 billion music industry.
Did you know that, although women pay 53% of the taxes on Earth, only 1-5% of public funding goes to women musicians and their musical projects?
This is UNACCEPTABLE and it is the MAIN reason why society is off kilter because the messages in women’s music are not being heard by the masses that thrive on disturbingly violent video games, TV, film, and cable programming, loud and womanizing popular music, and overall patriarchal ideas.
If we as women do not promote our endeavors, who will? Join us in our mission to promote women musicians, globally, www.wijsf.com/mission.htm – www.wijsf.com/join.htm –
WAKE UP WOMEN. Understand how you are controlled!
This article discusses why women will not support each other in an effort to end patriarchy.
Stealing the Blues
The account below about the origin of Memorial Day serves to support my contention that these books should be required reading in High School because they tell the truth about how Africans in America survived the horrors of slavery through music and how their music has been copied and commercialized by white producers and all but ignored by black people.
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One of the things that most black people know is that the public school system does a horrible job teaching black history. They will gladly tell you all the wonderful things that white people did and maybe even go back to Europe, but the contributions of African Americans are kept entirely on the back burner. [Source]
A fact that you should probably know is that African Americans are the reason that Memorial Day even exists in the first place. According to Professor David Blight of Yale University, the event began on May 1, 1865. A group of former slaves in Charleston, SC gave a proper burial to 257 Union soldiers who’d been put into a mass grave.
The black community of Charleston then consecrated the new cemetery with “an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people.” The event was initially called “Decoration Day” and was led by 3,000 black school children who started off by singing the song “John Brown’s Body.” They were then followed by hundreds of black women with baskets of flowers and crosses. After that, black men marched behind them in cadence, followed by Union infantry.
The Union soldiers lived in horrible conditions, and 257 of them died from exposure and disease. This was the reason for the creation of the mass grave site. A total of 28 black men went to the site an re-buried the men properly, largely as a “thank you” for helping fight for their freedom.
They also built a fence around the cemetery, and on the outside, put the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
Dr. Boyce Watkins, who created an online course based on a forum held with Minister Louis Farrakhan last month, says that this is simply the tip of the iceberg. He says that misinformation is one of the most storied weapons used to perpetuate the oppression of black people.
“Black people must, as part of our healing, go back and rewrite history to ensure that we learn the truth,” said Dr. Watkins. “You’ve been lied to for your entire life, so it is up to all of us to use the Internet as a critical resource in helping us to learn who we truly are. We are great people and America would not be the country that it is today without our sacrifice.”
Now you know the rest of the story. Go tell this one to everyone you know and consider acquiring and reading the books posted above.
Joan Cartwright, Executive Director
Women in Jazz South Florida, Inc.
Musicwoman Radio, Magazines, and Members 