In all my years as a jazz writer, web editor and record company executive, I’ve only had three Black colleagues.

A lamentable state of affairs, but very common in the jazz world. The music’s innovators and performers have been African-American but the overwhelming majority of journalists, photographers and record executives continue to be white men. No major jazz publication has ever had a Black editor or publisher.

Fascinating new book ‘Ain’t But A Few Of Us’ attempts to unearth some of the reasons why via candid dialogues between editor Willard Jenkins and Black jazz writers such as the late Greg Tate, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Tammy Kernodle (all three familiar as talking heads in the 2019 documentary ‘Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool’), Ron Welburn, Robin DG Kelley and John Murph.

Each contributor posits different reasons why Black writers have been so under-represented. Some lay the ‘blame’ at the musicians’ doors, others with editors and ‘gatekeepers’. Most writers are strikingly even-handed. Kernodle: ‘I’ve read the work of some white writers who I would have sworn were Black because of their treatment of the subject matter.’

Guthrie P Ramsey Jr.: ‘Even though as a historian I love to engage historical texts, I know what I’m reading was allowed by their editorial policy to get published, or was what that writer needed to write in order to get food on the table that week, and not necessarily some unbiased opinion about whatever musical object they happened to be discussing.’

And then there’s the thorny issue of whether a white biographer can really get ‘under the skin’ of a Black musician. Gene Seymour: ‘It’s possible, but I’m guessing he or she would…find more psychic territory closed off.’ Meanwhile Tate laments the fact that in 2021 ‘the notion of black jazz actually has more weight in London now than in the fifty states of the union.’

Jo Anne Cheatham discusses the obstacles of being a woman in the jazz world while Angelika Beener offers solace to the much-maligned, underpaid jazz scribe: ‘If you wake up in the morning, and you’re writing in your head, this is what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s not the most lucrative business but…when Louis Armstrong said, “People have died for this music”, it’s true.’

The book also includes a stunning anthology section, which reprints classic essays and articles from Black writers and musicians such as LeRoi Jones AKA Amira Baraka (the moving piece from Downbeat in 1963), Archie Shepp, A. B. Spellman, Stanley Crouch (his controversial JazzTimes piece from 2003) and Herbie Nichols.

The superb and long overdue ‘Ain’t But A Few Of Us’ faces a troublesome issue head-on, and it’s also very timely given the controversial recent reboot of JazzTimes magazine, which apparently saw the sacking all of its white editorial staff. The book is vital reading for any jazz fan, and any writer hoping to make a contribution to the music’s fabled bibliography.