“Jazz In China: The Documentary,” chronicles the 100-year story of how jazz—a democratic form of music through improvisation—exists and thrives in China—a country with a long tradition of adherence to central authority.

“Jazz In China” is a documentary produced, directed, and written by Eugene Marlow, Ph.D. based on his 2018 book Jazz in China: From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression (University Press of Mississippi).

The 60-minute award-winning documentary reveals the significant influence of African-American jazz musicians with leading indigenous jazz musicians, sinologists, historians, and jazz club patrons in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and archival and contemporary performance footage.

“Jazz In China” was the winner of the 2022 American Insight “Free Speech Film Festival,” and received the “Award of Excellence” from the Depth of Field International Film Festival.

“Jazz In China” will  be an “official event” of the UNESCO-sponsored International Jazz Day, on April 30, 2023.

Many thanks to those who made this event possible:
Curator Leslie Arlette Boyce
Brooklyn Heights Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
NYFA  “Jazz In China” is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts

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Dr. Eugene Marlow’s documentary short “Zikkaron/Kristallnacht: A Family Story” has been an official selection of 17 domestic and international film festivals, including the October 18-24, 2021 Paris Independent Film Festival and the London Indie Short Festival. It was awarded the 2016 John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in the Field of Media Ecology by the Media Ecology Association. CUNY-TV aired the documentary in March 2020 as part of its “Short Docs” series.

Professor Marlow is a faculty member of the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at the Weissman School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Baruch College, City University of New York (since 1988).

In addition to the above, Dr. Marlow is the recipient of several dozen awards for video programming excellence from numerous domestic and international video/film competitions.

About “Zikkaron/Kristallnacht: A Family Story”

This nine-minute documentary short describes the events of November 9-10, 1938 all over Germany and parts of Austria when, on the pretext of the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris, the Nazis destroyed thousands of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, synagogues, and homes.

The word “Kristallnacht” means “The Night of Broken Glass,” a reference to the shards of broken glass, a result of the destruction. “Kristallnacht” is considered the beginning of what resulted in the Holocaust.

The events of Kristallnacht” are told from producer Dr. Eugene Marlow’s maternal family’s perspective. They were present in Leipzig, Germany, during the event.  His Aunt Ruth (nee Landesberg) who was a child at the time of Kristallnacht, narrates the video. The video contains dozens of historical photographs and film. An original music score was composed and performed by Dr. Marlow and his quintet The Heritage Ensemble.

Generous support for this was project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.

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 Marlowsphere (Blog #148)

The following blog was delivered by Dr. Eugene Marlow on May 1, 2020 to members of the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE) via Zoom for their annual conference.

According to a lyric sung by the late blues singer Alberta Hunter “You cain’t have romance without finance.” The same is true in terms of longevity and survival of profit and non-for-profit organizations. More specifically, arts organizations do not exist for very long without effective financial management and financial support from various external sources.

In the United States government organizations at the national and local level are increasingly withdrawing from the role of funding arts institutions. And applicants for funding are finding it increasingly competitive for whatever funding remains available. Yes, the National Endowment for the Arts budget was increased this year and more foundations are getting into the funding role, but no longer can arts organizations take it for granted that monies will be there.

A case in point: In November 2019 The ​Turtle Bay Music School, held its final artist series concert, the last hurrah of a nearly century old New York City arts institution. A nonprofit on the East Side that partnered with public schools, the school announced in November 2019 it would be forced to close due to a lack of funding.

But there is a deeper issue that is pertinent to the training of arts administrators at the graduate level and it is this: if finances and financial administration is the bedrock foundation of an arts organization, how pertinent is the personal financial literacy of those in charge of the organization? My answer is: very pertinent.

Do You Know Your Net Worth?

At the risk of embarrassing myself, I’m willing to bet 80% of the folks in this audience don’t know what their net worth is. You have little idea what your debt-to-income ratio is or how much you’ll need for retirement if you can afford to retire.

My contention is: if you don’t have a handle on your own personal finances, your long-term debt, or how you’re going to finance your retirement, how can you deal effectively and efficiently with the finances of the arts organization you work for or are connected with, or teach students about arts organization financial matters?

