A Feminist Urge Is Driving the Shape of Jazz to Come 

Source: Improvised and Experimental Music.

There is something about jazz that embodies the vanguard of a revolution that has yet to come. “The music itself is about manifesting the unknown,” said Esperanza Spading at a panel on Gender and Jazz held at the New School as a part of Winter Jazz Fest held in New York City. Master drummer and jazz educator Teri Lyne Carrington moderated the panel which posed an all-too timely question: Given its legacy of calling out injustice and forming the basis for the imagining of new worlds, why is it that the jazz community is struggling so much with respect to inclusivity, representation and sexual harassment? Panelists who addressed the question included young trumpeter Arnetta Johnson, jazz journalist Lara Pellegrinelli, Angela Davis, and pianist Vijay Iyer, as well as Esperanza Spalding.