Musician/deejay Jae Sinnett spins when he's not swinging
Originally published in Current, July 21, 1997
By Steve BehrensIf the latest CD from jazz drummer/composer Jae Sinnett is getting a lot of airplay this summer, one reason may be that he knows how jazz broadcasting works. Sinnett occupies the air chair at Norfolk's WHRV-FM five nights a week from 8:30 to midnight.
The disc--Listen, released in May by Austin-based Heart Music--spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Gavin airplay charts before climbing to No. 1 for a week, according to Sinnett. At last word, it was No. 7.
This doesn't mean he's made a mint. The sales charts in Billboard don't necessarily tag along automatically after the airplay rankings. But the airplay gives Sinnett a break.
The Norfolk area has been Sinnett's home since he got out of the Navy in 1976, went to college and began drumming professionally, initially with any band that wanted him. "I can play the crap out of a polka," he boasts. He later toured with Ellis Marsalis and Chuck Mangione and now performs regularly in a trio with pianist Allen Farnham.
Sinnett thanks the late Vianne Webb, then v.p. of radio at WHRO/WHRV, for recruiting him out of a teaching job and putting him on the jazz/news station in 1989.
"Thank God for public broadcasting," says Sinnett. "If it wasn't for that system, jazz wouldn't exist on any respectable level."
He used his programmer's head to plan the new disc, his fourth release, on which he wrote six of the nine tracks. "The music has to be radio-friendly," he says. "If I were to open the record with drum solos, forget it."
Sinnett also held down the lengths of cuts to improve their chance of airplay. Six of the nine are four to six minutes long; only three last seven or eight minutes.
He split the disc between trios and sextets. "A lot of people find piano trios boring, hence the sextet with horns," he explains. "I gave programmers the option. That's worked. If I had recorded all horns, 10 or 15 stations probably wouldn't have played it." (In a favorable review in the Washington Post touting Sinnett's "stellar lineup," critic Mike Joyce said the sextets "are particularly enjoyable.")
Most important for airplay, Sinnett delayed the more "aggressive" or intense music until the end of the CD, he says. Deejays judge a record by its first cuts, he believes. Indeed, the first number on Listen sounds like it would be accompanied by the clink of cocktail glasses, and the last one has gotten into soft drugs.
"Jazz has pretty much become a musician's music," he explains. A lot of musicians don't understand that most listeners aren't musicians, Sinnett explains. Many need help listening to music with unusual tonality, obscured melodies and busy rhythms.
Like Kenny Washington, a famed drummer who deejays at WBGO-FM in Newark--and national hosts Billy Taylor and Marian McPartland, among others--Sinnett is part of a long tradition of musician broadcasters.
"Living in this area ... it's tough to get work, that's why I work here," says Sinnett. The job not only supplements his income but also lets him evangelize for jazz. He gives brief tips to WHRV listeners, trying not to sound like a teacher. "I say, 'See if you can hear the clave rhythm in the cowbells,' and then they listen to it in a different way."
Off-air, he teaches three-day jazz appreciation classes four times a year at the station, drawing 40 or 50 participants and sometimes entertaining them with a trio performance in the last session.
Knowing the jazz audience is part of Sinnett's calculated showmanship.
"I have to find a way to make music that is still creative and interesting as a performer and to serious jazz aficionados, and get to the point where non-musicians can feel good about it," says Sinnett. "That's really what I achieved with this record."
Outside link: Sinnett's program at WHRO-FM.
Web page created July 21, 1997
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Earlier news: Some jazz stations are testing samples of their
target audience to see what kinds of jazz they prefer. Others say this precaution is
guaranteed to take the edge off jazz.