It’s Personal

Why am I so keen on this? The answer is simple and personal. My father, Michael Marlow (nee Spivakowsky) , was an excellent musician: a child prodigy on the violin; Taught himself the viola and the mandolin.; Composed music.; Wrote the world’s first concerto for harmonica and symphony orchestra. It’s still being performed today worldwide.; He had his own radio program on the BBC.; Was a Broadway show conductor.; Performed as a member of the orchestra with many notables, including  and Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra. But he was lousy when it came to business and finances. He attempted to build his own music publishing company. It failed. He once dreamed of owning a restaurant. It never happened. When he died at the age of 63 of a second heart attack my sister and I learned he didn’t have any life insurance because he didn’t “believe” in life insurance.

I earned an MBA in part because I didn’t want to put myself in the same financial position my father ended up in. I wanted the vocabulary of business as a means of leveling the playing field professionally.

I’ve been involved in the fine and performing arts in various artistic and management capacities since I was born. At Baruch College (City University of New York) I teach and have taught a panoply of courses in media and culture, and business. At every turn I have experienced and observed that where there is a lack of focus on finances, regardless of the quality of the creativity, the enterprise falters. Further, this failure often, if not always, has roots in a key individual’s lack of understanding or appreciation of personal finances.

Personal Finance vs. Organizational Finance

Aye, there’s the rub. There’s no escaping the connection between personal finances and organizational finances.

What is the difference between personal finance and organizational finances? There are, of course, differences in terms of scale and function, but there is at least one major commonality: assets and liabilities.

In the personal finance context an asset could be liquid assets, et al. In the corporate context an asset could be liquid assets, etc. In the personal finance context a liability could be a long-term debt. In the corporate context a liability could also be long-term debt.

In other words, the difference between the personal finance context and the corporate context is scale and function.

Financial Literacy

This all relates to a much larger context and that is global financial literacy. According to a 2014 Financial Literacy Around the World: Insights From The Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services Global Financial Literacy Survey:

Worldwide, just 1-in-3 adults show an understanding of basic financial concepts. Although financial literacy is higher among the wealthy, well educated, and those who use financial services, it is clear that billions of people are unprepared to deal with rapid changes in the financial landscape. Credit products, many of which carry high interest rates and complex terms, are becoming more readily available. Governments are pushing to increase financial inclusion by boosting access to bank accounts and other financial services but, unless people have the necessary financial skills, these opportunities can easily lead to high debt, mortgage defaults, or insolvency. This is especially true for women, the poor, and the less educated—all of whom suffer from low financial literacy and are frequently the target of government programs to expand financial inclusion.

Further, in the United States, according to this same survey, the financial literacy rate is only 57%. Denmark and Sweden have the highest financial literacy rates at 71%.

In 2019, Investment News reports on an updated Standard & Poor’s survey, as follows:

Although the U.S. is the world’s largest economy, the Standard & Poor’s Global Financial Literacy Survey ranks it No. 14 (tied with Switzerland) when measuring the proportion of adults in the country who are financially literate. To put that into perspective: the U.S. adult financial literacy level, at 57%, is only slightly higher than that of Botswana, whose economy is 1,127% smaller.

According to a 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Treasury entitled Best Practices of Financial Literacy and Education at Institutions of Higher Learning:

With the cost of college rising faster than incomes and a staggering 44 million Americans owing more than $1.5 trillion in student loans, there has been growing concern that students and their families are taking on debt without truly understanding the long-term impact.

Indeed, there is a lot of research exploring this national problem: Nine out of 10 parents and students failed a 2018 quiz about student loan debt. Meanwhile, MarketWatch reported that half of college students taking an AIG survey on personal finance basics got two or fewer questions correct. And in a recent survey from the Brookings Institution, less than 30% of student respondents could correctly answer three questions on inflation, interest and risk diversification.

We must conclude then that to insure student success in arts administration programs as educators we must be certain that these same students are financially literate on a personal level, particularly so because as arts administrators the finances of an arts institution is a vital aspect of the institution’s credibility, viability, and longevity.

The Financial Literacy of the Arts Administrator

To put this another way, if an arts administrator isn’t paying attention to his/her personal finances and doesn’t have a firm grip on his/her net worth assets and liabilities, it would follow that this same arts administrator is not paying enough attention to the institution’s assets and liabilities?

