All that Jazz...

Once an old friend of mine said to me, "You don't like Jazz music because you can't stay in the moment." I knew he was right, but there was also something else to it: I am the daughter of a Jazz musician, and I guess the simplest way for me to rebel was through disliking the very music I grew up with. Unlike many of the other kids I knew (or so I thought)my musical repertoire was full of slick cats and mesmerizing music that would define everything I have now come to identify as my childhood.
Well, slowly but surely I grew out of my self-imposed rebellion. Funnily enough, it was through Etta James who I discovered in my early 20s. Suddenly, I had something to talk to my father about and my weekly visits with him became something I actually looked forward to, as he would give me free reign through his by then diminished album collection. I got Miles, I got Ayers, I got Stevie...musical gems made even more valuable by the fact that they once belonged to my Daddy...
I guess I should explain that my father had one of the most stellar Jazz album collections. He put all his resources in his music equipment: but by the time I was in college, he was but a shadow of the man I had grown up with. Gone was the Hammond B3, gone the Leslie, gone the fantastic album collection. He had managed to distance himself from everyone in his life, even my mother (and that is saying a lot). But anyway, I learned to enjoy Jazz and appreciated the way in which it helped my father and I bridge our differences.
Musicians are a completely different breed of people, just as I suppose, we writers are as well. Being a musician means having a bit more of an intimate connection with life, it's like you got your finger on the underbelly of it, which you stroke and stroke into contentment. Like rubbing a potentially cantankerous cat's belly. But anyway, I grew up with musicians and didn't realize how much I missed hanging out with them until last Wednesday night when I was invited to hear Dr. Lonnie Smith play.
It entailed taking a train about an hour or so out of Copenhagen to Holbæk. We were on our way to Vallekild Højskole, which was founded in 1865. It was a beautiful building, full of rooms with hundreds of instruments about. It was the perfect place to create. If I were a musician, I would feel as though I was in heaven.
And the jam session! Hearing Dr. Smith play was an experience in itself. It transported me back to Ocean Avenue, to listening to my father play day after day, practicing to perfect his Hammond skills. The best part of the night, besides hearing some very capable musicians play, was actually being around folks who were excited about Jazz. I often wondered why people studied Jazz, considering it a dead art (I know, I just wrote that, sacrilege! But folks say the same about writing!)And I asked one of the musicians I met. I mean, being a Jazz musician must be just as challenging as being a writer, especially if you're doing it on your own terms. But I guess when I asked I forgot one of the most vital foundations, tenants if you will, of being an artist: You do not choose it, it chooses you.
Well, this is the last weekend of my holiday. I go back to work on Monday. Real Life begins...but I've got all sorts of tricks up my sleeves for this round of Life, so you better just watch out...
farvel,
the lab