Jazz Society

Writing about University and student societies reminds me of the Swansea University Jazz Society found by Chris Howell and me around 1980.

In order to be able to put on gigs in Student Union facilities the regualtions demanded that our society had a formal constitution. We had no idea how to draw up such an instrument so we were shown the ring binder that contained the constitutions of all the other societies.

The first society in the alphabetical list was the African society. So - maybe even to this day - the Jazz society constitution is exactly the same as the African society's apart from the fact that the word Jazz replaces the words Africa and African wherever they occur. Though the result was a spectacularly daft document, I have often wondered over the years if there is not some poetic justice in this.