Now's The Time: Keeping Jazz Alive

by Alejandra Díaz-Pizarro

WKCR may as well stand for “We Keep Collecting Relics.”

Even the most surface-level survey of the station yields enough artifacts to fill a museum wing: a red Naugahyde armchair where Dizzy Gillespie once sat1 since reupholstered, but whose original fabric lives on in preserved scraps. Old (and oldfashioned) posters advertising WKCR’s flagship music festivals. Cracked and scratched records that have found a second life as décor pieces that herald our analog spirit. A stack of Billie Holiday books. Polaroids of board members dating back at least two decades. A wall’s worth of newspaper clippings tracing a loose and loopy chronology of the station. To say nothing of the miles, very possibly acres, of reel-to-reel tapes shelved in our archive room, so heavy that the building had to install a speciallyreinforced floor to bear the weight.

Amid these piles of history, it is easy to forget that these items have not always been frozen in the past, but were once alive in a vibrant present. Those posters were once promotional, those records once spun on a turntable, those photographed folks were once up-and-coming DJs, those reel-to-reel tapes once were not rare but everyday occurrences on shows.

WKCR has a dual mission to preserve and innovate, to be at once a haven for historical significance and a hub for artistic exploration.2 In the 21st century, the rapid pace and increasingly-commercial bent of the music landscape has often meant that we have had to place more emphasis on the latter half of the mission, as (proud) keepers of the flame. But in 1970—the year that marked the formal birth of the Jazz Department, and WKCR’s commitment to “the alternative”3—the station’s leaders weren’t looking to keep the flame so much as stoke it.

1. Remnick, David. “Bird-Watcher.” The New Yorker, 12 May 2008. www.newyorker.com, https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2008/05/19/bird-watcher.

2. “About.” WKCR 89.9 FM, https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/about. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.

When the first birthday broadcasts were proposed to the board in 1978, they took “a slight tilt towards living artists;” in fact, as Phil Schaap recounted in a 1992 interview, none other than “[John] Coltrane didn’t make the cut—you see, he was dead.”4

Their emphasis on musicians who were alive and working—which in ‘78 counted among their ranks Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Roy Eldridge5—was idealistic even for the time. The ‘golden age of jazz’ was already a cliché, and so was the fact that it was, by all accounts, long gone.6 “There was a jazz community that needed help,” Schaap remembered, and “radio [had] abandoned jazz.”7 Radio not only became a way to bring jazz to an audience, but also to bring an audience to the musicians. Later, Schaap would reflect:“I’ve been training musicians my whole life, but I can’t find ‘em gigs anymore—not unless we have audience development.”8 Keeping jazz alive not only meant taking jazz to the people, but also pulling the people toward jazz, which made all the difference between being a living, working artist and being forcefully relegated to the past under the all-too-polite label of ‘legend.’

3. Spring, Evan. A History of WKCR’s Jazz Programming. Interview with Phil Schaap, 5 Oct. 1992, https://web.archive.org/web/20060222075049/http://www.columbia. edu/cu/wkcr/jazz/schaap.html. Columbia University Libraries, University Archives.

4. Spring.

5. Spring.

6. Kilgannon, Corey. “In a Life of Jazz, a Jarring Note.” The New York Times, 27 May 2001. NYTimes.com, https:// www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/nyregion/in-a-life-ofjazz-a-jarring-note.html.

7 . Spring.

As the giants of 20th century jazz—and his friends and mentors—began passing away, the mission of the Jazz Department Schaap led shifted more toward a spirit of keeping their memory alive.9 As a child, he was exhorted by his friend and sometimes babysitter, the drummer Papa Jo Jones—who would give him in-depth lessons on jazz listening—to “pass it on.”10 Schaap took this to heart: in a 2013 interview with jazz writer Mike Zirpolo, he expressed concern that “In the case of this cultural phenomenon called jazz, we are now at the point where the original generations of creators are gone. There is a wall now separating us from the originators. So we’ve got to set up a system by which it can be passed on.”11 And what a system Schaap created: his flagship shows, Bird Flight and Traditions in Swing, remain cultural institutions more than 40 years after they first aired. jazz, one thing was for certain in Satch and Tanvi’s forward vision for the WKCR Jazz Department: it had to reflect jazz as it is today.

8. Scheinin, Richard. “2021 NEA Jazz Masters: A Q&A With Phil Schaap.” On the Corner: The SFJAZZ Magazine, 19 Apr. 2021, https://www.sfjazz.org/onthecorner/neaqa-phil-schaap/.

9. Kilgannon.

10. Kilgannon.

However, much as it is easy to forget that the memorabilia lying around WKCR was once more than an extensive keepsake, it is easy to forget that the original impetus of the Jazz Department as conceived in 1970 was to celebrate living, working jazz musicians, to find them a listenership. Luckily, Jazz Heads Tanvi Krishnamurthy and Satch Peterson have not stopped looking forward even as they have kept one foot planted solidly in the past.

