Introduction

As the producers of the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972, The Rainbow Multi-Media Corporation is proud to welcome you to Otis Spann Memorial Field, Ann Arbor, and three days of the most exciting blues and jazz music we were able to arrange for this weekend. We have taken great care in putting this Festival together to make it as unique and as satisfying as we know how — musically, socially, politically, economically, and every other way — and we’d like to take a few minutes before you get into the music to speak briefly of our intents and purposes .in producing the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972.

The Blues & Jazz Festival was conceived last winter by Rainbow Multi-Media president Peter Andrews as a revival of "the original Ann Arbor Blues Festival, which after two incredible years (1969 and 1970) of artistic (but not financial) success was laid to rest by the University of Michigan before a 1971 Festival could struggle into life. The void left by the absence of the Festival last summer was so great that people in the Ann Arbor music community were bemoaning its disappearance far into the winter; folks in the bars, on the 'Streets, and at various community meetings fantasized its re-emergence endlessly, but there seemed tp be no way to put on another Blues Festival without the support and sponsorship of official University student organizations and their sizable entertainment budgets.

The major problem with the 1970 Blues Festival was its tremendous financial failure, leaving a' debt of upwards of $30,000, most of which was attributable to last-minute emergency police and “security” costs and to over-booking (too many artists at too high prices to the producers) and under-pricing of Festival tickets (four shows for S10). Since the University would in no way he interested in a repeat of jibat failure, and since {he University seemed to be the only hope for bringing the Blues Festival back to life. Peter Andrews drew up a proposal for an Ann Arboi Blues d. Jazz Festival which he felt would solve the problems encountered by the producers of rite earbejr events.

His idea was that careful booking, detailed planning, and superior organization, coupled with the expansion of the . Festival into contemporary jazz music and a slightly less esoteric line-up of blues artists, would not only insure the success of a 1972 Festival but would afeo-expand Ufost^ musical base laid-down by theproducers and participants & the earlier Blues Festivals, which had essentially limited their pbtentkl. appeal to music! lovers by featuring little-known (though musically excelled blues different disciplines within the blues idiom. A thorough-going proposal was drawn up by Peter’s staff, headed by Suzanne Young, and was

organizations at the University for their approval.

For a variety of reasons, most of the student organizations could see their way to sponsoringsuch an event, even though most of them would’ve loved to do it. Frustrated from wliat amounted to months of pleading his "ease in vain, Peter was ready to do something drastic when he discussed the problem with his newly-acquired business partner, John Sinclair, who had nussed the two Blues Festivals while serving 29 months of a 9%-to-10-yearsenmnce ftyr possession of two joints of marijuana before being released last December 13th. Buzzing off John's enthusiasm for the Blues & Jazz Festival {dan, and following his earlier* intuition that the University wasn’t the only answer after all, Peter began seekrhg independent backing for the proposed event among progressivemusic business operators who could understand the commercial possibilities inherent in the proposition, as well as | the musical imperatives involved, and who might be abJer&f bring the Festival off.

Andrews made a number of pitches and drew some genuine interest, but the Festival started to get off the ground for real one Sunday in June when Sinclair was in Lansing for a free concert and met a young brother backstage who presented the solution to the problem of financing the event. Rick Dyksfra had inherited a piece of money and wanted to do something worthwhile with it. so he approached Sinclair out of the blue and offered financing for a project or projects which needed backing, preferably musical projects which could also raise money for other major projects to be undertaken by Rainbow Multi-Media, the non-profit corporation Sinclair and Andrews had organized.

Flashing immediately on the Blues & Jazz Festival scam, Sinclair set up a meeting between Rick and Peter and himself for a couple days later, and agreement was quickly reached as soon as Rick read through the proposal and dug on the proposed list of artists for the Festival. This list, which was essentially the same as the Festival line-up this weekend, had been constructed around the principle that high-energy music, whether rock & roll or blues and jazz, is what people go crazy to hear, and it was specifically designed to lead people directly from one familar discipline (blues in some cases, jazz in others) to an unfamiliar although closely related musical form which might raise their musical consciousness a little bit higher. Hard-core blues and rhythm & blues artists were coupled with hard-core avant-jazz musicians, with more popularly-known blues-based artists (Dr. John, Jr. Walker and the All Stars) mixed in to illustrate the wider registrations of the two black musical forms.

