As long as I've listened to jazz, I've always liked its "outsider" status, its kudos as a minority music that swims against the tide. Going to small clubs like the Spitz and the Vortex gives you a musical experience that's somehow more "real" than that in a big venue like the Astoria or the Royal Albert Hall. In a small club, there's the excitement of being in close proximity to amazing musicians, and sharing this experience with fellow cognoscenti, nodding our heads wisely as if in appreciation of a great secret.
So it is something of a shock to realise that jazz is actually very popular. Most of the events I've attended at this year's London Jazz Festival have been packed. So how do we jazz fans square our instinctive, elitist fondness for jazz's exclusivity when we're surrounded by 3000 people clapping, stomping and hollering for more? Which is what happened at Herbie Hancock's recent gig at the Roundhouse.
The atmosphere was a little more hushed for Michel Camilo and Tomatito at Barbican Hall last week - just two blokes playing their instruments. Incredibly well. But you couldn't get round the fact that the hall was full, and that the reception was ecstatic. And this wasn't the only full house for jazz. That same night, a few miles away the Moondog meets Bach gig (Joanna MacGregor, Andy Sheppard and co.) was rocking the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Nikki Yeoh was wowing the Vortex with a solo piano recital. Abdullah Ibrahim, Cassandra Wilson and Richard Bona and the Wayne Shorter/ Stan Tracey double bill all sold out, too.
Yet part of jazz's appeal lies in its exclusivity, its secret signs and codes and roll-call of familiar, chummy names like Duke and Trane and Miles and Wayne. Jazz fans, fearful that others will shun or poke fun at the complex, sometimes obtuse music we love, adopt the Millwall position: "No one likes us - we don't care." When ambitious schemes like the National Jazz Centre or Jazz FM fail, jazz heads grimly nod: "Told you so." We are rarely impressed by sales figures: stickers claiming that x is the best-selling album since y would probably put most of us off.
Yet the fact remains that some jazz CDs sell - and keep selling - in large quantities; that big jazz concerts regularly sell out; and that certain jazz stars earn a fortune. The people who enjoy jazz around the world may be a minority, but it's a big one, and growing. So if the priggish student in me feels uncomfortable about the hordes muscling in on this uniquely engaging but unruly music - my inner jazz evangelist leaps for joy.
