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"Jazz Is... Cool Like That"
| I can remember a time before G.W. or Daddy Bush resided in the White House when a brother named George was campaigning for the hearts and minds of America on the platform: 'one nation under a groove'. It was the '70's and Funkmeisters were all 'gettin down just fooor the funk of it'. The most memorable mantra of that moment in history was; 'Funk is its own reward.' While I've been inclined to agree, given the number of sweat soaked suits I've sacrificed on the strobe lit alters of the Funk gods, I maintain that Cool, Funk's predecessor, child of Be-bop and Hip-hop's grand daddy is an even greater reward. In this 'never let 'em see you sweat', 'you must be gelin' world I wonder why we can't all... just be 'cool'. Jazz cool! Even the TV pizza ad says 'it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.' Cool might have spared us violence at Vibe. The Best of Both World's tour might not have been reduced to one world if everyone had just been cool. November 19th Pistons/Pacers would have been just another regular season game. Some of our best and brightest young stars might still be with us if they had been living the cool life rather than - whatever the opposite of cool is. Jazz is cool! Always has been. Satchmo and a single swipe of his always handy crisp white hanky was the very picture of cool. His broad, infectious smile hinted that everything is under control. In fact, it was he that introduced individual solo improvisation (one of several defining elements of jazz), to the music. Diz, Monk, Duke, Count, Prez, Hawk, Trane, Ella, Sarah, Eckstine, were all cool. Miles, of course, cool. Ask Herbie, Wayne or Chick about Miles' cool or just listen to the music. In fact, you become cooler just listening to the music. Taken in doses, a little bit each day; jazz is a tonic. It can smooth out your rough edges like smooth music is prescribed to do, but smooth music comes with side effects; gradual dulling or dimming of the wits. Good jazz is like a tonic. Be careful when you select your jazz. Take the time to read the liner notes, listen in the store and borrow from the library. Find out what you like. You may find that you like Miles in the morning but you like Herbie when you come home at night. You might like Trane in the car on your way to work and Duke on the way home. If you're not sure where to start don't be afraid to ask somebody. You'll know who to ask and don't be self-conscious because they know that just asking makes you cool. They'll know you're on to something. You're about to make a life altering breakthrough. You're about to be transformed. My Pop used to sit on the side of his bed, white t-shirt, white boxers, leaning down into the barrel and reed of his tenor mouthpiece, blowing one particular tune I remember, 'Good Bait' with a cigarette dangling from his fingers; a tenor man, a jazz man. I was a kid but even then I knew he was cool. When he left, I knew that wherever he was, whether he ever came home or not, Arnie was cool. After all, I have him to thank for the Miles handle, making me jazz cool by default I suppose. The combination of twelve tones and twenty six symbols give us the rich language of jazz. Some of our coolest progenitors of the art form elected to allow the tones to remain silent while they whipped those 26 letters into a frenzy of black and white reflections and technicolor imaginings. Do not to sleep the likes of Ellison, Hughes, Wright and Baldwin on the way to your jazz enlightenment. "And so I play the invisible music of my isolation." Cool? Ask Gil-Scott (Heron) or Nikki G. Now, before you argue that the jazzman is an anachronism in today's times, consider that just two terms ago the nation's tenor toting Commander in Chief made no secret of his proclivity toward the jazz life. That horn made him cool enough to have been the third Blues Brother. We're now entering our second term of a Commander who seems to subscribe to the cool school of 'Duke' Wayne. Too stiff, too contrived. The inherent problem is a factor known as fakin' the funk. While Tyrone Powers, Hank Fonda and Gable, the Duke's contemporaries and arguably, his competition, were away fighting the war, Wayne was in Hollywood perfecting his squint and swagger for the big screen. That's no way to earn street credibility. The fact is, from the beginnings of secular music, musicians have found themselves in the company and environment of shady, unsavory characters from small town slicksters to big city gangsters. Cool became an instinct; a survival tool. It's worth noting that the musician's objective was not to become a gangster but to simply survive the game in the same environment by being cool. But the cool was real, it had to be. Today, some music leaves the listener, not cool, but hostile and aggressive. The essential quality of jazz is its cooling affect on everything it touches directly and influences indirectly. That affect is evident in movies from Spike to Eastwood, fashion from Miles to Marsalis, Nancy Wilson to Cassandra Wilson, Be-bop to Hip-hop. The B-boy stance was cool. Cool is three brothers in black fedoras and white shell toe Addidas rocking "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith; Chuck D and P.E. with Anthrax; Branford, Omar and Kenny blazing the Sting band; Living Color; Prince; all cool! It's a unique blend of the soulful and the cerebral; irreverence and tradition. No one can dictate a particular style or sound that everyone must follow. Besides, the cool jazz thing to do is to ignore such a dictate anyway. In fact, the beauty is in the individualism. It's not so much the sounds as the frame of mind, the attitude. It's all about how you choose to bring it. Try a beret and a goatee just for fun. Jazz heads will get it. After all; jazz is cool like that. Article also published in Black Men's Magazine June 2005 |
