You Are Allowed to Be a Local Jazz Musician
My sabbatical year has hurtled past and the book is drafty but almost completed drafted. I just began work on the final chapter which investigates today’s jazz community. Notice I don’t say scene. I got this from my colleague, Kafari, a local jazz pianist. The word “scene” is almost as bad as “cats.” It is redolent of an era when jazz was tantamount to hip masculinity and may I just say, if you say “cats” you sound old, sir. What we say and do are choices that bring forward exclusionary pasts or break with them. In any case, I agreed with my confrere: “community” sounds much more hopeful and inclusive and what I think a lot of us would like to see for jazz, rather than the tired and depleted “scene.”
As part of my research, I wanted to get involved in the community a bit more, which for better or worse, and even if you are focused locally, means being online. I hope we can all agree that social media is bad for our mental health. I hope that everyone 18 and older has developed their system for maintaining sanity while finding what they need on Instagram and Co. As for those younger, I can only say, “Thank God I don’t have kids” and well, “Good luck, kids!”
Because when I started delving into Instagram and Co., I immediately went down my unique comparison rabbit hole of saxophone bad-assery. Young men and women (I do have my interests) shredding away. This is all great and I’m thrilled to find young women tearing it up, but it compels the thought: why am I even playing? Obviously, I’m describing nothing new here. But the perennial problem of comparing ourselves to others will always need addressing.
Social media can magnify the problem of one yardstick to measure jazz. Technical skill can be measured. Taste, not as easily. As a jazz mentor once told me, “It comes down to taste—what choices do you make in your playing.” You can play a million notes per measure, but, as I ask myself about anything I write (and what we learned from Miles), so what? Why should anyone care?
I am not denigrating the bad assery, just putting it in perspective. Social media connects the entire world and can make jazz into one giant Mt. Everest that we are all on ranked from highest to lowest.
In my local scene I see a variety of skillsets. The problem is that you don’t see very many local women jazz instrumentalists in my town. There are men of many ages, skill levels, and musical dispositions, but it seems women have to be Nicole Glovers or Terri Lyne Carringtons to be “on the scene.”
Let’s stop that. I’m here to say you can be a local jazz musician. You are allowed to exist and pursue the fulfilling and never-ending challenge of becoming a jazz musician, even if you aren’t shredding like someone with 500 thousand likes in New Zealand or Antarctica. Good for them. May they continue to develop as musicians. And may you, too.