Tanvi and Satch—as all Jazz Heads should be—are firmly embedded in the New York City jazz scene: Satch, a jazz guitarist himself, is responsible for bringing live jazz onto WKCR’s airwaves every Friday on Out to Lunch, while Tanvi is to thank for WKCR’s excellent representation at jazz venues around town. With a shared commitment to contemporary 11. Zirpolo, Mike. “Phil Schaap…at the Epicenter of Jazz.” Swing & Beyond, 2013, https://swingandbeyond. com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PHIL-SCHAAP-ARTICLE-final.pdf.

From that vision emerges Now’s The Time, a brand new show dedicated to the promotion, exploration, and progression of contemporary jazz music produced within the 21st century, with an emphasis on emerging artists under the age of 35. This show—the first of its kind—will occupy the Friday 8:30-9:30 am slot, replacing one day of Bird Flight on the schedule, starting February 9th.

Replacing Bird Flight is no small change to the schedule, but it is also not a decision taken lightly. “Schaap’s expertise in Bird’s music and his integration into the richest parts of the jazz scene embody the essence of Bird Flight and [Schaap’s] time at WKCR in general,” Tanvi writes. “Schaap was not just interacting with the jazz contemporaries of his time—he was celebrating them, analyzing them, and most importantly, sharing their music. Just as Schaap promoted and progressed the jazz artists of his time, we hope to do the same with Now’s The Time. Alongside being a celebration of contemporary jazz musicians, Now’s The Time is also our little ode to continuing the work of Schaap in furthering the genre of jazz.” 12 age, retire, and pass away, [the] show functions to mitigate” the perceived decline of jazz, “and pay homage to their work by highlighting how jazz is a progressive and developing genre, still currently being explored by emerging and established contemporary artists. In the ethos of maintaining our legacy in jazz’s history and progressing jazz’s future, this show proposes a weekly space for listeners to lend an ear to young artists and current musicians who are continuing the work of revolutionizing the genre.”13

The aim of Now’s The Time is, in its own way, connected to Schaap’s mission: as stated in the show proposal, presented to the programming team in December of 2023, “as we see many jazz greats and pioneers from the 20th century 12. Written statement by Tanvi Krishnamurthy.

In keeping with WKCR’s tradition of naming shows after well-known songs that fit the show’s theme, “using a Charlie Parker tune as the title felt like a fitting homage to its predecessor [Bird Flight],”14 so the programming team settled on the Charlie Parker classic “Now’s The Time” (proposed by another former Jazz Head, Stephen Park). The title, however, is more than just a nod to Bird: in the Jazz Heads’ words, “Now’s The Time feels representative of what this show means—an urging of listeners, musicians, programmers, etc. to realize that now is the time to be consuming and creating jazz in its most inventive and unique forms. An ode to that which set the stage before us and also what is to come in the future, Now’s The Time encapsulates the perpetual yet evolving state of jazz as music that is truly of the present.”15

This dual commitment to past and present echoes the sentiment espoused by Phil Schaap, who believed that “All music is present tense when it’s listened to or performed. [...] And the only way to contemplate music is in the present.”16 Additionally, by exposing listeners to artists they may not have heard before but may go on to love, Now’s The Time fulfills Phil Schaap’s original mission: all along, he was “trying to create an audience for the musicians. That’s my job. Their job is to be musicians. And sometimes I help them in that endeavor too.”17 Now’s The Time creates a space to advance the original mission of the Jazz Department: to celebrate living artists, to bring them to the people, and to bring the people to them. By highlighting an evolving form of jazz, the show also forges the newest link in the long chain of jazz history behind it, retaining jazz’s connection to what came before while creating a path for new links to be added. Through it all, Now’s The Time is an exciting, exulting reaffirmation of WKCR’s commitment to its most fundamental mission: keeping jazz alive, in every sense of the word.

13. Internal proposal made to the WKCR programming team by Tanvi Krishnamurthy and Satch Peterson, 6 December 2023.

14. Proposal.

15. Proposal.

16. Hond, Paul. “Every Day Is Bird Day.” Columbia Magazine, Spring 2010, https://magazine.columbia.edu/ article/every-day-bird-day.

On February 2nd, 2024, WKCR will devote 24 hours to a Phil Schaap memorial broadcast, commemorating the date of his first broadcast on WKCR.

In 1945, Charlie Parker recorded “Now’s the Time,” a blues-based jazz composition with Parker on alto sax and Miles Davis on trumpet. In the years following, interpretations of the Bird’s piece have transcended time and audience. Building on the legacy of Parker's work, WKCR is excited to introduce a new program titled Now's The Time, which will inherit the Friday 8:30am9:30am slot previously occupied by Bird Flight. This new show aims to embrace the spirit of exploration and innovation that Parker and his peers worked to cultivate. In line with WKCR's commitment to celebrating contemporary and alternative music, Now's The Time will showcase emerging artists of the 21st century. Hear its commencement on February 9th, 2024, at 8:30am.

17. NEA Jazz Masters: Phil Schaap (2021). National Endowment for the Arts, 2021. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=yLK34aDdFw8.