What is "IT?"
Just the other night I was part of a group. Young and old. Rich and poor. Black, Latino & white. Farmer types and Hip-Hop. I was at a local jazz club.
What is IT about jazz that produces this kind of convergence? The band had a latin saxophonist, a young dread-locked brother on stand-up bass, middle-aged white pianist and a middle aged African-American on drums.
One song started and the leader motioned for someone in the crowd. An elderly black gentlmen slowly made his way to the stage...His voice was far from perfect, but as this man sang about love, IT was presnent, he had IT, we all wanted IT. And we wept because of IT.
IT allows for the hyphens and the hyphen-less to co-exist; for Grandpa & grandson to be together...for unity without uniformity.
What is "IT" about jazz that produces this? Have you ever experienced "IT" in a church?
posted by jazztheo at 9/24/2005 06:52:00 AM
5 Comments:
I'm just figuring the jazz thing out myself. I'm a musician, though. So I've experience "it" in my music. But not often -- even when the music is good. And though I've experienced "it" often within the family of faith, I've hardly ever seen it at church -- though I hear folks talk about having "it" at church all the time. I think they're mostly making it up, but I may be wrong about that.
As jazz is becoming part of my life, I'm hearing music differently. Playing it differently, too. The same is true for the way I experience faith.
From a musical perspective, I’m told that “it” is often the flatted-fifth – a dissonant sound made by two notes that are six steps apart. In the middle ages, they called it the "devil in music.” It is certainly the presence of pain. You just can’t play “Don’t Worry Be Happy” with a flatted fifth. The bebop artists, which included Miles Davis, thrived on the flatted fifth.
When I try to play the flatted fifth (on guitar) it just sounds like I’m messing up – probably because I’m paying too much attention to it. It doesn’t work to say, “let’s play flatted fifths.” But when it sneaks in, somewhere way down underneath the music, like the water that runs beneath the surface, you get “it.” Beautiful music that never lets you forget the pain, the dissonance.
Jazztheo asked us to listen to jazz before and after Kind of Blue. There were plenty of changes in the music, I’m sure, but the flatted fifth was a big one. I’ve read that Louis Armstrong and the big band guys despised it. I’m wondering where the flatted fifth fits in Christian theology, and which of us church guys are prone to despise it?
"Beautiful music that never lets you forget the pain." That's jazz.
My Cool Daddy,
Don't y'all put Satchmo in the ghetto. Joy's got sometin' in jazz, too.
-lsn
You know LSN, it doesn't matter what jazz I'm listening to, I am mindful of the context of pain that produced it. I'ts more of a Romans 8.28 thing.
I've experienced IT in prayer. Last week I was praying with a group I'm going to England with and I started praying for us and our trip and the church we're going to work with and the church we go to now.
It was a weird thing. I was sitting cross legged on the floor with my hands in my lap and I felt like my arms were 10 feet long and my head was higher than the rest of my body. It was as in the Spirit as I've ever been. It was as "IT" as I've ever been.
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