Jazz and the Ambiguity of Influence, Part 8: The Meaning of It All
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| Romare Beardon, Jazz Village |
As society scurries forth into the future, I wonder what the fate of jazz will be; actually what I really wonder is whether the riches of what jazz means for humanity will be able to stand up to the seismic tide of digitization and dehumanization to efficaciously influence the course of things. Jazz is so meaningful to me that I really believe a large part of why I was born this time around was to be able to experience it in its full flowering. Perhaps it is only from "the other side" that we can "see" what's really happening during a group jazz improvisation that's really working, but it's only here that we can feel and sense it when the ideas start firing back and forth and overlapping like supercharged synapses in an immense matrix of consciousness; and what's more, when said activity also includes a soul element, where the room is filled with the spirits of the ancestors and all those who have believed that the best response to the violence of the world is to create environments where expression, including aggression, is cooperative even when competitive; where our coaches from up above call to us through the existential membrane, That's it! That's the way to be!
Essentially, I'm talking about a mind-body-spirit synthesis that is actualized through the experience of what they used to call back in the days of free jazz and spirit jazz, "the music." It was an acknowledgment that the stakes are higher than merely being skillful at the genre of music called jazz. I guess that's what we call playing for keeps. But the truth is that there is also transcendent value in simply swinging in a room full of people that are drinking in an atmosphere of diffuse conviviality and the joy is set at simmer. When you know it's good to be alive. Every form of music has the capacity to spark that feeling, of course. And I do get from many of its modes. I wouldn't say all. I do have my limits: for instance bro country and the kind of rap where they yell at you. What I do love with a passion equal to that of jazz is the art of songwriting. A good song creates its own form of the mind-body-spirit synthesis as well. I'm not quite as passionate about "classical" music, the Western mode that matches or surpasses jazz in complexity, though I do very much appreciate it. I especially love symphonic music for the richness of the tones and voicings of instruments. There is a sensuality that is hard to match when you bathe in the sounds of Beethoven or any of the great composers. And the conjuring of emotional states from pathos to grandeur is also superb. Yet, jazz does something for me when listening that I never quite get from classical. When I listen to an improvisation I feel I am thinking with the player, that I too am involved in the act of creation. In classical, I can appreciate the logic of a composition as it unfolds, but it's not the same for me. I rarely feel if I am fully invited in. With jazz I do feel that. But that's a small distinction really. With all great music and art what we experience isn't virtual. It's actually more real than real.
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