William Parker: Music Is Life

I watched two excellent jazz documentaries last month: one was the story of trumpet master Lee Morgan's relationship with his common-law wife, Helen, which ended with her killing him in a crime of passion. The other was a superb profile of the bassist Buster Williams. The former sounds more sordid than it actually was; it was a genuine tragedy. And the artistic achievement of Morgan, the true heir of my idol, Clifford Brown, is highlighted through footage and interviews with his peers. The latter shows the way a great jazz veteran thinks and talks about his art and his craft. And that relates to my main takeaway, which is that as much as I love jazz music, I love jazz people equally so. I love their reverence for the tradition and the perspective of their forebears, those who have "touched the hem of the garment," as Williams put it, riffing on Christian phraseology. I love their humor, which always comes in at an oblique angle and delights in subverting expectations. I love their bias toward not viewing things moralistically. I love how they never tire of discussing the nuances of "the music," both the technique of it and how you get to that place everyone wants to get to, the place of transcendence where the music is playing through you. This passage from a recent JazzTimes interview conducted by the guitarist Melvin Gibbs with the prolific bass genius and indefatigable band leader William Parker (shown above) is a case in point. Just substitute the word life for music here and you can get a sense of how you can learn and grow through dedication to the art form:

Melvin Gibbs: What do people need to understand when they’re playing with you?

William Parker: "That anything can happen. That the road we wanted to go down could be closed, and we have to take a detour. And sometimes we don’t have a map. Sometimes we don’t have a musical GPS. You’re going to have to find out where we’re going by listening and feeling. We might not get there every time. But we try to move forward, to be open, to respond to sound, respond to the moment, to train ourselves to do that, by being aware. And, you know, you can actually stop playing those chord changes. You don’t have to play that rhythm all the way through. You can play something different. People don’t even know that: 'Oh, I can play something different? Wow! Yeah. Somebody’s saying you don’t have to play that.' The methodology is to be open, to let the music flow through you, and not get in the way of it. But then also know when to give it a little push, a little nudge. Basically, have the philosophy that the music is stronger than you. The music is the mountains. The music is the sky. The music is the clouds. The music is nature. It’s stronger than you, and once you activate it, it’s going to guide you home safely. And it’s going to guide you to another planet, if you want to go there."