How to Pass the Torch of Syncopation

Two events in which I was invited to take part in November and December of last year prompted me to look at where OKOM is headed (the internet acronym—Our Kind of Music—is as good a way as any to lump together the myriad styles toward which we TST family members gravitate). As we roll over into a new year, we simultaneously squint at the past even as we gaze toward the future. Anyone involved with American pop music of the first half of the 20th century on any level, whether performing it, listening or dancing to it, even writing about it, is constantly faced with this juxtaposition. The originators of this music were kids: teenagers or 20-somethings on the cutting edge of the new, the avant-garde, the sui generis. Contrast these innovators with the audiences listening to their creations, as performed live by contemporary musicians, and you have a doozy of a generation(s) gap. Excepting classical music (not so named, of course, when it made up the hits of the day) you’d be hard-pressed to identify styles of music with such a long shelf life as our ragtime, blues and jazz, in all their multifarious forms and styles. Yet, while an occasional youngster (by that I mean anyone not alive when Ronald Reagan began his second term as President) or group of youngish dancers might be seen in attendance at an event presenting OKOM, they are not in abundance in most parts of the US. Events