I’m reminded of the Daily Mash post, “Woman ends 20-year attempt to like jazz”, and feel relieved that my two decade journey ended differently. My lazy critique of jazz went along the lines of, ‘I like a beginning, middle and end’ and ‘when does the tune start?’ My bodily experience of jazz was irritation. Jazz to me was pretentious and impenetrable. I just didn’t get it. Yes, I was over-thinking it.

Jazz is freedom: freedom to flow in any direction, freedom to improvise, freedom to create, freedom to play. Jazz is unpredictable – where is this going? – and when one drops into this, it is remarkable to experience; jazz pulls you through several emotions, some of which are joyful. What caused my jazz epiphany? A deeper and wider epiphany, that life is jazz and to live life means being open to its sometimes excruciating and sometimes serene twists and turns. Further still, at its best, jazz reflects an individual-collective dialectic of emotional, intellectual and political progress:

“To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group – a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project.” (Cornel West, Race Matters, 1993: 105)

Looking backing now, my delight at the improvisations of the Dave Matthews Band live meant I was always already partially there vis-à-vis jazz, but the track below by the American composer and clarinetist Shankar Tucker was what cemented that realisation.

If you haven’t got there already, I hope you enjoy your jazz epiphany soon. 😉 My thanks to comrades Bruce Robinson and Richard White for patiently waiting on my arrival.