Random Thoughts & Theories

So, I read a nice column over on jazz vocalist Champian Fulton‘s site, in which she brings up some personal anecdotes about encountering lighthearted barbs targeting Jazz in the media, and then later, discovering that Jazz legend Barry Harris shared her view on those same instances.  It’s a nice column, and you should read it before proceeding onto mine… Follow this LINK to the article… because I address it below.

And, thus, my response…

It appears like there’s a few things in play here…

1.  Regarding the David Letterman comment:  Thelonious Monk should offend some people.  Even today, his sound presents itself as innovative and unconventional.  Of all the Jazz greats, it seems that Monk’s music has been the toughest for followers to emulate.  That, to me, speaks of the singularity of his creative voice.  Something like that is bound to rub some people the wrong way, and while it’s unfortunate that David Letterman is one of those people, I think when a musician with a very strong following is able to incite some people to say “turn that music off,” that’s a sign of the music’s strength.

2. On The Office, neither Dwight nor Angela are very bright characters.  They are seriously warped in serious ways.  If real people in a real job setting and behaving as they did on the show, Angela and Dwight would have accumulated an impressive amount of both job terminations and restraining orders.  I wouldn’t take anything they say personally.

2.5.  Now, as far as the writers of The Office and Parks & Rec taking potshots at Jazz… they’re both comedy shows, so they’re gonna take potshots at everyone.  It would be worse if Jazz were ignored altogether, deemed not even worthy of a couple jabs from major network mass-consumption television shows.  And that’s all they are… network tv shows… not the kind of critical pedigree that one need feel self-conscious about receiving a barb or two from.  File under “whatevs.”

3.  The larger picture has to do with why Jazz is the target of this kind of pointed humor.  I’d posit it has to do with its reputation, deserved or not, of being a thinking person’s music.  It wasn’t always that way, but that reputation has evolved over time to where we are now.  Generally speaking, and with plenty of exceptions, there exists a segment of the population who might be interested in exploring Jazz were it not for the perceived barrier-to-entry of getting learned up on the subject.  As opposed to, say, rock or hip hop or pop music, where one just hears a couple bands on the radio or a friend’s house and dives into the music, Jazz is viewed, by some, as having some sort of education requirement to be able to sufficiently appreciate the music, that it’s not enough to simply like a tune… one must understand why they like a jazz song and learn to like it the correct way.

Yes, yes, I know, this isn’t always the case, but it never fails to amaze me when I encounter people who express this exact reason for why they hesitate simply picking up a Coltrane album or something new by Dave Douglas.  It’s unclear just how pervasive this prevailing reputation of Jazz is, but it is out there.

And, as a result, it’s why Jazz gets picked on from time to time.  It’s a passive-aggressive version of self-deprecation.  Scrabble players get it from people who smile and say sweetly, “Oh, I’m not smart enough to know all those crazy words.”  It’s seen on sports broadcasts… the moment one of the announcers throws out a word with more than three syllables, everyone else in the booth immediately pounces with an exclamation of confusion over the word followed by a banal joke about having spent more time in the gym than the classroom.  It’s seen everywhere in society when a person fears that their level of knowledge or expertise is not up to the challenge at hand, and rather than simply embrace their uncertainty and step up, they enter a defensive crouch of self-deprecation and take a jab at the perceived source of their self-generated discomfort.

But the thing of it, the absolute truth of it all, is that nothing could be easier than exploring Jazz.  Its reach goes back nearly a century, and its present-day expanse covers the entire planet.  The sound of Jazz is as varied as the artists who create it.  We are surrounded by doors that open a path to Jazz, and it’s as simple as taking a step forward to begin.  You don’t need to read a Jazz primer before beginning.  You take chances on new music, and you like what you like, and you dislike what you dislike, and you continue on from that foundation.  There are no pop quizzes.  There is no preparation fee to begin.  You go to the music store, the library, online, live shows, wherever you choose to begin exploring, and you simply begin listening.  It’s as simple as that.

There are many different ways to appreciate art.  Find the way (or ways) that work for you, and don’t ever let anybody tell you that you’re doing it wrong.  Our connections with art, with the creativity of the artist, they’re a very personal thing that is wound up in everything we’ve ever experienced, dreamed, wished for, and envisioned, and nobody is a better judge than you of how it all plays out when you listen to a Jazz album for the first time.

There is no wrong.  There is only what you like.  There is no obstacle to beginning.  There is nothing to fear.  There is only you.

And that’s no joke.

Happy New Year, everyone!  Here’s hoping that 2013 treats you all well.

I wasn’t really sure what to post here.

