Jazz for aficionados

stuartk, very well said! I do understand how difficult all jazz is and the degree of study and musicality that is involved. And I am really glad that you mentioned the inner feminine. As a writer, it something I have to struggle to find within myself. I think like a male, but I am learning. 

In regards to appreciating the degree of musical sophistication and intellectual understanding of music that is required by jazz musicians, I am in awe of all jazz musicians I hear, especially live. I began listening to jazz is the 60s, and at some point, perhaps in the 90s, I felt I wasn't hearing anything really new, except in Brazillian jazz. And maybe that wasn't so much new as new to my ear.

Many years ago i went to hear Wynton Masalis live. Obviously the man is a great musician. Any musician who is adept at both classical and jazz has my respect. I found his music, however, not exciting. He played what I will call older jazz. I like Brad Meldhau and have seen him live a few times. Clearly he is a great musician, and I appreciate that, but I am not excited by it anymore. Whereas when I put on Tania Maria or Flora Purim, I am literally up dancing at my old age.

I went to hear Melissa Aldana live and she excited me because I found her voice to be new and unique. Although, like most young saxaphonists, she was influenced by Coltrane, her notes wavered softly in a way I'd never heard before. In a way, I felt like the first time I heard Stan Getz (backing up Astrid Gilberto on the Johnny Carson show.) What's this! My young mind asked of my young body. I'd never heard anything like that before. Bossa Nova. Wow! At that time (I was probably 15) I listened to Wagner in classical music. 

I have a lot of jazz records I haven't listened to in many, many years, and I am beginning to pull them out again to see what I missed the first time I listened. And I am reeducating my ear to jazz classics. I have also been streaming some female sax players like Anat Cohen. I may be old, but I want to listen to new things, especially jazz.

Back to my poem. Yes, it does take a lot of work to become a jazz musician. I don't think it is work, though, for those who were born with a passion for music. I like to say I get lost when I am writing, and I love being lost creatively. All of these musicians, whether I think they are exciting or not, are excited by music. And that is what I mean at the end of my poem by "garce lands anyplace/ like snowflakes/ promiscuously kissing faces. I think of how so many of these jazz musicians were born into poverty, yet they were kissed by the muse who does seem to be promiscuous. I think that's partly what the movie Amadaeus was about. 

So, stuartk, I think you and I are on the same page, except you can play guitar and I was a failure at playing guitar. I love music, but cannot make it. I was not promiscuously kissed, at least not by the muse of music. 

Thank you for not abandoning me. I know I can be a pain sometimes.

@audio-b-dog 

I agree-- we are very much on the same page although I do think you are romanticizing a bit if you really believe there is not work involved in mastering Jazz. Like any art form, it takes commitment and and discipline and the further one wishes to go, the more it requires of the individual. The Coltrane’s and Shorters may make it seem easy but for most of us, art is not easy.

Having said that, I was watching an interview with Diane Seuss (digressing to poetry, here) the other day and she said writing poems has never been "effortful" for her.  I wish I could say the same about my writing process!

BTW, I don’t find you to be a pain at all. That never entered my mind. 

stuartk, writing poetry was never difficult for me because I was bursting with something to say and I wanted very badly to say it.  I studied with Gary Snyder and other notable poets, so I had a technical foundation. Once a poem burst out of me, like the Coltrane poem which I did write on a roadside, then I lovingly worked on it to refine what I wanted to say. But I don't write poetry anymore.

Writing prose, on the other hand, is a bitch. I should be working on my novel, but it's more pleasurable to write you. I think I was touched with poetry. I started writing in 9th grade. My high school poems were good enough to get me entry into a much-coveted spot in Gary Snyder's upper-division class at Berkeley. I was hungry for the tools he gave me.

To me poetry is a burst of emotion crafted into form. Prose, prose, prose... it is too long to be a burst of anything. And I do tons of research. I have been researching the book I'm working on for at least fifteen years. I didn't even know exactly what the book was about until research led me there. 

From my research, I believe that music was first made during humanity's spiritual quest, about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. Nietsche says there is no tragedy without music. And we all know there is not ecstasy without music. I think Coltrane had a direct pipeline into music's spirituality. I'm listening to Pharoah Sanders now, and he shared what Coltrane had. So did Alice Coltrane, whom I think should be on anybody's list of top jazz musicians.

The musicians you mentioned to me, Davis, Shorter, Coltrane, Parker, all broke through some barrier. And barriers are only broken with raw emotion. Parker brought us into bebop. Out of bebop, Coltrane and Miles took us into a raw, spiritual territory that jazz had not yet explored, at least not in their way.

I am not saying that they did not have to work, but I'm saying I don't think it was "work" for them. If somebody falls in love with somebody else, it is not work to spend days traveling to see them, even for a short time. Coltrane had something bursting to get out of him, and fI think he would have been anxious to find the tools and learn how to use them 

Roots of jazz: for those discussing the roots of jazz, I think the U.S. and Brazil are two countries where jazz and pop emerged because they're such melting pots with so many roots. Early jazz had so many influences. Obviously the blues from slaves and other Blacks, but there was also Scotch-Irish influences, and Jewish Klezmer music. The Gershwins were clearly part of jazz's beginnings, and Italian singers weren't wanting. This is one area of the arts where Europe had to look to the Americas.

My favorite female jazz singer :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtbDTRZwx3c