Subscribe to this feed
<$1.29.2006$>
Jazz - Trippin'
| Whew! I just finished an exhilarating, mind blowing, adrenaline pumping, two hour and fifteen minute set of jazz. Oops! Pardon me if I got sweat on your page. What most people don't realize is that jazz can saunter like a summer stroll in the park or it can go like an all out blazing summer Olympic sprint. Tonight was more like a 2 hour marathon - non stop, moving the whole time from mood to mood, in and out of reality like nothing else I know. We traveled sans flight plan but somehow traversed the globe from New York to Nairobi and back again - we traveled time from the 50's to 2010. In fact, we shot back in time to primal screams that would've made the folks in the next cave over get up, light a fire and come running to see what was going on. It was raw energy, passion and ideas that fueled our flight! Gut twisting g-forces - then in a blink, we'd beam into a mind spinning, heart pounding, 10,000 rpm, red line fury of spontaneous rhythmic ideas that would make a John Woo action scene seem like a scene out of The Summer of '42. A film action sequence, no matter how exciting, like the DeNiro car chase in the movie Rodin - is mind blowing, but it starts and end is in the same place and time. That scene was long for a car chase - O.J. not withstanding, but ends up in the same city just minutes later. Even an expertly crafted fight sequence, complete with martial arts and weapons of individual destruction with all its excitement, begins and ends in the same setting. I suppose if I had to liken jazz to a cinematic expression it would be a flight of F-16 eagles going from a dead stop on deck to mach 2 plus and minutes into the flight approaching restricted foreign air space with bogies on alert. In jazz no air space is restricted and no bogies. The closest thing to an enemy is a flinch; a choke - a fractional moment of doubt that you may not pull off the idea in your mind. But, if you're aware of the riff while it's still in your mind it's too late anyway - you lose! Remember, you're moving at mach 2? Alright, forget the F-16's, you’re in Star Wars. Even Star Trek had warp speed. You may capture the rapid speed of jazz as a fighter jockey or Jedi but in jazz the computer can't fly the terrain at sea level or save you from a black hole a galaxy away. You're all you've got. You are the computer... 'Right Hal'? In flight, in space or out of space, you miss the flavors; the cayenne, the curry, the Cajun gumbo and the salsa. You miss the tango, the fedora, the beret, the satin, the lace, the cognac, the smell of leather in a 10 year old Porsche, $100 Cuban cigars and $100 perfume on a full lipped, black hair, long legged sister from the Bronx or Brazil or somewhere. Jazz is like a dream; you can patch together colorful pieces of places and people and paste them into scenes in surreal time. In a dream characters from your childhood can interact with folks from your present joined by people you've never met in places you've never been doing things you've only imagined doing. These are just some of the things that race through my head while I'm playing; good love, good food, beautiful things, exotic places, lovely people living through pleasure and pain and back again. I think of moves that Phyllis used to make... she was all jazz. Angie Bofill... jazz. Rochelle and Laylah and Cassandra... jazz. I think of how smooth Eric Gale played the lines... jazz. The first time I heard Lou Rawls I knew... Natural Man was a jazz man. For you readers I'll break it down like this; LeBron is jazz. Tiger is jazz. Iverson is jazz. Shaq and Kobe... jazz. Venus and Serena... jazz. Bruce Lee and Jet Li... jazz. Edgerrin James or whoever your favorite running back is... jazz. Come on... look at the moves. It's the failure to fear failing. It's the courage to make your mark, your way. No flinch; no choke. Now, understand this; not every, so called, jazz artist brings this edge, intensity or level of play to the game of jazz but don’t be mad, neither does every baller. Some players just seem to get the first step off faster than everyone else on the floor - and BAM! What I love about jazz is without a hint, a cue or warning you can play from heaven to hell and back to heaven again. You can take your listener from the subway to the L; Cannes to cotton fields; Ipenema to Eatonville; Pacific coast highway to Paris to Peking to Lima, Peru to Central Park to... wait... that many P's means pianissimo. This must be the fade. Out! Article also published in Black Men's Magazine Apr/May 2006 |
