Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jazz in Africa

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Move to draft. While there is obviously no consensus to delete this article, even the "keep" !votes signal severe problems. I am therefore moving it to Draft:Jazz in Africa so that interested editors can flesh it out a bit more before moving it back to main article space. Randykitty (talk) 13:10, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Jazz in Africa[edit]

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not enough sources, questionable notability, topic too broad Vmavanti (talk) 18:01, 12 December 2018 (UTC) Delete - ~~this essentially falls under WP:YELLOW~~ Unnecessary list. Kirbanzo (talk) 18:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:YELLOW says that Wikipedia is not "Yellow Pages. Contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses is not encyclopedic." As the page in question contains nothing like this, this complaint is absurd. Andrew D. (talk) 18:30, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bad rationale, sorry. Kirbanzo (talk) 19:11, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep There's plenty of jazz in Africa in a variety of countries including Senegal, South Africa, Ghana and more. The current page is a weak start but it is our policy to welcome such constant and improve it per WP:PRESERVE. Andrew D. (talk) 18:30, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of South Africa-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 20:36, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 20:36, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete WP:Preserve says in its first line "Preserve appropriate content". This article has no appropriate content because all of it is unsourced. There isn't enough content to judge what's true. So I suspect people are not judging the article. They are judging the subject. WP isn't supposed to work that way. I know about jazz. Jazz in Africa is so different that it isn't really jazz. Nevertheless, it is of course a large continent with many countries, making the the subject far too broad to cover in a WP article. "Jazz in..." isn't the kind of article Wikiproject Jazz concentrates on. But there are articles about festivals, venues, and musicians from all over the world. Of the 27,000 jazz articles, nearly 5000 need serious work, most of it done by a few of us. I invite those with strong feelings to fix those articles about African musicians (and so on) if that is an interest is yours. I'm sure readers would much rather see a finished house rather than a condemned building. I'm not a big fan of the good Samaritan argument that says oh, maybe some kind soul will come along and fix it. What I have seen over and over is: they don't. At least not in jazz articles. I've worked on articles that have hardly been touched in ten years. Some has to take the initiative and actually do the work or it won't get done. Readers see half-assed articles and they think less of Wikipedia because of it. I want to improve Wikipedia. I don't want to kick the can down the road. Common sense ought to play some role here.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Vmavanti (talk • contribs)

Another point from WP:Preserve. "should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability and No original research." How do we know the existing material meets the last criteria? If it's unsourced, it could be original research. In that case, there would be no point in keeping it.
Vmavanti (talk)

Keep as an obviously notable topic per WP:PRESERVE. This is not bad enough to need WP:TNT. Catrìona (talk) 08:46, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: This does seem like a topic with potential, which could span, for example, Louis Armstrong's concerts in Nigeria and Ghana [1] during the independence era, the performances by Archie Shepp, Dave Burrell and others at the 1969 Pan-African Festival sponsored through the Organisation of African Unity [2], and the activities of Guy Warren and Randy Weston as well as figures from South African jazz. The Preface to Robin Kelley's "Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times" shows a potential breadth of sources. The problem is that the present article falls very short, little more than a poor relation of the more substantial South African jazz article, and may be a case for WP:TNT. AllyD (talk) 10:50, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Do you read this topic as referring to American jazz musicians playing in Africa? Or as a form of music created by Africans in Africa?
Vmavanti (talk) 00:53, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

both, as US jazz musos will have influenced the African jazz scene and vice versa. Coolabahapple (talk) 06:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is your name AllyD?
Vmavanti (talk) 21:06, 16 December 2018 (UTC)Vmavanti (talk) 21:04, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

or is it Ali G? Booyakasha! :))Coolabahapple (talk) 00:26, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete/Disambig Is there a justification for having an article on jazz from/in a continent of 1.2 billion people and more than 50 countries? There's no Jazz in Europe, Jazz in Asia, or Jazz in South America, even though these have been written about extensively. Instead, we have, for example, Jazz in Germany, Japanese jazz, Brazilian jazz. So why pick a continent instead of individual countries? I detect that old Africa is a homogenous country stereotype, which this article is helping to perpetuate. The solution is to create articles on jazz in individual countries. If we can manage Iranian jazz, then we can do some African countries too. And then we could use Jazz in Africa as a disambiguation page. (And yes, I will volunteer to create some of the needed articles, if we can get away from this 'they're all the same/other-worldly, so let's lump them together' thinking.) EddieHugh (talk) 13:01, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 06:00, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Move to Sandbox - I least I hope that can be an option. The subject is intriguing, and I couldn't wait to read it just from the title. But the article is too skimpy for publication. I would hope the article's author and like-minded writers can collaborate on a wider article that is better sourced and more comprehensive. I would be happy to help in any way that I can. Capt. Milokan (talk) 19:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.