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Improvisation and All That Jazz
A Sermon Given
by the Reverend Cinnamon Daniel
on July 14, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
In improvisation, you don't know what's going to happen -- you just
don't know. That's true for jazz musicians. They may have come to
some agreement beforehand about the basic structure of limits of a
piece of music; they may have played together many times before
they are attuned to one another, are anticipating each other. But as
to exactly what's played, the sounds they create together, they are
of the moment, spontaneous responses in a musical conversation.
So what is improvisation?
Here's one definition - a definition I suspect may have been written
by a UU humanist:
"improvisation, as all musical performance, involves continuing
series of highly complex instantaneous neurological processes,
including, (a) the passing of complex electrochemical between the
nervous, endocrine and muscle systems; (b) the execution of
complex physical actions; (c) rapid monitoring of the actions via
visual, tactile and proprioceptive feedback systems; (d) producing
musical sounds and monitoring via auditory feedback; (e) cognitive
evaluations of these sounds as music; and (f) further cognitive
processing to generate the design of the next action sequence and
trigger it?" (from "Psychological Foundations of Musical
Behavior", Rudolf E. Radocy, et al.)
It's a very rational definition, with good use of scientific fact. And
eminently reasonable. But something's missing.
Here's another look at improvisation:
I lived in New York City, a Mecca of improvisation, for five years.
I found a freedom and creativity that I had been longing for there in
the midst of millions of lives. One spring day I had gone down to
City Hall for a tour, and afterwards I stood on the City Hall steps
where the mayor grandstands and the protesters assemble. Then I
heard music -- a trumpet maybe? Drums, too? I walked out into the
park surrounding City Hall and found a jazz combo -- trumpet,
drums and bass playing to a small but enthusiastic crowd. There
were several of us gathered around the musicians; we leaned on
railings, sat on benches, or squatted on the pavement. They played
with beautiful ease, mesmerizing us -- our faces had gentle, dreamy
smiles. The trio eased into "Summertime," one of my favorites. It
suddenly was a very good day. I listened, and people came and
went. Some people never pausing as they walked by. And then a
little, old lady came up, a little bent over, walking with a cane,
carrying some groceries. She stopped and bobbed her head in time
to the music. She grinned at the musicians. And then she very
slowly and carefully put down her bag of groceries, and she very
slowly and carefully put down her cane and she began to dance. She
was graceful, dignified, and a little bit funky; she was having such a
good time. She was answering YES to life, to truth, and to love.
She was laughing and all the listeners began to laugh with her and
smile at her. The musicians were charmed and began to play to her,
letting her movements guide them and transform their music. We
were all there together in a moment of magic, of pure
improvisation. The song stopped and so did the dancing lady. We
all applauded her. She blew kisses to the musicians, and they bowed
to her. And then she slowly and carefully picked up her cane, and
slowly and carefully picked up her bags and she walked away. And
the music continued.
Improvisation is not limited to music. In fact, a musician Mildred
Chase writes, "to improvise is natural and intuitive; it is the
imagination guiding an action in an unplanned way, allowing a
multitude of split second adjustments. We improvise in all areas of
our lives everyday." The most common form of improvisation is
everyday speech -- the sentences we make may have never been said
before and may never be said since. Every conversation is a form of
jazz, spontaneous creation.
We improvise in our parenting, in relationships, in intellectual
pursuits. How do you create a new way of managing a city, or
write legislation that will deal with an intractable problem facing the
world? How do you invent a new way of talking to your wife or
husband or lover?
Aaron Copland believes that we create and improvise to figure out
who we are: "I must create in order to know myself, and since
self-knowledge is a never-ending search, each new work is only a
part-answer to the question, 'Who am I?' and brings with it the
need to go on to other and different part-answers."
Improvisation is an invitation to create oneself and one's world, a
process of discovery, a series of offers, and a spiritual path.
"It's like going out there naked every night," a jazz player says of
his experience of playing: "I mean we're out there improvising.
The classical guys have their scores whether they have them on
stands on have them memorized. But we have to be creating, or
trying to -- anticipating each other, transmuting our feelings into the
music, taking chances every goddamned second. That's why when
jazz musicians are really putting out, it's an exhausting experience.
It can be exhilarating, too, but there is always that touch of fear,
that feeling of being on a high wire without a net below."
Jazz requires relationship, trust, and risk. A musician tries to
express her true, authentic voice while listening intently to her
fellow musicians. She will support them, and she hopes that they
will support her, but finally, she has to take a risk -- there is no
certainty in jazz, no one way to play.
