This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by f.fuchs@gmx.net. In the Macho World of Jazz, Don't Ask, Don't Tell September 1, 2002 By FRANCIS DAVIS I have been asked what it's like being white in a field of music that's considered African-American," the vibraphonist Gary Burton says. "I think it would be equally valid to ask me what it's like being gay and playing a form of music that's seen as macho. It's interesting that the subject never seems to come up." Although white jazz fans in particular like to think of themselves as color-blind, it often seems that race is all they ever talk about when the subject is music. There is even a kind of reverse racial profiling that goes on in jazz: white players are pulled over and ticketed for reckless introspection. But whereas race is visible, even if it is becoming less so all the time, sexual orientation usually is not. Within jazz, race is considered a fit topic for public discourse, while a gay sexual orientation is regarded as private, a potential source of embarrassment for performer and audiences alike. It is practically gospel in jazz that a player taking an improvised solo is coming clean, baring his soul, telling us who he is in no uncertain terms. But what if the player is gay? Isn't that as much a clue to his identity as race? Mr. Burton's comments came during a panel discussion about homosexuality in jazz at the Village Vanguard in April, which I moderated. It was presented by the National Arts Journalism Program and Columbia University, and along with the writer Grover Sales, the other panelists were the pianist Fred Hersch, the saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase and the singer and pianist Andy Bey. There appears to be a growing acceptance of homosexuality among the general public. Yet the panel was the first public discussion that anyone could recall to address the topic of homosexuality in jazz. In jazz the rule remains "Don't ask, don't tell." This attitude is ironic because the jazz subculture has been notoriously free and easy, ahead of the beat on most social issues. Safety in numbers may have as much to do as sensibility with drawing gay men to certain professions, like hairdressing and floristry. In general, the performing arts are another area in which the news that someone is gay hardly comes as a shock. But there are ways in which jazz and all of popular music have more in common with baseball than with theater or dance. (Jazz even has its own body of statistics, in the form of discographies, recording dates and musical lineups.) Despite a growing number of female instrumentalists, the audience for jazz remains overwhelmingly male, which perhaps explains why jazz itself remains an enclave of machismo. There was a time when all jazz musicians were straight, as far as anyone knew. The composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn was a notable exception, but he was perfectly happy to spend his career in Duke Ellington's shadow, which was the same as being in the closet. It was only in 1996, with the publication of David Hajdu's Strayhorn biography, "Lush Life," that nonmusicians learned of Strayhorn's homosexuality. A common objection to Mr. Hajdu's book was that Strayhorn's sexual orientation had no bearing on his music. Mr. Burton has been "out" to his friends and associates since the late 1980's, when he took a male date to a party at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he has taught since 1971 and is now an executive vice president. "My decision to come out resulted from the end of my second marriage," he said. "I was in my 40's and finally came to the conclusion that I was more gay than straight. The deciding factor was that I got a crush on someone who was very out, and in the course of dating him, I had to be out as well. It didn't last, but I was out by then." Even so, Mr. Burton didn't go public, as it were, until 1994, when he discussed being gay in an interview on National Public Radio. Whatever repercussions he feared, an apparent lack of notice on the part of the jazz press (and by extension, the jazz community) left him more puzzled than relieved. Given his standing in jazz (he has been a consistent Downbeat poll-winner on vibes since the late 60's), it was as if the guest of honor at a formal dinner had noisily slurped his soup or blurted out an off-color remark - best to look the other way. Except for an article about Mr. Burton and other gay musicians in JazzTimes magazine last year, which elicited an angry letter that accused gay musicians of not swinging (long a white stereotype), the jazz press has continued to shy away from the subject, despite his willingness to speak frankly about being that supposedly rarest of creatures, a gay jazz musician. In avoiding questioning Mr. Burton about his sexual orientation, jazz journalists may be guilty of nothing more than trying to guard his privacy, or they might feel it's a nonissue. But this reticence seems disingenuous in light of the role that Miles Davis's reputed prowess with the opposite sex played in defining his appeal to many of his male fans. (Never mind the persistent rumors that Davis was bisexual.) And discretion