It might have seemed lately that the tastes of British politicians don’t extend beyond Taylor Swift and Oasis but on 29 October, at an undisclosed venue, probably in London, politicians belonging to the All-Party Parliamentary Jazz Group (APPJG) and a judging panel from the jazz “constituency” conferred awards on music practitioners of the non-pop variety.
Seventy guests were entertained by a band featuring Andrea Vicari (piano), Alison Rayner (bass), Tori Freestone (saxophone), Henry Lowther (trumpet) and Noah Ojumu (drums) as Lord Mann, Chi Onwurah MP, Issie Barratt, Joe White MP, Yvette Griffith, Steve Crocker, Orphy Robinson, Peter Leathem, Jane Cornwell and Jon Newey gave out awards for vocalist (Emma Smith), instrumentalist (Emma Rawicz), album (Zoe Rahman, The Colour Of Sound), ensemble (Alina Bzhezhinska’s HipHarpCollective), newcomer (Ife Ogunjobi), venue (The Verdict, Brighton), media (Gilles Peterson), education (Nikki Yeoh) and services to jazz (George Nelson’s Moment’s Notice). There were also two special awards, for Anita Wardell and Paula Gardiner.
The winners were drawn by APPJG members and the judging panel from a shortlist of 31 nominees announced 14 August which will eventually be published on the APPJG website. The APPJG numbered “over 110” in March, but had reduced to “over 73” by August, perhaps indicating that there are more jazz fans among Tory than Labour MPs.
The 31 nominees in turn had been selected by the judging panel (comprising “promoters, musicians, journalists, the media, people from jazz education and managers”) from 3952 names proposed by the public in March this year via the APPJG’s webform. Although it would make interesting reading, the names chosen by the public – and the votes for each – are not revealed. However, it appears that the number of public votes for any candidate is immaterial, the judging panel simply taking the public’s suggestions as a source of ideas for the list of nominees. APPJG secretariat Chris Hodgkins says “The awards are by public nomination, not by how many nominations for each person.” The selection process and criteria are described here.
The APPJG awards are widely fêted in the small world of British jazz but some question the awards idea, rejecting the notion that art can be measured or that there can be a best of anything in the arts. The organisers might defend against such charges by saying that the awards exist – like the APPJG itself – to promote British jazz in general, and their inclusion policy tends to support this. They say the awards “celebrate and recognise the vibrancy, diversity, talent and breadth of the jazz scene throughout the United Kingdom”. Yet they also say the awards “are celebrating the best of British jazz”. The two objectives – one representative, one meritocratic – might seem contradictory. If the best in art were possible, could a selection process conscious of gender, background and geography locate it? Probably not, and we’d be left, indeed, with an awards scheme where representation prevailed over merit. In any case, the APPJG scheme bans any winner from being nominated in the following year, which implies, implausibly, that excellence in the jazz art is short lived.
Representation ought to keep more people happy, but it seems that the provenance of the APPJG’s represented few has been a source of discord. They are arrived at by the votes of around 100 people – some of unknown expertise – and it seems the anonymity of the judging panel for most of its life has led to distrust. Unusually among awards schemes, the APPJG panel was unnamed from the foundation of the awards in 2005 until 2017, a situation that may have fuelled suspicions of bias. Indeed, some nominees and awardees have been panel members, although a mechanism exists in the selection process to prevent panel members voting for themselves.
In 2017, following calls for transparency, the secretariat announced that panel members’ names would henceforth be published, saying “Since 2005 details of the Awards Panel have remained confidential to avoid Panel members being lobbied or abused by email, online or personally. For the Parliamentary Jazz Awards for 2018 a list of the Panel members will be published on the APPJG website after the Awards have been completed. The Parliamentary Awards trust that Panel members will be treated with courtesy.” The panel has generally been announced some months after each awards event but the 2023 panel has yet to appear. The secretariat expect this – and 2024’s panel – to be published on the APPJG website when time allows.
Panel members 2018-2022, numbering around 30 per year, are listed here, and longstanding judges have included Gary Crosby (Tomorrow’s Warriors), Jon Newey (Jazzwise), Martin Hummel (Ubuntu Records), Charles Alexander (formerly Jazzwise), Steve Crocker (Leeds Jazz), Kevin Le Gendre (BBC), Deirdre Cartwright (guitarist), Paul Pace (Ronnie Scott’s), Joe Paice (Pizza Express), Rob Adams (journalist and publicist) and John Fordham (the Guardian).
Gauging by social-media calls from hopefuls for votes, there’s a widespread belief that the number of public votes counts. A popular vote would certainly be far less debatable than that of a limited electorate of judging panel and politicians. But, as critic and reader polls in Jazz Journal have shown, the jazz world in recent decades has grown so populous and so diverse in style that consensus is hard to find – JJ’s new-releases pages typically list over 300 new albums every two months. Until the perennial jazz boom beloved of and stirred by publicists subsides, scratching the surface of a welter of jazz activity might be all there is. Still, publishing that public-vote list would give a fascinating insight into popular opinion and the thinking of the judging panel and allow politicians to demonstrate democratic transparency in an era when talk of the people versus deaf elites is all the rage.