Each concert was structured so as to provide a context for the individual artists and their musics which would give them each a fuller definition than that provided by all-blues and all-jazz programs, while special care was taken to insure that the leaps and discontinuities from one form to another wouldn’t be so great as to bewilder people or turn them off some other way. A number of outstanding performers from the two Ann Arbor Blues Festivals were contracted, among them Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Mighty Joe Young, Little Sonny, Freddie King, Luther Allison, Lightnin’ Slim and Otis Rush; other blues and rhythm & blues artists were selected for their unique musical qualities, including wailing Koko Taylor from Chicago and one of the grand old women of the blues, Sippi Wallace, who has been retired from secular performing for many years in favor of her life as a gospel singer in the sanctified churches of Detroit; a number of jazz artists were chosen to represent some of the multi-directional socio-musical movements in contemporary black expression (among them: Sun Ra and his Arkestra, the Detroit-based CJQ, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, a group of trumpeter-composer Leo Smith and multi-instrumentalist Marion Brown, Archie Shepp and his sextet, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, who later withdrew and was replaced by Pharoah Sanders). Siegel-Schwall was chosen to represent the rainbow blues movement, and two Ann Arbor boogie-blues bands were added to demonstrate one of the most exciting contemporary permutations of the blues.

The musical mix spoke to the artistic questions involved, but there’s always more to music than just the notes, and with festivals particularly there recurs the question of the economics of the music, or who makes the money and what do they do with it when they get it. The non-profit nature of the Rainbow Multi-Media Corporation eliminates the major economic contradiction — one or two or three individuals making profits for themselves by exploiting a number of musicians and groups for their own selfish gain — but given the nature of the Blues & Jazz Festival and the peculiar features of such an event, even that wasn’t enough. No one organization or group could rightly rake off all the proceeds of the Festival for itself, since one of the conditions of our community is that such an event is Created by many elements in the community working together, and another condition is that most all of those elements are needy of money for their own community service/self-determination projects, too, and the economic development of the community is not best served by grossly eneven growth patterns which plump one alternative institution (such as Rainbow Multi-Media) to the exclusion and neglect of its sister and brother developments.

Quickly eliminating the possibility of retaining all the Continued from previous page. possible net proceeds for its own projects, which include the establishment of a non-profit recording studio and a non-profit printing plant in Ann Arbor as well Jibe development of a non-profit booking agency and a self-reliant local non-profit record company^fflpinbow (Multi-Media selected a number of commuip|y-based, community-oriented self-determination projects as recipiehts of percentages of proceeds from the Ann Arbor Blues & "Jazz/Festival 1972, These include Projects Community, a student-community organization at thg^^Wverrity of Michigan which is particularly concerned with the economic, political and cultural development of the, local black community and which is the co-sponsor, of the Festival Trotter House, a black student-run cooperative which is* responsive to the needs of the non-student Jjtack populatfolp of Ann Arbor (5%); the Community, Parks Program, onevof the oldest alternative institutions^^," the: Apt, Arbor rainbow community and probably the strongest 'lifter five solid years of practice III1 producing free rock and roll concerts in the city’s parks every Sunday afternoon during the Summer months (10%); and the People’s : Ballroom, ,a brand-new rainbow community 4 institution which is the first successful development of its kind in the nation and which opened its doors for the first time the week beforcfhe Festival started (10%).

Continued on next page.

In addition, the Fesp^al has channeled even more money into the embryonic alternative economic system which has recently begun £0 develop in the Ann Arbor community by contracting with other community service groups to provide for the mahy services which are necessary! at such an event. This, Includes security (on-the-site “policing*’ as well as parking-lot direction and protection), which is provided by the PsychedehC,iUngers erf the Ann Arbor Tribal Council instead of by the local police force, which is itself constricted to a minimal presence in the parking area and no presence at all inside the gates; medical help (including drug-abuse prevention and treatment), which is provided by the People’s Free Clinic staff and workers from Drug Help; the serving of food and be^rages,* which will be handled by the People’s "I^OodK Committee of. the Tribal Council as it is at the free concerts during the summer; sound, lighting and staging,..which -is/ contracted to Vulcan Sound Systems, Inc. of Ann Arbor who provide the sound system for the free concerts at cost to the Community Parks Program all summer; the crucial on-stage production work, which will be handled by the stage crew from the People’s Ballroom, headed by Craig Blazier, which has managed the stage al the free concerts all summer long; and site development, which has been . ‘

implemented b&'a group of community people who have worked throughout the summer to get the field in shape for this event. Even the garbage collection service is being provided by a community cleanup squad instead of the usual official garbage collection a^e^feiesllp.?