The origins of jazz are in African songs and rituals -- songs for
work, for celebration, and songs to invite in the holy. There is an
African proverb "the spirit will not descend without song". This
African music became the root of American slave music, spirituals
and the blues. Early jazz also echoed the speech of the black
preacher -- long rhythmic sermons of call and response, with sung
sections -- preaching would begin softly and crescendo into a
frenzy, inviting in the spirit. Early jazz musicians tried to make
their instruments sound like voices, with changes in pitch, growls,
wails, like the preachers and singers they heard in worship. This
music that was becoming jazz combined with European dance forms and
sounds -- this stew of sounds became America's music, jazz.
It is improvisation that defines jazz. It is interesting that it is
defined by what is missing, what is yet to be. Improvisation can't be
determined ahead of time. Jazz improvisers do usually work within
a fixed form -- a succession of harmonies, a time signature,
sometimes a melodic line as starting points. And so there are rules
of a sort -- but rules that create freedom, that make space for the
not yet to come into being. This paradox of jazz is also present in
the tension between the spontaneity and practice. A musician can't
be out there naked without spending hours and hours knowing her
instrument, her fellow musicians, listening and listening.
Central to jazz is the overwhelming importance of creating one's
own unique sound, a sound immediately identifiable as you. But
jazz musicians connect the need to create their own identity with
the desire to communicate with and be in relationship with others.
In playing together they create community through sound. Jazz,
then, is about relationship; the connection and trust we create
together that allows for freedom.
The old and the new are connected through standards -- old songs
played again and again, creating a canon of tunes. Thousands of
musicians will play these tunes in their own way, improvising off of
a common starting point in a gigantic conversation. Two of our
songs today have complex, varied lives of their own -- Thelonious
Monk's "'Round Midnight" and Jerome Kern's "All the Things You
Are."
We, the audience, also have an important role in jazz. The musician
Derek Bailey writes: "Undeniably, the audience for improvisation,
good or bad, active or passive, sympathetic or hostile, has a power
that no other audience has. It can affect the creation of that which is
being witnessed. And perhaps because of that possibility the
audience for improvisation has a degree of intimacy with the music
that is not achieved in any other situation."
The audience, the listener, has agency and thus is participating in a
similar kind of self-creation and relationship-building as that of the
musicians. In listening actively, one can re-imagine their world as
their sound vocabulary grows. In listening one is accumulating new
language and fresh ways of identifying and describing the world. An
imaginative listener is the composer's partner in creating a piece of
music - there is no meaning in music without this relationship.
The great saxophone player John Coltrane said: "It seems to me
that the audience in listening is in an act of participation, you know.
And when somebody is as moved as you are…it's just like having
another member of the group." And there are many members of
that group in a small church in San Francisco, the St. John Coltrane
African Orthodox church. Believers view John Coltrane as a saint,
his music as holy scripture. Coltrane is prophet, shaman, priest,
savior. Their icons are a triptych of Coltrane with his sax, a
dark-skinned Mary and a dark-skinned Jesus.
Since its inception in 1971 the St. John Coltrane congregation
celebrates word of God through the heart and music of John
Coltrane. It is the triumph of John Coltrane's life over many
obstacles, his music, and his testimony that have inspired these
followers down the righteous path -- as they say "to live cleanly and
do right".
Coltrane himself found God in 1957. After many years of drug
abuse, Coltrane became clean, he committed himself to a new,
spiritual way of being in the world. He believed that God revealed
to him in entirety the piece called A Love Supreme
which he transcribed and recorded in 1964, one of the greatest
jazz albums of all time. Then God told him that he should go out
and preach through his music as one committed to God. Coltrane
writes in a prayer that accompanies the music:
God is. Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts, fears and
emotions -- time -- all related all made from one all made in one.
Thought waves, heat waves, all vibrations -- all paths lead to God.
Glory to God, God is so alive. In all ways seek God everyday.
Let us all sing songs to God. God breathes through us so
completely, so gently we hardly feel it yet it is our everything.
The congregation takes Coltrane's A Love Supreme and his
accompanying prayer as their sacred text. The burning center of the
congregation is the four hour long jazz mass on Sundays. They
gather, bringing their instruments -- saxophones, trumpets, pianos,
bass, drums, a violin, guitars, congas, their voices. Listeners gather,
too. They are led by the Most Reverend Bishop Franzo King, who
plays bongo and trumpet. Without a word they begin to play
"Acknowledgment" from A Love Supreme. They play, dripping
with sweat for hours before there is any spoken dialogue in the
service.