Now, perhaps this parallelism is not valid. Perhaps the arts administrator is fluent in the institution’s finances and knows the institution’s balance sheet, cash flow, assets and liabilities in great detail. But let’s say this same arts administrator accrues excessive credit card debt, or purchases real estate at the height of a market with a net income to long-term debt ratio that is out of balance and disproportionate. What does this say about this arts administrator’s expertise and skill to manage the institution’s finances? It does not speak well.

The importance of financial issues to arts administrators is nowhere more articulately stated than in the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE) Standards for Arts Administration Graduate Program Curricula of November 2014. The opening paragraphs of the “Financial Management” section of the document states:

Financial management is a core function within the management of cultural organizations, and is the framework through which resources–human, physical and financial—are maintained and monitored. In the not-for-profit sector, the balance between mission and money is a key factor in maintaining a sustainable, vibrant and successful organization, and needs to be clearly understood by arts administration students. We recognize that some programs include the teaching of commercial enterprise in the arts; this version of the standards has not yet incorporated standards for those areas of practice.

The document goes on to describe what arts administration students should be able to do with regard to financial matters at the foundational and best practices levels.

The Financial Literacy of Arts Administration Students

The question is: even though students at the undergraduate and graduate level might be adept at dealing with financial matters in the corporate context in the classroom, might not their understanding and appreciation of fiduciary functions have deeper meaning if their own personal finances are in order?

How many students come into an arts administration program with a foundation in either personal or corporate finance? Textbook learning is not as valuable and purposeful as real life learning. It’s one thing to require students to take a course in corporate finance, but it is quite another if students have no real-life background in finance, personal or otherwise. Students might take a corporate finance course and achieve a high grade, but what is this grade based on? An ability to read and abstract financial content from a textbook and feedback on a test, or is the good grade based on a student’s deeper understanding of finances based on “personal” financial experience?

Possible Prescriptions

A possible prescription for this “in the closet issue” is to provide students with a one credit course in personal finance. It does not have to be complex. But its main objective would be to sensitize students to personal financial matters as part of the process and preparation for dealing with institutional financial matters.

Another solution is to infuse non-financial courses with references to financial matters wherever possible. By doing so, students can begin to relate “personal financial” issues to non-financial course content. Over time, perhaps, students will begin to integrate the “personal” with the “organizational” to everyone’s mutual benefit.

In other words, to borrow and skew a well-worn phrase, charity begins at home. I’m willing to bet that if an arts administrator has a firm handle on his or her own personal finances, the chances are high this same arts administrator is well informed and in control of the institution’s finances. One context informs the other.

It makes sense to me that the more informed an arts administrator is about their own personal finances, the more sensitized this same arts administrator will be to the institution’s finances. You can attempt to bifurcate the two contexts, but if one bar is lower than the other, ultimately one will suffer. Attempting to parse these contexts can lead to problems. Is it not a better idea to prepare an arts administrator student with a solid foundation how to deal with personal finances so that this same student can approach the institution’s finances with the same kind of rigor?

© Eugene Marlow, PhD, MBA 2020

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“Blue In Green: Original Compositions by Eugene Marlow Inspired by the Jazz Poems of Grace Schulman”—a collaborative album of 10 poetry tracks by world-renowned, award-winning poet Grace Schulman and 10 original jazz compositions by award-winning composer/arranger Eugene Marlow—was released on April 30, 2019, International Jazz Day. April is also both Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM) and Poetry Appreciation Month.

Dr. Grace Schulman, a Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College (City University of New York) —who contributed and recorded the jazz poems on this album—will be inducted in the American Academy of Arts and Letters on May 22, 2019.  She is also the 2016 Robert Frost awardee from the Poetry Society of America.

“Blue In Green” was selected to be part of  National Audio Theatre Festivals (NATF) Playhouse’s 2019 PODCAST  PALOOZA at the 2019 HEAR Now Festival. The Festival’s podcast pages opens the day of the Festival, June 6, 2019, and runs through August 1, 2019.

“Blue In Green” is also a March 2019 recipient of a Silver Medal Award from the Global Music Awards.

Numerous jazz musicians are referenced in Schulman’s poems, including: Art Tatum, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk, as well as classical violinist Itzhak Perlman and Danish author Chris Albertson.