I didn’t want it to just be a review post.  It seemed right that it should be something different, something special.  I decided, instead, to write something blog-y.  I suspect this will make some of you cringe (that is, if my use of the word ‘blog-y’ hasn’t done so, already).

I caught a cold yesterday.  A bad one.  Bad for me, at least.  I get little colds now and then, but nothing notable… the kind of thing where I resist any attempts to care for me or “tend to my cold” (guh, I hate that phrase, makes it sound like a job).  But yesterday, waves of chills came crashing down upon me, a giant plume of fuzziness spread out in my head, my stomach rumbled of nausea, and I got one of those sourceless headaches that seem to clamp down upon my temples indiscriminately.  And if that weren’t signs enough, I drank two large mugs of hot broth last night.  I hate broth.  Hate.  But when presented to me, my body sent craving signals to my brain, and much to my own horror, I found myself drinking not one, but two mugs of the god-awful stuff.

I’m still feeling it today.

Sitting here, drinking my morning coffee, it has me thinking back to another time from my past when I had one of these indisputable common colds.  I was living in Denver.  Life was pretty good, with its perfections and its flaws as each life possesses.  Anyways, it was a cold October day.  Clouds painted in every color of grey cloaked the Rocky Mountains to the west, and what little sunlight got through illuminated the snowy peaks and foothills in a heavenly glow.  If it weren’t for the sneezes that began wracking my frame and the chills the descended upon me, I probably would’ve stopped to admire the pretty scene.  I was at some coffee shop on Capitol Hill when the cold struck.  I can’t remember which coffee shop, which is a shame, because I had lots of fun times in Denver at many such places.

Anyways, I knew what was what, and that I should head home before the cold really started punching me in the face.  I lived nearby, so it wasn’t going to be a hike or anything.  However, I swung by the post office first.  On my way out that morning, there had been a slip in my mailbox stating that I had to come by the post office and pick up a package.  I picked it up on the way home.

It was CDs.  I was my first package of BMG mail order CDs.  This was around 1996 (approximately).  BMG was still doing mail order only stuff (I don’t think they established an on-line presence until around 2002).  I finally took them up on one of their little mailing offers, which I probably yanked out of a Downbeat magazine.  Anyways, the CDs came that day.

To this day, I struggle to remember which CDs arrived that day.  I do remember, quite vividly, how excited I was opening the package up, this wonderful music I’d gifted myself, and that it had arrived on a day to cheer me up when bad health was the only thing in sight.  Also, I had recently quit my job and was using my savings to take time off to write my first novel, thus there was nothing in my budget for buying new music… free CDs were exactly what the doctor ordered (assuming that Jazz CDs were actually something a medical doctor could specialize in).  I flipped through the CDs.  There were probably six in total.  As best as I can remember, here’s those six CDs:

I’m absolutely certain of the Frisell, Tyner, and Gordon selections.  I did get a Mingus, but it may have been Ah Hum instead of Three Or Four Shades Of Blues.  I want to say the sixth selection was either Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz or Horace Silver’s Song For My Father.  I’m pretty sure I got a Coltrane in the batch, but it might’ve been Giant Steps instead of Blue Trane.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m growing sure that it was Giant Steps.

The Bill Frisell album was the only modern recording I picked up then.  I was right in the middle of a decade long buying binge of 50s & 60s Jazz, but Frisell was a local guy who I’d been turned on to several years earlier by my best buddy Zachariah, and his music really connected with me.  I had already picked up most of Frisell’s recordings up to that point, enjoying both his ambient drone on the ECM label and his voodoo-Jazz and bluegrass-Jazz sounds on Nonesuch.  His 1996 recording Quartet, however, took it to a new level.  It remains one of my favorite albums of all time.  Right out the gate, Frisell makes a huge statement that his creative development has reached a new plateau with the song “Tales From the Far Side.”

The entire album consists of this spooky style of Jazz.  Between Frisell’s guitars and effects, the happy sighs of Ron Miles’s trumpet, the strangely melodic voicings for Curtis Fowlkes trombone, and the inventive use of violin and tuba by Eyvind Kang, I was hypnotically transfixed by this album.  It sent me to different places.  And with the cold weather outside and gloomy skies and shadowy Rocky Mountain range in full view from the windows of my fourth floor Denver apartment on Washington Ave. & 12th, this music made everything alright.

A year later, I saw the same quartet perform at the Boulder Theater in support of the Quartet album.  It was a magical night.  But that’s a post for another day.

Okay, I think that’s it.  This post was surprisingly focused considering my head feels like it’s a fishbowl full of dirty water.

