Joseph P. A. Villescas, Ph.D.

by Joseph Villescas, Ph.D.
Have you ever listened to jazz in Downtown El Paso? I do not mean at the Dome or at Brick & Mortar, but outdoors in the Plazita. I used to with my father, José Villescas, with squadrons of pigeons circling above and Spanish conquistadors staring at us while a few of El Paso’s finest musicians performed for folks taking a break from work or out-of-towners wandering over from the Grey Hound Bus benches where Jack Kerouac slept all those decades ago. Back in the early 80s we would head Downtown, eat hot dogs from Coney Island, and take black and white close ups of our friends playing their trumpets and saxophones.

I grew up with a ubiquitous jazz presence in our community—classic cuts on the airwaves and live takes in the studio, at the annual jazz festivals that the Friends of Jazz (http://www.elpasofriendsofjazz.org/) used to host at the Chamizal, and frequently live at nightspots where my father would shoot a few rolls of film. All of those years ago I was fortunate to see iconic musicians like our very own Gerald Hunter come to life under red lights both on stage and on photo paper in the darkroom my father constructed in our garage.

The El Paso jazz scene of that time was an accessible and diverse crossroads comprised of musicians, enthusiasts and other artists of all ethnic backgrounds that called the Pass of the North their home. Unlike many other cities in the southwest, a love for jazz in this region of the borderlands produced a culture that linked many jazz musicians and their social networks with El Paso enthusiasts as well as the next generation of new listeners, performers and promoters. How alluring our community dynamics must have been to these artists then for them to disregard the opportunities that cities like Chicago or New York intrinsically provided during that part of their lives. Clearly there was an unusual infrastructure of appreciation of this art form that made El Paso a destination community rather than a point of departure for many high-caliber musicians from in and outside of our city.

By the time I was studying on the east coast I began to notice that many of our longstanding musicians and aficionados were departing the scene as a result of various economic factors and social schisms within the supporters of jazz in the El Paso region. Although a high degree of appreciation for jazz remained, longstanding figures were fading away. Several of the old timers that mesmerized me in the early 80s were suffering from moderate to severe health problems by the late 90s. We lost Gerald and his blues before I graduated, the jazz festivals became more sporadic, and bar and restaurant owners were watching their audiences shrink. To compound the situation further, longstanding venues were closing, radio programming was waning, and the infrastructure that brought national and international talent regularly to El Paso was less robust than what it had been a decade earlier. In essence, by the turn of the century the El Paso jazz scene was imploding and the organized sectors that kept this art form well celebrated and publicly accessible was crumbling. Yes, you could still find Art Lewis jamming regularly at Kiki’s during this era, but you could not find very many of his contemporaries performing regularly on those same nights.

By the time I was discovering the Elephant Room in Austin back in 2000, it seemed like the only place you could really find jazz alive and well in El Paso was in the high schools, at the UTEP music department, and at the music stores. It was our local band directors and private lesson providers in particular who have kept jazz alive in El Paso, and families like the Olivas clan that operated like a ‘jazz virus’ on the ground level—infecting new audiences with a profound love for our unique forms of border jazz that were produced authentically in El Paso. It is also thanks to the City of El Paso’s Museums & Cultural Affairs department that endeavored to keep mass opportunities available to experience jazz ‘under the stars’ and to program directors like Denis Woo at KTEP that kept providing listeners with their daily jazz fix.

When you look closely at the legacy of jazz in El Paso you can definitely recognize our community’s distinct contributions, passion for the myriad forms of jazz, and innovations to the blues and beyond. Jazz never died in El Paso, it evolved here due to our community’s hybridity and innate talent. What I believe happened during the last ten years or so was that the students of El Paso’s jazz and Latin jazz musicians began to emerge and challenge the boundaries of 20th century forms with their brass, keys, strings, and sticks. Several toured the country and distant parts of the globe to hone their abilities, and then returned to impact our landscape with their creativity and sheer tenacity for our collective benefit.

Today, new online resources exist for everyone to become more informed about what is available in our community through groups such as the El Paso Jazz Connection (http://www.jazzelpaso.org/). They regularly update their website to provide El Pasoans and out visitors with information about where to catch live performance from our local musicians as well as from performers who operate throughout the country and the rest of the Americas.

This Thursday on Charlando con la Gringa, Lisa D will be interviewing the board members of this organization to discuss their holiday initiatives and vision for 2009. We are also going to be talking about plans to feature our local jazz musicians and highlight our classic venues in El Paso for their contributions to our community.

Joseph Villescas, PhD is an independent consultant, writer, and instructor who conducts extensive investigations on Latino and other multidimensional populations that explore trends in their educational development, media consumption, internet usage, voting behaviors, racial categorization, organizational capacities, and readiness for future leadership roles in community settings.
Although based in el paso, several projects are also underway that target multiple border counties, communities in central and west texas, as well as undergraduate and graduate student populations nationally.
To learn more about Joseph Villescas, log on to www.villescas.org.