I wish I could say that I love jazz. I appreciate the tremendous skill involved in playing this important musical genre, and I’m willing to go to concerts, especially if they are...free. Such an opportunity came when my wife, teacher friends and I were at a teaching conference in Hannover, Germany.
In the early evening we headed into town for some drinks, and my wife - ever the socially outgoing member of our marriage - got talking to a jazz musician who was playing a concert that night. The musician invited us to come along. Having no other plans, we agreed to do this. A couple of hours later we arrived at the club to find advertisements for ‘Free Jazz’. At the box office we were temporarily confused by the need to purchase tickets. ‘But It’s free jazz.’ “Yes, I know’, said the young, patient box office woman. ‘You need tickets’. ‘….But it’s free.‘ ‘I know this. You need tickets’. We explained that we had met one of the musicians who personally invited us. She went to check out our story. Yes, Ok she sighed impatiently. We entered, bemused - a cultural misunderstanding, we thought. When the concert started we quickly realised the misunderstanding was entirely ours. Free Jazz, it turns out, is not a description of its cost but of it’s form. The ‘free’ part means the music is devoid of pre-set rules: each musician is free to improvise in the purist, most experimental manner desired. This evening that meant harmonic hell. Not only were all the musicians playing an incomprehensible cacophony, but the singer started screeching scat style without a discernible sense of timing or connection to the instruments. Too polite and embarrassed to head to the exit (which meant passing the band), we stood at the back, suffering. I put my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes, and tried to meditate myself into appreciation or anaesthesia. My wife wore a hopeful smile. In the end, when there was a lull in the screeching and instrument slapping, we crept out past the band, ashamed heads down, and all quietly hurried went back to the hotel. Loving jazz remains an ongoing project.
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AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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