Marlow’s challenge was to create compositions that reflected—in whole or in part—the content or tone of each of Schulman’s 10 jazz poems.

“Blue In Green” will be available on cdbaby.com April 30, 2019.

The CD can be purchased for $15 + S&H by contacting meiienterprises@aol.com. Use code word “BING” in the subject line.

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Marlowsphere Blog (#141)

There are two reasons why I am focused on Veterans Day.

The first is the Vietnam War. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from what is now known as Herbert Lehman College in the Bronx, NY in 1966. Two weeks later I received a draft letter from the United States Army. This led to one of the most important decisions of my young life. Instead of being drafted into the Army, I decided to voluntarily join the United States Air Force in June 1966. It meant four years of my life, rather than two, but I perceived I would have more control over my life in an Air Force uniform than in the Army. I was right as it turned out.

This decision leads to the second reason: The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill—signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt—a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The bill has been updated several times by the United States Congress and is still providing benefits to ex-servicemen and women.

As a direct result of this bill, FDR, and the Vietnam War I was able to complete an MBA for almost no expense, and then several years later a Ph.D. for almost no expense. That Ph.D., plus extensive experience in print and electronic media helped me land a position as a professor in the then journalism program at Baruch College, CUNY. This position further gave me the opportunity to garner two more degrees: in music composition. I have now completed 30 years of teaching courses in media and culture at Baruch College.

In effect, a man by the name of FDR, together with the GI Bill of 1944—a year after I was born—plus the advent of the Vietnam War and the attendant draft had a direct impact on my personal and professional life over several decades that I could not have imagined when I was in high school or starting an academic pursuit in 1961.

Talk about unintended consequences!

I’d like to point to another unintended consequence that is directly related to the draft. The nation’s first military draft began in 1940, when President Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act. The draft continued through war and peacetime until 1973. More than 10 million men entered military service through the Selective Service System during World War II alone.

One of the consequences of the draft and military service is that it creates a universal and immediate bond among those men and women who serve and have served in the military, regardless of branch of service. Whether in wartime or peace time, whether in combat or behind the lines, so to speak, putting on a uniform immediately creates a universal experience that can be shared with those who have also worn a uniform. This shared experience cannot be easily explained or even described to those who have never worn a uniform. And even though in today’s time the expression “Thank you for your service” is much more in vogue and prevalent than when I returned from active military service in 1970, when I hear it from someone who is too young to understand, it does not have the ring of authenticity in the saying of it.

In my opinion, the end of the active military draft in 1973 has resulted in the unintended consequence of at least two generations of Americans who do not share the universal military experience. And it is the absence of this shared experience that has contributed and does contribute to the economic and social divide in the United States.  As the most recent national election showed the United States of America is not united: it is two countries. One country on the east and west coasts, together with a smattering of states in the north Midwest, and the rest of the country, essentially the middle of the country—those sections of the country that either don’t directly experience the influx of immigrants from all over the world or are perceptually threatened by so-called illegal immigrants taking away job from those who are already here. Campaign rhetoric to the contrary, it’s been a while since this country was a manufacturing dominant country; this is primarily a service-oriented economy requiring higher levels of education and inter-personal and technical skills.

During the draft, young men from many walks of life, from different parts of the country, with varying levels of education, with a spread of ethnic backgrounds came together for basic training, further training, and living, working, and fighting together. It was a melting pot environment and surviving it, dealing with it, and profiting from the experience was an opportunity for personal and professional growth.

Further, in the 2001 book The Millionaire Mind by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley, among the many lessons presented there I was struck time and time again by how many of the multimillionaires described in the book had military experience. It came up as part of their backgrounds over and over again.

The Selective Service is actually in force today and men up to the age of 30 are required to register with it, but it is not an active draft. The question is: should it be? There are many reasons for and against. But I think there is a strong argument to be made for this country to institute some kind of national service, whether military or not. I perceive this kind of service would re-kindle the experiential homogeneity brought home by the GIs after WWII, and more recently the regional conflicts in the Middle East. Over 70 countries out of 196 countries in the world have some kind of mandatory military or national service. Perhaps we should take their lead.

© Eugene Marlow November 11, 2017

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