Wit & Attitude Quote by Lester Bowie

Bowie’s line is less a pep talk for jazz nerds than a pointed correction to an industry myth that’s been useful for decades. “Jazz doesn’t sell” is the kind of phrase executives deploy like weather: regrettable, unavoidable, nobody’s fault. Bowie calls it what it is - a choice. Not a fact, not a natural law, but a story that lets labels, radio programmers, and venue owners justify starving the music while still cashing in on its cultural prestige.

The crafty part is his repetition of “sell.” He doesn’t romanticize jazz as too pure for commerce; he insists on the boring, measurable reality of transactions. Jazz “sells consistently” - not always spectacularly, but reliably, the way a back-catalog business keeps the lights on. That emphasis is a quiet indictment of a market that worships spikes and sensations. If the industry only values explosion-level returns, then steady, long-tail art gets miscast as failure.

Coming from Lester Bowie - an AACM figure who moved between avant-garde experimentation and broader audiences (think Art Ensemble of Chicago, but also a clear ear for showmanship) - the claim carries extra bite. He’s not pleading for legitimacy; he’s exposing a rigged definition of success. The subtext: jazz has been forced into a cultural role as “important” but not “profitable,” so it can be celebrated in museums and film cues while being denied real investment. Bowie punctures that hypocrisy with a simple, almost accountant-like insistence: the money is there, and it always has been.