May 24, 2004
Jazz
A fan asked the great Satchmo Armstrong, “Pops, what is jazz?” His answer first came in that gentle smile and then this penetrating comment, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”
Walking along his seldom traveled road, Scott Peck observed that one could not find a better metaphor for community than that of a jazz band or, he added for good measure, a basketball team. Music lovers don’t have to play jazz to appreciate it. But we do have to live in community, for that is the way we’re made. Consequently, Peck’s analogy and Armstrong’s response do us a remarkable favor.
They turn us away from simplistic definition to thoughtful understanding, from dehumanizing diagnostic statistics to spiritual enrichment and discernment, in other words, to the very ways and movements that make community work.
If this seems enigmatic to us, it may be because in our society we often seek truth as if we expect to find it and with such language as not to recognize the “answer” when we get it.
Like true community, jazz is inseparably cross-cultural. It mixes western instruments, harmonies, and melodies with African rhythm, phrasing, shaping of sound, and musical conception. No wonder it arose in an international seaport on the Mississippi delta before it headed north to Kansas City and Chicago and on to New York for even more transfusion.
In “The Jazz Book” (Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, 1981), Joachim Berendt suggests that jazz differs from European music in three basic elements, all of which serve to increase its intensity, and each of which enhance the metaphor of community.
(1) Jazz relates uniquely to time, but is not necessarily confined by it. (2) It centers around a basic melody and chord progression and yet retains the spontaneity and vitality of musical production released by improvisation. (3) It allows and expects a sonority and phrasing which reflects the individuality of the performer.
Musicians discover quickly that there are no secrets in a jazz band. Each player’s skills are obvious and accepted, but there is always encouragement and room for growth.
The musical “rules” are not broken without reason and consequence. Very much as in community, they become less casual or optional and more restrictive as the size of the group increases. That there’s a comfortable upper limit to the number of musicians playing jazz together may be a reason why large orchestras seem so ponderous when they attempt it and often feature a smaller, more cohesive group to help keep them on track.
Maybe Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, writer, and village prophet, has size and cohesiveness in mind when he admonishes us for using oxymorons like “global community.” And maybe it’s why the Harlem Globe Trotters basketball team never meets a stranger as they glide all over the planet to the jazzy strains of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” combining the best of both Scott Peck’s metaphors.
Dave Barry, the satirist, has a rock band made up entirely of published writers. He reports that one time when they were performing, a rumor came across the band stand that there’d a been chord change. Sound familiar?
No Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.