Working as part of a national and European network gives us the opportunity to share, see and showcase some of the most unique sounds of our scenes.
For today’s young musicians, relying on the connections we have developed over the years is a considerable asset. It is up to them to create the music that resonates the most with our world; it is up to us to identify them, to support them and to create the moments of encounter and discovery that will bring them to light.
Then, it is a question of goodwill, of voluntarism even, if each of us decides to participate in the discovery and promotion of these emerging talents.
In our venues, in our festivals, we must offer them a space, find the appropriate stages and then encourage the public to take the risk of discovery, by also guiding them through this process. Then again, we need to motivate local, regional, national and international presenters to invest some of their time in meeting these musicians, most of whom are still unknown.
It is a vast undertaking, but programs like Jazz Migration, as well as other programs in other European countries, allow these paths to cross, these tracks to multiply.
In these times of great violence, which pushes people even further into withdrawal, it is high time to think broadly, to take risks where we work, to try to be exemplary in our openness to others.
On the scale of world, history our small battlefield sometimes seems quite vain, but opening our space to the stranger, encouraging the exchange for the beauty of the gesture, reciprocity without mercantile concerns, is also an investment in the future.
Philippe Ochem
President of AJC