I want to send a belated happy holidays wishes to everyone and again wish everyone a happy new year.  Especially those of you who gotta ride solo through the holiday season.  As I’ve mentioned before, I know how bittersweet that can be, so I have good thoughts for those of you in particular.  Also, here’s to a better year for my friend Cicily Janus, who could really use some positive momentum and good tiding in 2013.

I should probably stop now.  I feel myself getting especially sappy.  If I keep typing, I’ll probably start wishing the best for all the cats abandoned at shelters and caught homeless in bad weather all of my love, which, of course, they know they have, those sweet kitties.

Uh oh.

Cheers.

When talking about favorites in music, it’s best not to speak in absolutes. The listener changes over time. The music does, too. Everything changes. But when I ignore the mine field of absolutes and state that John Coltrane‘s A Love Supreme is my favorite Jazz album of all-time, it’s about as close to a certainty as I’ll ever get when it comes to this kind of thing.

I guess I just feel like shooting the breeze about it today. I don’t expect this column will be very focused, but whatever. It’s Sunday and Autumn outside and I feel like daydreaming.

God, there are so many reasons I love this album. Just from a music standpoint, the opening track of the four-part suite “Acknowledgement,” with that dramatic crash of tam-tam, followed by some cymbal washes, a phrase on bass, and then Coltrane’s opening salvo, it’s such a powerful statement that exudes spirituality and enticement for what’s to come. And then Coltrane’s potent mix of languid phrasing and fiery electricity, the album just takes off from there.

And the meaning I attribute to the album’s epic cycle of identity, conflict, pass through, and resolved contentment, it speaks to my own experiences in life just as, I’m sure, it spoke to Coltrane’s in his own way… And that transferability of individual personal meaning is one of the very best qualities of creative endeavors, as is the perfect malleability of the art to the unique vision we each possess.

I remember listening to this album in my car as I drove over the Rocky Mountains, feeling free and unencumbered by any of the problems that had been weighing upon me before I hit the road. I remember listening to this album on my iPod while walking along the Chicago lakefront, a park, colored leaves, and cars buzzing down Lake Shore Drive to my right, the choppy deep green waves of Lake Michigan to my left, the Drake Hotel, Hancock Tower, and Chicago skyline straight ahead, and seagulls soaring overhead while crossing a slate gray Midwest autumn sky. I remember apartment windows in many cities and A Love Supreme playing as I looked out a window at the town I was calling my home.

Just as this music is timeless, my experiences and memories are imbued with that same timeless quality when this album comes pouring out of my speakers, and I feel as young or old as I did at the time I recall listening to this album last. It’s a visceral experience the way a particular album can take me back in time (and, perhaps, forward in time, too), and A Love Supreme is especially useful in the art of time traveling.

For Coltrane, this was a spiritual album. I’m sure it was. In many ways, it’s a spiritual thing for me, too. And as I mention above, a wonderful quality of art is its malleability to the human experience, so whatever message or meaning of spirituality A Love Supreme was for John Coltrane, for me, it’s about transcending a static view of life, a mundane interface with time, and, instead, being cognizant of the series of miracles required just for me to possess the gift of being here, alive, and experience time as a holistic entity and not just a series of tiny victories and obliterating regrets.

It’s a powerful album, and it has a powerful effect on me. The best art does this, and this is as it should be.

So, anyways, thinking about this album as I was, I got curious and poked around the internet to search out some renditions of A Love Supreme recorded by modern jazz musicians, and thought I’d share them with you.

Let’s begin…

*****

ASA Trio

What I like about this version: I wouldn’t have imagined how A Love Supreme sounded via a guitar-organ trio, but ASA Trio took care of that problem for me. There’s a nice airy groove to the tune. It has plenty of the excitable energy of the original, but presents the composition with a free-floating hop and bounce, sort of releasing me from the spiritual heaviness. I like how ASA sort of separates out an aspect of Coltrane’s song and presents it in an entirely different light, without straying far at all from the original. There’s no mistaking this song for anything but Coltrane’s classic album, which makes the differentiation all the more admirable. Cool stuff.

Your album personnel: Agnar Már Magnússon (organ), Andrés Thor (guitar), and Scott McLemore (drums).

*****

Matthew Halsall

What I like about this version: It plays it close to the original, but voiced with a modern voice by a new generation of jazz artists. Nat Birchall, the man in the tenor sax position on this tune, has often had his sound (and his albums) compared to the sound of Coltrane. He has that mix of power and lyricism that embodied much of Coltrane’s playing. Matthew Halsall, a frequent collaborator of Birchall’s, brings his trumpet to the mix, an element not present on the Coltrane original. Not only does it make for an intriguing ingredient, this intrigue is enhanced by Halsall’s modal style (which often gets him compared to Miles Davis) and how he tries to fit it into Coltrane’s opening transition into the free jazz sound.

