Jazz language

On Tuesday, August third, 1999, I called in to work sick and slept in. It was a beautiful sunny day outside, and even the opacity of the dank green curtains couldn’t keep the brightness out of my tiny apartment. When I finally woke up around noon, I realized I had the most incredible dream…

There was a circle of children from every corner of the world, sitting with rapt attention at the feet of an old African story teller. He was a towering man wearing an all-white Nigerian Babariga with shocks of course gray hair escaping from under his hat. His smile was magnetic, and his huge, strong hands motioned silently for me to come sit with the rest of the children. As I approached, I recognized his face so clearly. It was Leroy Vinegar – the man who so patiently taught me what it was to live jazz. I never knew him well, but he had touched me in a silent and permanent way, just as he had so many others. It wasn’t until a day or so later that I found out he had passed away that very morning.

In the intervening years, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this dream and what it meant. Just like the man inside it, it has left an indelible ripple in my life. And with any ripples, there must be still waters to really carry it forward. For me, that still water was broken for a long time by a deep struggle with music, career and relationships. As the waters have calmed and I have found peace, that dream came back to me, and so did its meaning, as you will soon see.

I recently had a conversation with Steve Coleman about my personal struggle with the nexus between jazz and my own musical language. His reply captured the essence of things I had known for a long time, but had never fully coalesced for me:

“If you think about any labels at all, this will restrict your creativity. For the most part the pioneers of any kind of music were not thinking in terms of labels or style names. You can think about a particular ‘form’ (say a particular kind of cycle or whatever) but I never think in terms of what are called styles, not even what people think is supposed to be my style. I don’t think in terms of styles and I don’t consider myself as having a style. Creating with no style in mind, playing without playing, composing without composing. I only concentrate on what I am trying to say (more on this below). So as far as I am concerned, there is no ‘nexus’ between the dynamic language (meaning always changing) that I am currently involved with and that of so-called ‘Jazz’, because I refuse to accept that ‘Jazz’ exists. ‘Jazz’ for me is the not-so-creative part that most people relate to when they hear some forms from the past. I don’t know if I am being clear, but I have never considered the music of people like Duke Ellington, Don Byas, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, John Coltrane, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill – I have never considered this creative tradition ‘Jazz’. I don’t care what others call it and I don’t even pay much attention to what these people themselves (i.e. the musicians) call it. I’m just giving you my honest opinion about this. So there is no ‘nexus’ for me, I don’t need to worry about any kind of consistency as I only deal with where I am coming from, trying to be as truthful and consistent within myself as possible – in all areas of life. I think that if I can stay in that space, live with that vibration, then the other things take care of themselves.”

“ Ultimately I believe that humans are the living embodiment of creativity, we don’t need to ‘try’ to be creative, we just need to have knowledge of what we are – and the creativity naturally comes from us being in harmony with our true nature.”

“This is the simplest way I can say this.”

“In my case, my focus has always been what I am trying to say (using music as a sonic symbolic language) and how do I want to say it. When I was coming up learning how to play on the South side of Chicago the older cats were always stressing “get your own sound”, “find out what you want to say”, “what’s your story” and stuff like that. Since they all sounded pretty much unique from each other I interpreted this to mean that I needed to find my own way musically to say what I wanted to say. So then began the search, even before I could play anything even a little well. This meant that I was learning the basics of music and at the same time figuring out what I want to say and how do I want to say it using music as my language.”

“The funny thing is, I STILL feel like that is exactly where I am now! I am still very much trying to learn the BASICS of music, or I should say that now I am trying to learn the BASIS of music – now even more than before. And I am definitely still trying to work out the what, why and how in my expression of that music.”

“Jason, what really clarified things for me (and I had a long talk with Michael Brecker about this) was when I got some kind of handle on ‘what am I trying to say with my music’.”

“We often hear of people talking about ‘tell a story’ with your music, or even with a solo, but what does that mean? Well, it is much too complex to go into detail in one email (I may attempt to write a small book on this one day) but I think that it simply means the same thing as ‘telling a story’ normally would mean to a person. But what I found out is that I needed to look at what ‘telling a story’ meant in ancient times to people a long time ago. Because ‘telling a story’ then was not exactly the same thing as ‘telling a story’ is today. Back then ‘telling a story’ meant to talk about something using symbols that revealed a principle on multiple levels. Today ‘telling a story’ may mean to someone to talk about something specific, like for example a relationship you have with a woman, or something like this. So I started to look at the kinds of stories that people like Bach, Beethoven, Bartok, Parker, Coltrane, etc. were telling along with other kinds of music from Africa, Asia etc. I wanted to find out what these stories were and how were they being told musically.”

“This helped me a lot because at this point I began to focus on the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ of what I was trying to say, and the ‘how’ part kind of took care of itself. In my very early years I was focusing more on this rhythm, this melody, this harmony, this form, this phrasing and things like that. But even so I eventually found that there was a connection between when I was intuitively figuring out what and how to play and this later period when I was more into the message part of what I was trying to say.”

“Regarding compositions, I always wrote songs about something, so there was always a subject matter at hand. Ultimately there is no difference between composition and improvisation for me. I consider improvisation ‘spontaneous composition’, it is just a matter of the method of creation. Spontaneous Composition requires that you develop the ability to create things in real time, in the moment. So you need to develop skills that address these problems. But the things that I want to create spontaneous are no different than the things I want to create with preconceived compositions. Many of my so-called preconceived compositions start off as spontaneous compositions, and I just notate them later. What I work on a lot is the kinds of sonic forms (rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, tonal, shapes, etc.) that will form the symbols in my symbolic library, and this is the basis of my musical language. Then I work on internalizing these forms so that I can create them and others similar to them spontaneously by feeling. But I am not just choosing forms randomly or just according to what I want to hear or like. The forms are a big part of what I want to say, as they themselves are the sonic symbols that carry these multiple level messages.”

Leroy’s final gift to me was to see him not with a bass in his hands, but children at his feet, learning and growing as he nurtured something much deeper than musical appreciation inside of them. He had a story to tell, just as I do, and just as you do. One of the most difficult aspects of accepting this is to realize that our own stories have just as much to offer to the world as anyone else’s. And, in many ways, our stories are the embodiment of the life we lead, our hopes, our fears, experiences and desires. Ultimately what comes out of our instruments is a map of our souls, if we let it be. The trap we fall into as “jazz musicians” is to try and tell someone else’s story, as though it was our own. In the world, we think of this as a fable or legend. You can repeat a very intriguing story, but you can never tell it with the same passion and depth as a story you have lived. Musically, the same is true. We can play a phrase or passage exactly like any one of the greats, but it is not ours. Even songs or chord changes belong to someone else. This is the essence of why I have chosen to explore different worlds of improvisation and spontaneous composition instead of focusing on learning standards, or transcribing other peoples’ solos. I understand on a deep level why that path of learning is so often taken. It is in many ways the difference between reading about something academically and doing it yourself. Both approaches yield a different set of outcomes in relation to how we perceive the world, and how we ourselves are perceived. Music to me is very far from academic or safe. When improvising, I like to live in the moment, to take chances, to do things I have never done before. Every time we play our instruments we have this opportunity. When music becomes a purely academic pursuit, the language becomes the end instead of the means to an end. Language is merely a description of something and not the thing itself. And, this distinction becomes critical for any musician who wants to tell their story. It’s not about the words or notes. Sometimes it is a scream. Sometimes it is silence. When it is real, you know it, and so does the audience, because they feel it, see it, believe it.



What is your story?