The demographics of Jazz

I was in for an unpleasant surprise yesterday when I set off to do the weekly shop. Switching on the car radio, instead of jazz, 106.8FM was playing some bland, repetitive, background twaddle. When a human voice mercifully intervened, I was informed that I was no longer listening to Radio Jazz on this frequency, but to "Radio Chili Zed" (Chill-E-Zet, Chilly-Z or any permutation of the above).

Instead of classics from Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald or Count Basie, I am subjected to sounds made by people unheard of at their own breakfast table who are recording 'music' for spaced-out clubbers too fragile to face the day. The aural equivalent of ten mils of Diazapam, this elevator music de nos jours lacks any redeeming features that will enable it to withstand the test of time. Will any of this stuff be listened to and revered half a century from now? I sincerely doubt it.

I wish this awful radio station a speedy journey to the footnotes of Polish broadcasting history. I want my jazz back.

But I won't get it back. The largest number of Poles today by age are 25 years old. It is their tastes that determine the Polish media market. It is for them that Radio Jazz has been taken off the air and replaced by this formless guff. Chilloutowo-undergroundowe brzmenia are no substitute for be-bop, funk or big band swing.

I shall continue listening to Radio PiN (though it plays interesting music, announcers never say what they've played - which I find annoying) and of course to TokFM where half of Jeziorki can be heard commenting on economic issues. But my favourite music station has gone.