can be an unintended form of homophobia, said Mr. Hersch. "There are several phases to coming out, and I think most of us went through one when we first told another human being that we were gay," Mr. Hersch said. "We were nervous and looking for the perfect way to put it. Then, over time, we get to where we assume everyone knows and nobody really cares. But the third phase is that in the same way that somebody else might talk about his wife or girlfriend, you want to be able to talk about your boyfriend or lack thereof." Jazz and gay culture may be antithetical. Although the musicians on the panel didn't feel that they had been ostracized since coming out, only Mr. Bey has attracted a sizable gay following since declaring his sexuality. "Once you've found out who you are, you can express your feminine side, your masculine side, you're not afraid to let it all out, and I think a lot of gay people want to hear that," Mr. Bey said. But he is a singer, and there have always been jazz singers like Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae with a gay appeal, regardless of their own sexual orientation. Mr. Burton's experience seems more typical of those on the panel. "One of the surprises for me in coming out was that nobody had ever heard of me and nobody had ever heard of the vibraphone," Mr. Burton said. "I had finally connected with `my people,' and they didn't care. The kinds of music that are popular in gay culture have a high degree of glamour, and jazz is the opposite." In a 1984 article for the magazine The Jazzletter, Mr. Sales noted the scarcity of gay jazz musicians relative to the overall gay population and speculated that the reason for this might be traced to jazz's earliest days, when it gave black men an outlet for expressing an assertive masculinity that they were otherwise forbidden to give voice to. Mr. Sales said jazz offered a similar outlet for the first white jazz musicians, who were likewise discouraged from expressing their masculinity as offspring of a genteel society in which music and the arts in general had become overrefined and, in Mr. Sales's word, "feminized." This is a reasonable enough theory, but it hardly explains why the jazz world - liberal on most issues - finds itself at this late date so far behind the rest of the population on issues relating to gender and sexuality. Except for a crack that if Mr. Hersch wanted to be asked about his love life, he should call a tune on his next album "something like, `For My Lover, Irving,' " there were no hostile comments from the floor during the question-and-answer period that followed the panel. But the Vanguard audience of 100 or so seemed far more comfortable participating in the two discussions that followed, which addressed the economic hardships of playing jazz and the proper roles of critics and scholars - the usual shop talk at jazz get-togethers. My lack of success in putting together a more racially balanced panel (Mr. Bey was the only black participant) raised for me the troubling question of whether gay black musicians face more difficulty in coming out than their white counterparts as a result of greater homophobia in black culture. (Some black denominations have a spotty record on gay issues, and hip-hop's preoccupation with thuggery has set an impossibly high standard of masculinity for young black men.) Despite my best efforts, there were no lesbians on the panel, but women may have a greater disincentive in coming out, because they already have so much going against them as female intruders in a music ruled by men. (To some men, a female drummer or horn player is automatically butch, even if she happens to be straight.) "I know certain gay musicians who are not out who I feel overcompensate by trying to be even more macho than straight musicians," Mr. Hersch said. "And unfortunately, certain women players have also been pressured into higher and louder and faster, with more chops." Whether being gay makes a difference in playing jazz was a question left hanging by Mr. Hersch and the other panelists, and none of the gay musicians I've spoken to in the months since have quite been able to answer it, either. But this doesn't mean that the question is irrelevant, just that gay musicians are still trying to figure it out for themselves. "I usually leave the interviewing up to the interviewer," Mr. Burton said, explaining that journalists typically ask him about his latest recording, his equipment and the trials of balancing teaching and performing. "But this undiscussed area of being a gay man, being part of the gay community - has that affected me creatively? That would be a very interesting thing to explore. But interviewers, maybe because they're not sure how to write about it, stay away from it." Like the others on the panel, Mr. Bey feels the issue warrants discussion. "You have to deal with the issue of who you are, and it can be a difficult issue if you're living a so-called abnormal life," he said. "It needs to be talked about in order to liberate yourself." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/01/arts/music/01DAVI.html?ex=1031985251&ei=1&... HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company