In each case significant aims of money are going back into the Ann Arbor community, not out of the community and J into the pockets of individual profit-oriented entrepeneurs. Drug Help, the Free Peop$b!s workers, the Rangers, allff of these groups are being paid for their sendees, and every centff of the money they will make from their work is sorely needed by the institutions they represent in -order-to^b^ry: out tHeir community service work! The Peopled Food Cbiciiut|e^ will | realize for itself a substantial share of the proceeds ffbrmthe J sale of good food and drinks to the anticipated 15,Q0O blues and jazz lovers (30%) for each of the five shows, money which will go back into the Food Committee as capital for next year’s park program and for other self-deterpination/selfreliance people’s food programs during the winter!*

Other community-oriented services provided by the Festival and its producers include literature-distribution booths and stands for a variety of community organizations, including the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Michigan Committee for Prisoners’ Rights, the Indochina Peace Campaign, the £hlman JtightS^Party, the Ann Arbor Sun newspaper, Ozone House, ana a number of other groups at no charge to the people involved;^ Sbord outlet staffed by Salvation Records and stocked Snth hundreds of records by Festival performers and other great blues and jazz artists, paihfully assembled from dll over the world for the Festival weekend by the Salvation peoplefa&d the availability of a great many short-term jobs for people from ^ community, many of whom haven’t been able to find work of any kind all summer.

And, for those people in the Aim Arbor-Detroit-lower Michigan area who are not able to attend the festival for one. mason, or another, whether it’s lack of money or some other incapacity, Rainbow Multi-Media has arranged for the Festival to be ,>bro'adc$£f .live, in Its entirety, over radio stations HPBHSl.O.WfcjjJ ahd.'WASpFM (99.5) in Detroit. The broadcast rights were freely assigned to the radio stations, at no profit ip the-Festival, ^order that more people would be able to experience the powerful music of the blues and jazz '-artists who are appearing here at Otis Spann Memorial Field. Other people are here video-taping, the event for possible , educational-TV screening later m the/year, and Atlantic Records has. been designated as the exeturive recording agent for the Anri Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972, With at jeast one album .of music from the Festival planned for release later this year'm eati|yjiil973. ! ,

Of course the economic innovations brought about by the Blues & Jazz Festival 1972 have their political implications as won’tattempt to delineate here;,but it is mterestihg';^Mste that Rainbow Multi-Media has received the . fullest cooperation from the city government of Ann Arbor, indudingj|||| approval" of the' use of the site (University property which is teased by the city) by the City Council, continuing ;assistance and advice from Assistant City Administrator Jim Hudak, and a rational, reasonable'stance on "foe part of foe* Ann Arbor FoHce Deparfeineitti which has confined itself, as it for fbejast. ihr.ee and and a half years "Irf/fhe’ Cpnptunity Fi|li.;:lhrogram,'' to a minor role in the parking area and tiaffil^ntrol at the jlite and nc§j|msenee at all inside the gates./! * . M £I

Cultt^ty, ,'econbmicaEy and politically, then, the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972 is a unique event; and more than that/ifps unique in a singularly progressive term. We " consider the Festival to be a first major |tep in our community toward self-reliance, Mf-determination and the development of an alternative, communallst,; non-profit economic system which would be controlled by people within our community and not by people who have no more to do with our culture and our music than, say, Richard M. Nixon.

We trust that the Festival, as the earlier Ann Arbor Blues Festivals, will -smashing ’artistic success. — it’s hard to Conceive that it i2p$ld*be any other way* given the musical genius which Is present here at Otis Spann Memorial Field this weekend. But what’s just as important to us, if the event is financially successful ng Will have enough seed capital for Rainbow Multi-Media W develop some of the projects we’ve been planning and dreaming about for many years; a number of community> institutions and organizations will benefit substantially; a large numbef of brothers and sisters from our ’ community will have a few more dollars towards the rent and groceries;,!.the artists will'receive a decent compensation for their work; and everyone will come out of the Festival feeling good enough Ib/wofk through the winter to build up the

people’s institutions we’ve all begun now to create together. InaO what we would call a real good time.

John Sinclair and Peter Andrews/Rainbow Multi-Media