The Bishop says John Coltrane is their "messenger of sound praise
for the upliftment and dedication of our lives to God through the
vision of Love Supreme. We are fully aware of the universality of
his music and his philosophy, and that his spirit and legacy reaches
and touches the lives of many people of many different faiths,
creeds and religions." They live this out in music and also in many
outreach programs -- to the homeless, poor, addicted. They sponsor
a food pantry and tutoring, spreading Love Supreme throughout
their community.
At the St. John Coltrane church, there is no judging, there are no
mistakes -- there is no best way to play jazz. Each Sunday the music
is a little different, and invites the spirit in a new way.
Improvisation is holy and whole however it is expressed.
Like these church-goers, my study of jazz helps me to form and
articulate my theology, to flesh out my understanding of UU
identity. My theo-jazzology encompasses the two most important
principles of UU:
- Each and every person is important.
- We are all connected.
We all have a unique voice, and we are all dedicated to being part
of a group. We are called to uncover and express our creativity. We
play/compose/create as an antidote to destruction, as a
way to build a better world.
The same kind of listening, flexibility, and daring necessary for jazz
are present in out faith lives. Like musical improvisation, holy play
takes both preparation and risk. We bring our skills, experience,
prayer, and reflection into our faith; then we take chances. We step
into not-knowing, into movement, and into wonder. In those
moments we discover something intimate and powerful; we
experience ourselves as creators, maybe even experience revelation.
This community has improvised in many ways over the years, most
recently in the religious education program as its ministerial
leadership has changed. It hasn't been easy, a little bit like
changing a drummer and rhythm in the middle of a tune while trying
to keep the song going. You would like for things to continue just
as before, but the beat is sounding a new path. So you listen and
respond, and soon the tune is rejuvenated.
One of my favorite memories of Cedar Lane is of celebrating
Christmas Eve at Temple Emanuel on Connecticut Ave. There was
no room at the Inn for our little congregation at our home here due
to extensive renovations and construction, and our neighbors
offered us their sanctuary. The renovations called for a lot of
improvisation. This unexpected night at Temple Emanuel helped
me to understand our connection to both the Jewish and Christian
traditions in new ways; how we are all wandering people, searching
for meaning, safety, belonging, and for a home.
And these days if you were to come by the chapel on a Sunday
evening, you might hear musical improvisation as it happens in a
jazz and poetry vespers services. For a couple of years Cedar Lane
has invited local jazz musicians and poets to help lead worship,
exploring the connection of sound, words, and spirit. And the
congregation has its own standard now. The traditional hymn,
"Spirit of Life," re-tuned as a jazz hymn used during the offering.
In that same chapel I witnessed what to me seemed like magic,at a
children's service when I was a girl. Chris Patton came to create
music with us. We entered the chapel and Chris was there,
surrounded by synthesizers and speakers and power cords,
extremely exciting to little kids. He asked five kids to come up and
play a note, any note. And right then and there he took these five
notes and made a song, a beautiful song just for us, for that moment
only. I remember thinking that he was a wizard, that his
improvising was a strange and unusual power. In talking with Chris
about this several days ago I told him how amazed I was and how
scary it is for me to improvise musically. He said, "you know,
that's funny because when I'm improvising I don't worry about
making mistakes, it's when I supposed to play things a certain way
that I get nervous."
So I am trying to give up judging. Be-Bop came to be because
musicians like Thelonious Monk played and loved the "wrong"
notes. My imagination and wrong notes will lead me into a new
way. John Lewis, a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet says:
"when you start to play, an idea comes along and that dictates where
you have to go. Sometimes things go wrong. Many times you find
a nice way of getting out of a phrase that was better than the
original way you were going."
Here are some tools for improvising as our lives move and change:
The general basic principles of improvisation, according to T. Carl
Whitmer:
- Don't look forward to a finished and complete entity. The idea
must always be kept in a state of flux.
- An error may only be an unintentional rightness. Do not get too
fussy about how every part of a thing sounds. Go ahead. All
processes are at first awkward and clumsy.
- Polishing is not the important thing; instead strive for a rough,
go-ahead energy. Do not be afraid to be wrong; just be afraid of
being uninteresting.
Our improvisation and creativity are worth something, they can
help us to say something we can't otherwise say. Together we can
potentially create a space in which people can "dream out loud" and
play in new ways, a space in which revelation just might break
out?
I invite you to hear yourself. When and where are the moments of
improvisation in your life? When they unfold, how to you respond?
Closing Words:
May you leave here today with open ears and open hearts, with
these words by the jazz musician, Steve Lacy: "Each thing you hear
determines the direction that you go. You just follow the music,
and if you follow the music, you can go anywhere. AMEN.
Office@CedarLane.org
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