That's Jazz!

Miles Davis, one of the biggest inspirations in my life!

So, yesterday, I was browsing through the music stand at my local Tuesday market, I had already picked up four LPs and just as I was about to pay, I noticed one more box to flick through. The owner (who looked like a combination of Seasick Steve and Worzel Gummage) of the stand said to me in an almost dismissive tone 'That's Jazz!', as if a mid-twenty-something guy wouldn't know what Jazz is. The way he said it was like, it's a forbidden secret, something alchemical, and supernatural. Something you have to know about to like...

Which is pretty absurd, I got into Jazz without knowing anything about it. I didn't know who the stars are, I couldn't tell (or even know of) the difference between Bebop and Cool. Obviously though, as time went on, and my interest in Jazz grew, I've become reasonably knowledgeable about it. I can't list exactly who played in Charlie Parker's band in 1945 for sure, but that isn't that relevant to enjoying the music.

However, what is true is that there is a sense of alchemy to Jazz, in how it draws such base elements together, and creates gold from air. Jazz is dangerous, especially as it became more about personal interpretation, experience and improvisation, 'the moment', it became a right dark world. By the fifties, drugs and Prostitutes were used as payment more than cash, many legends had already set their life on a final crash course, and many would die young. However from this darkness comes the ultimate expression, the way out, the now institutionalised view of the Jazz performer, being at one on the stage, the music is the escape and the raison d'être. Billy Holiday dealt with much trouble in her life, yet propelled the art of singing into such alien territory, the voice as sheer emotion. Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Chet Baker and so many more were either briefly or long-lasting drug addicts, yet took music beyond what could be expected. Miles Davis himself was a one-man revolution!

Sun Ra took Jazz to the reaches of space,
and he never came back down.

While Jazz did become infiltrated by the commercial sector, and even men like Miles Davis would produce sub-par albums for the cash (these would flitter around during the fifties, but by the sixties and seventies, he was the living embodiment of artistic integrity), many leading figures would still create such earth-shattering works of spirituality. Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz was a quest for a new music, looking back into the history of 'black music' whilst surging forwards with such energy that those who didn't follow through were often left drifting in the cold dark space of irrelevance. Through it, he managed to perfectly secure the sound of the times, the anarchy and chaos of America's racial situation, and the search for a new 'Black Identity'. John Coltrane took his art to further heights, the saxophone becoming almost a direct connection to the spiritual world, the world of pure feeling and emotion, free of earthly baggage. An idea which was surpassed only by Sun Ra, the all loving angel from the planet Saturn, one of the original Moog players, and a conduit to true cosmic energy. His band, the 'Arkestra' were themselves used as a great big instrument by Sun Ra, whose out of this world Jazz would eventually influence the emergence of psychedelic rock.

There is a wide dismissal of Jazz particularly amongst the white middle class (who may perhaps have a Wynton Marsalis or Kenny G CD because it makes them feel oh so cultured because they like 'jazz' with a lowercase j), many comedians will make jokes about Jazz and it's experimental nature, as if it's an embarassing footnote in the history of music. Ultimately though, this comes from the reactionary attitudes of the white elite during the height of the American civil rights movement. The more violent and oppressive the elite got, the more expressive and experimental Jazz got, the darker, edgier and  painful the situation, the harsher, more aggresive, experimental Jazz got, to express these feelings. Unfortunately, the cultural baggage was put down and has stayed there. You just know that whenever somebody uses the phrase 'experimental jazz', they haven't listened to any of it.

Billie Holiday, singing with a voice
straight from the heart

Ultimately, my love of Jazz is prettymuch infinite, and I feel like it's one of the 21st century's greatest mistakes that Jazz is being left as this mouldy old music from the past, to be viewed like Bach and Vivaldi. Jazz is true music from the soul, it's influence is around everywhere, and it's feelings of individuality and expression are far more relevent now in our world of corporate and commercial mundanity. In a world where people think that tweeting about their breakfast is the height of individual expression, we need Jazz more than ever. It's powerful stuff, it's beautiful and ugly, dangerous yet loving, free yet oppressive, personal yet impossibly cosmic. Young people should not be discouraged from listening to Jazz, it should be encouraged, and hopefully it can earn it's place as the most pure form of expression around.