Your song personnel: Matthew Halsall (trumpet), Nat Birchall (tenor sax), Rachael Gladwin (harp), Adam Fairhall (piano), Gavin Barras (double bass), and Gaz Hughes (drums).

*****

Sam Newsome

What I like about this version. It’s pared way down, which allows me to focus on the original composition’s sonic qualities. While Coltrane could be surprisingly lyrical during moments of sheer force of will, there has always been an especial appeal in the way his sheets of sound wash over me… almost cleansing. Newsome’s version doesn’t have the same effect, instead emulating Coltrane’s sonic traits as focused blasts of notes, like blasts of tight air funnels, a percussive force that’s also calming in their way. Neat stuff. Found on his new release The Art of the Soprano Vol. 1.

Your song personnel: Sam Newsome (soprano sax).

*****

Wadada Leo Smith

What I like about this version: Pared down, serene, and inspired. From Smith’s album Kulture Jazz, he gets right to the heart of this song. The part that delights me most about this performance is that it’s not any way that I ever heard the song before in my own head or heart, but hearing this version makes me sit up and think, yes, subconsciously, I’ve connected with it this way before. Smith’s version feels very personal to me, as if I had come up with it myself and just never realized it. I think it’s beautiful when an artist can inspire that kind of connection with a listener.

Your song personnel: Wadada Leo Smith (bamboo llute, flugelhorn, harmonica, koto, maracas Mbira, percussion, trumpet, vocals).

*****

Lift

And this last track is by somebody who goes by the name of “Lift” on his Soundcloud page. He doesn’t give a name, only describes his music as “Guitar noodling from Armenia.”

He covers some other jazz tunes, too. And while I do find his rendition likable in its way, mostly I just love that he sat down and decided to play the song and hit the record button and share it with others on Soundcloud. I think that action speaks to the same thing that inspired me to make this post, about how much Coltrane’s A Love Supreme affects people, and the transitive nature of art, how one creation inspires more, ever outward.

That’s it.

Have a great Sunday.

[EDITOR’S NOTE:  Thanks to Josh Maxey for pointing out that, coincidentally, A Love Supreme was recorded on December 9th, the same day that Bird is the Worm first opened for business.]

So, I got some cds in the mail today.  Three, to be exact.  Before I had finished staring at the cover of the second to flip to the third, I was already traveling back in time to the day and place of the recording session.

The thing of it is, I was never there to begin with.  Hell, the recording dates on two of the albums occurred not long after I had gotten sufficiently adept at walking on two feet.  The third cd was recorded before I was born.  But still, just the sight of those album covers took me back.

And that’s one aspect of the power that Music Of The Past has on me.  Staring at album covers and liner note photos of jazz albums recorded back in the fifties and sixties, especially some of those classic Blue Note and Prestige and ESP album covers or the great liner note photos of the Impulse albums, the sense of history is so palpable that I can feel it pulling me back in time, as if I had been there to witness the recording session personally.

The ability to conjure memories and nostalgia for times and places that I never actually experienced… that’s power.

And I have to admit, as focused as I am on the jazz of the present day, it’s an aspect of older jazz albums that I had forgotten about.

We create because we are compelled to.  Creativity is a truly awesome human trait, and the act of expressing all the imagination and unspeakable thoughts and emotions bouncing around inside our heads and hearts and souls through an expression of art, it’s just about the purest acts of humanity we can give substance to.

What is important in creativity is the artistic expression in the present moment, where it’s just the artist(s) and their art… the rest of the universe doesn’t exist.  This act, a distillation of imagination and creativity while existing only in that moment, it makes an imprint in Time.  That imprint is represented by an album or a book or a painting, etc, but there is an emotional and psychological presence to it that is so much more than just the physical product one can hold in their hands.  And it’s so damn palpable.  It’s why I can open the mail, look down at a cd cover from a recording session that occurred forty years ago, and feel myself traveling back to a time and place I’d never been, and feel the itch of memories for events that never happened to me personally.

Now, that is why art is important.  We create these things that are expressions of ourselves which affect others in a variety of profound ways, and which will continue to do so even as they outlive the artists who created them.

And the artists of today?  The jazz artists recording right now as I write this?  If you put your heart into your music, in forty years, in four hundred years, people will still hear the beat of your heart as clearly as they hear the notes from your instrument.  And they just might travel back in time to see it in person.

Anyways, that’s what I felt as I flipped through the above albums.  Just felt like putting it down in type.  I’m pretty sure I’ve had a discussion (or discussions) over on the AllAboutJazz forum with others on this same subject.  It’s not a new experience, this sense of time travel, but its recurrence never lessens its potency.

Cheers.