Jazz Condition -- UPI Arts & Entertainment

The jazz world is in an uproar over the firing of columnist Stanley Crouch by Jazz Times magazine.

Crouch, an extremely intelligent man and a skilled writer well versed in the columnist's art of stirring the waters, wrote a column accusing white jazz critics of promoting white jazz artists because they feel more comfortable writing

about someone of their own color. The accusation comes coded with the ancient implication only blacks can play "real" jazz, an argument tired halfway into the last century.

The firing, and its reaction, initiated the perfect storm. Charges and countercharges filled the air; in such an atmosphere it's almost impossible to figure out what really happened beyond the obvious facts Crouch wrote a column designed to test the limits of credibility -- the way Lester Bangs used to sometimes do it -- and Jazz Times

felt so uncomfortable being associated with racist ideas being presented as home truths Crouch was summarily fired.

Crouch certainly is well within his rights to protest the magazine's treatment of his work. His claim he was fired as a result of racial bias clouds the issue, however. While there is no denying the American media does suffer from racial bias -- the invidious suggestion that disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was allowed to get away with his outrageous fabrications because he was black is a shocking example -- there is no real proof beyond Crouch's own assertion he was fired for this column. The magazine points out in its defense, moreover, the column in question wasn't even Crouch's last submission.

Furthermore, in an interview with Don Heckman, Crouch changed the subject completely, arguing his problem was with the fact there is no effective dialog between critics in contemporary jazz criticism. This is a great point, and one I wish he had based his original column on rather than the sorry direction he did take.

While Crouch might be right in complaining about a white establishment in jazz, it's interesting to note he took this stand in Jazz Times rather than his much more public forum as a syndicated newspaper columnist. Crouch the syndicated daily newspaper columnist obviously has a far more important outlet for his writing, one he significantly did not jeopardize with racist cant. Crouch the MacArthur "genius" Fellow certainly doesn't need the small money writers make at Jazz Times.

Anyone who's followed his extremely nuanced career might well come to the conclusion the very Machiavellian Crouch knew exactly what would happen when he played the baiting game and placed the Jazz Times editorial staff in an untenable position.

In fact, the controversy has attracted far more attention than Crouch's column itself ever did. He has, in the tradition of America's great people of letters, done a remarkable job of drawing attention to himself. He has done few favors for his supporters, however.

Jazz may well have been the single most important force driving racial justice, integration, and minority rights in this country's deeply intolerant history. Blacks and whites have been working together as brothers and sisters in the

jazz world for a couple of generations now, and attempting to drive this kind of rhetorical wedge between them is a boorish enterprise one might expect more from the likes of David Duke than one of America's premier black columnists -- unless you ascribe to Amiri Baraka's view Crouch is a kind of right wing overseer whose real intent is to poison the waters of race relations on the behalf of the media plantation owners who pay his salary.

The most serious damage Crouch might have done with his racist gambit is to his single-most important client, Wynton Marsalis. Crouch has served as mentor to Marsalis in his remarkable rise to prominence in the jazz world, and is now his fiercest apologist. Not that the most erudite musical director at Lincoln Center since Leonard Bernstein needs an apologist as translucent in his bias, but the fact is that Wynton is stuck with Crouch now, given the very noble quality of loyalty Marsalis has shown over the years. Sometimes, as in this case, such loyalty is not to his benefit.

Marsalis has done an astonishingly great job, both musically and politically, as Lincoln Center's leader, but he has been somewhat justly accused of overlooking contemporary musicians -- read: potential rivals -- of all colors in his Lincoln Center flagship band.

Becoming associated with race baiting tactics when you're in charge of what might well be the most sensitive fundraising institution in the world is absolute poison. Crouch ultimately could cost Marsalis a huge chunk of the prestige that he has worked so hard all of his life to build.

There is only one person who can un-do the damage that has been done by this whole affair. Stanley Crouch himself, the great columnist, the brilliant man of letters, the Socrates of jazz discourse, must find a way to spin his own words, to repudiate the notion he supports racist doctrine, just as he did when he turned his back on all the avant-garde jazz figures he once championed, and often played with, on his way to becoming the Eminence Grise of the neo-conservative movement in jazz epitomized by his Plato, Wynton Marsalis.