Creativity Quote by Norman Granz

There is a hard-edged honesty in Granz admitting that democracy, in practice, is a constraint. He frames audience taste as a governing force, not a delightful mystery: the bandstand becomes a ballot box, and the set list is policy. Coming from the jazz impresario who built Jazz at the Philharmonic, this reads less like pandering than like a producer describing the economics of attention before anyone called it that. You can hear the hustle behind the principle: if you want to keep the lights on, you program for the room you have, not the room you wish existed.

The subtext is a negotiation between art and access. Granz wasn’t just selling music; he was staging integrated tours, paying musicians fairly, and forcing venues to confront segregation. For that kind of cultural leverage, popularity isn’t a guilty pleasure, it’s fuel. “Democracy” here is double-coded: it’s the market logic of majority rule, but also an argument for broad, shared ownership of jazz as a public good rather than a boutique art for connoisseurs.

What makes the line work is its faintly defensive pragmatism. Granz doesn’t romanticize the masses, and he doesn’t romanticize the artist either. He implies that purity can be a luxury, even a form of retreat. In a music world that often mythologizes the uncompromising genius, Granz offers a colder, more effective ideal: get the crowd, then use the platform.