Jazz as a Second Language

“Talking about jazz is like singing about architecture,” -Apocryphal, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise

Jazz is the music we made when we first climbed out of the primordial sludge and needed something to say. Jazz is Whitman's barbaric yawp, Ginsberg's howl, and what Plato was most afraid of. Jazz is not background music, despite what coffeehouses and elevators try to convince you. Jazz is the name for when you become human through music. It's imminent and it's intimate and it's ineffable.

But jazz has had bad attorneys in the courtroom of public opinion lately. My personal quest is to try to expose people to the heart of jazzness, because everybody already loves it whether or not they're aware. And this means correcting the notion that liking jazz means having a copy of “Take Five” on your iPod or hanging a poster of Miles Davis on your wall or having any association with Michael Buble. Fuck Michael Buble. That belongs in another column, though.

Obviously, this has to be experienced though. Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1Eo-6sDIE
And that means really listening. Attention must be paid. Give the music the respect it deserves, and it will respect you too.

This tune (jazz musicians say 'tune' more than normal people, and 'ditty' too, embarrassingly enough) is by the unparalleled trumpet player Lee Morgan, whose biography deserves more than this gloss. He, like other trumpet greats Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, and Clifford Brown, got his start as a teenager, recording as a solo artist for Blue Note Records, one of the most venerated labels in jazz. He worked with John Coltrane and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and was an integral part of several albums that changed the face of jazz in the '60s. He was the first trumpet player I loved. His heroin addiction forced him to take a break right at the pinnacle of his career.

He returned with Sidewinder, the record this song comes from. The groovy, bluesy coolness rocketed the song to the top of the charts and caused Blue Note to adopt this style basically through the present day. He continued to make amazing records until February 19, 1972, when he was just 33. His wife called his name while he was on stage getting ready to perform. When he turned to her, she shot him, then began crying out, “Baby, what have I done?” He bled to death because the ambulances were reluctant to go to the rough neighborhood the club was in. Jazz is, if nothing else, a series of tragedies.

I chose this song because many people of our generation say “the beat” is what matters most to them in a song. The first thing you hear on this track is Bob Cranshaw's bass. There's no better feeling than experiencing the sound of a fat double bass played through quality speakers. The bass ostinato (a repeating rhythmic or melodic figure) stays fairly constant throughout the song, which is fairly rare. Usually in jazz the bass will “walk,” or outline chords by playing one note on every beat. The effect of the figured bass is to establish a groove, along with masterfully laid-back drummer Billy Higgins. Higgins' cymbal is somewhere in between straight eighth notes and swung, which is where the second note of each beat is delayed. This is called playing “in the cracks.” If you can listen to this, combined with Barry Harris' bluesy syncopated (off-beat) chords, without moving a little, I don't know if I can help you.

The rhythm section plays through the form once to set the mood for the piece. Let yourself dig in and feel yourself in their groove. Listen to how each instrument fits perfectly in the spaces left by the other musicians. The bass note on the fourth beat of every measure is a major seventh, even though the key has a flatted (meaning lowered a half-step, also called dominant) seventh. This gives a sense of anticipation, whether or not you're aware.

(An idiosyncrasy of jazz is that, even without knowing all of the music theory that goes into it, your musical sense is affected strongly by very small changes. Learning the theory doesn't make you more susceptible to this, it just makes you more aware of what's happening to you. It's like taking literary criticism classes to learn why you like a book.)

The basic progression, or series of chords, is almost a blues. The uniqueness of the song, and what gives it its title, is the piano's shifting chords. Each measure starts one half-step below the key, then rises up to it. The ear still knows what key the song is in, but the moment of uncertainty leaves the song slippery and perpetually driving forward. At the end of this intro, there's a pause. Remember that pause.

The trumpet and sax (played by the wonderful Joe Henderson) enter and play the head, which is the basic melody of a song which serves to outline the chords that the musicians will solo over. Each repetition of the progression is called a chorus, and each chorus will follow the same progression. The basic structure of a song is head, solos by each musician, then a recapitulation of the head. While the soloists are doing their thing, the rhythm section will comp, or accompany, them, by suggesting the chords as well as by reacting in real time to the improvisations of the soloist. This is hard to do.

The melody is similarly driving, never really giving a moment's rest. The pause at the end is now home to one cool-ass bluesy lick that should make you squinch up your nose and go “Ooooh!” At the end of the head, Lee Morgan's solo begins. He's one of the true masters of soulful playing. His solo includes many snippets of the melody, which helps make it more cohesive. Listen to how he bends and growls some of his notes. The uncomfortable bit of dissonance is what it's all about. If you're paying attention, there's a lot of tension in the music. Without it, what's the point? He uses a lot of motifs, or repeating figures, with minor variations to subvert the listener and keep you on your toes. You should be shaking your head and shimmying your shoulders a bit. His sound has got a tinge of suffering in it, but in a way that reassures that it's all cool cuz he's got his axe and he's really blowin', man, this shit's cookin'. When he starts his third chorus he goes into a flurry of B-flats with accents on the beat. This raises the crap out of some tension. His resolution isn't quite convincing, so he has to go back into it and lead us out with explorations through the range of the scale that doesn't really ever solve the problem. He backs out, leaving us forced to seek resolution in other places we won't find it. C'est la vie.

Henderson's solo follows. While his blues work isn't as immediately accessible as Morgan's, he's got fun moments where you can feel the reediness of his tenor being used to its full bluesy potential. The repeated figures are common and an easy musical moment to latch onto for beginners. These licks are what drives a lot of blues based music and speak to us on a primal level. There's something about the immediacy of an insisted repeated melodic figure that makes us feel the performer's passion in a really clear way. Harris's solo uses the same principle, playing on old blues tropes.

Then bass solo, then head out. Jazz is tough to get into, I'll be the first to admit it. But once you make the attempt to understand jazz qua jazz, you've made the first step towards being able to experience one of the most truly religious endeavors of human existence. Is it worth it? If you have to ask, you'll never know.