Getting Warmer

I've said before that I don't like jazz. Yet, I've posted some, and that has led me to think about why I did. What about my previous jazz posts made the cut?

I think it's the unabashed soulfulness that so much jazz lacks.

You'll hear it in Keith Jarrett's moody concert-length improvs. You'll hear it in Vince Guaraldi's sophisticated soundtracks for the Peanuts/Charlie Brown television specials, as well as Guaraldi's music for Black Orpheus.

On a technical level, it's the liberal use of the warmer, sweeter thirds (major and minor)  and sixths (major and minor), both melodically and harmonically; the willingness to turn dissonant seconds (major and minor) into ninths -- expansive, inviting, spiritual; the intentionality that's missing from free jazz.

Then, too, there's the use of bluesy flips that makes some jazz sound more like this wistful, countrypolitan masterpiece from the late, great Floyd Cramer than, say, Sidney Bechet. Those flips are also present in the work of the great, British session keyboardist, Nicky Hopkins.

Jazz has been called "African-American classical music" and, as in classical music, the practitioners of jazz approach it with considerable rigor. The end result is often more hackneyed than authentic, for all its "correctness". When musicians choose their own path, the result is more authentic by default. And that's a lesson every musician needs to learn.

Or, as Shakespeare put it in King Lear, "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."