The past couple of weeks have been list-making time, an opportunity to reflect on the great music that came out in the past year and try to distill what was best or most meaningful. I discussed my top 20 albums in this blog’s year-end summary, a slightly expanded version of the list I submitted for the 18th annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics poll. The Francis Davis poll is now live at Arts Fuse, and if you are interested in jazz or adjacent genres of creative music, you owe it to yourself to spend some time checking out the poll results in detail. In this year’s poll, the 159 critics and journalists who participated were asked to pick their top 10 new releases, three top archival releases, and make one pick each for debut artist and Latin jazz. The published results calculate the winners and publish a list of the top 50 jazz albums for 2023, along with insightful essays by poll founder Francis Davis and tireless poll runner Tom Hull. You’ll also find a list of jazz musicians who have died in 2023 and, most interesting of all, access to each of the individual ballots. Digging into the wealth of results is an excellent way of finding music you missed over the last year and getting a new perspective on the landscape in the creative music community.
In his keynote essay “The State of Our Union Could Be Better,” Francis Davis argues that the annual poll results over the last 18 years document a changing of the guard. In the first poll from 2006, only one of the top ten finalists was under 50 years old. By contrast, in the 2023 poll, only two of the top ten are over 50. Jazz is now younger, more diverse, more international, and more female – all excellent developments for the health of this art form. But the picture presented by the poll results is far from rosy. Davis also points out that the overwhelming number of the top 50 releases are on small artist-run labels. Although releasing music independently is often cast as giving artistic freedom, this choice is created from necessity. The 18 years of poll results show how major labels have largely left the “jazz” scene, and artists now have to fend for themselves. You can find the prior poll results here; the comparison is illuminating and a little distressing. Among the poll winners from the first five years of the poll were jazz albums on major labels such as Verve, EmArcy, Sony, and Concord. Even more important is the influence of Blue Note, one of the most important independent labels in jazz, but really a major label owned by Universal Music Group since 2012 and EMI since 1979. During the first 13 years of the poll, Blue Note consistently had at least one and often multiple albums in the top ten poll winners. This year, however, Blue Note released only four of the top 50 poll winners and had no top ten albums for only the second time in the poll’s history. There are really no other majors to pick up the slack – the only major label release in this year’s top ten is from James Darcy Argue on Warner Brothers-owned Nonesuch (#5 on the list). The declining absence of major labels from this jazz poll is part of a long story of disinterest in America’s art form that started with Columbia’s infamous purge of their jazz roster in 1973.
Artist-run labels have largely filled the vacuum left by the departure of major labels. First-place poll winner James Brandon Lewis released For Mahalia, With Love on Tao Forms, a label started by drummer Whit Dickey in 2020. Runner-up Jason Moran self-released From the Dancehall to the Battlefield on his Yes Records imprint, which has issued only Moran’s albums to date. Elsewhere in the top ten, independent standard bearer Pi issued three albums in the top ten (by Steve Lehman (#3), Tyshawn Sorey (#4) and Henry Threadgill (#8), while Kris Davis’s Diatom Ribbons Live at the Village Vanguard is on her Pyroclastic label (#7), and the fifth edition of Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin is on Canadian independent Constellation (#6). The top ten is rounded out at 9th place with Jaimie Branch’s posthumous release on Chicago-based indy International Anthem and the second album by Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet on French independent label RogueArt. Whether the poll documents a decline in interest by the majors or a disconnect between major label support and artistic excellence is almost beside the point. The poll results show that the artists making the most vital music have had to do it on their own. Just about every month, another musician announces they are starting an imprint to self-release their new album, undoubtedly a sign of the change in times. And let’s not forget the withering of other critical sources of support to artists, such as the closing of local performance venues or the uncertainty over the future of artist favorite Bandcamp. It’s easy to feel the struggle of musicians to make a living or to read the tea leaves as to where we are headed. Part of the message is that the future of this art is in your hands – make sure you support the music you love!
But the absolute joy and pleasure of the Francis Davis jazz poll isn’t getting a roadmap of the scene – it’s getting hipped to the excellent and exciting music released in the last year. Much of this music doesn’t get the attention or notice it deserves until you have the benefit of journalists and critics crowdsourcing their accumulated knowledge, distilled into the poll results. I recommend drilling down to the individual ballots and seeing the individual top 10 lists of the 159 critics who participated in this poll. Taking in the list’s enormous variety of music is a reminder of the depth of today’s creative music and the ingenuity of the artists who create it. I can personally say I learned of at least a half dozen records that otherwise may have escaped my attention from reading these ballots. The quality of outstanding new music, the wild depth and variety of recent releases, and the genius of today’s musicians are a source of never-ending amazement.
Finally, on a personal note, it was a real honor to be invited to be one of the 159 participants in the poll. I want to publicly thank Tom Hull for the invitation. It was a responsibility I took seriously and a pleasure to listen to and ponder the best and most impactful music of 2023. Above all, I want to thank all of the artists who devote themselves to creating and sharing work that helps make the work a better place. The act of creation is what we need in the world at this time. If you want to check out my ballot, the link is here, but as I said above, I recommend reading everyone’s ballots and then going back to the music and making your next discovery. Now, on to the great music of 2024!
Your humble “jazz critic” is one of the voters!