Posted on Dec 16, 2022
The importance of remembering everything but the music
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https://www.npr.org/2022/12/16/ [login to see] /the-importance-of-remembering-everything-but-the-music
"I began this reminiscence writing about a year of concerts and festivals, that renewed togetherness and back-outsideness that feels at once routine and rogue after the hiatus, but quickly realized that what's most important to me about jazz right now is what is happening off- stage and backstage, in-between shows and attitudes, when we catch ourselves wondering what we're saying as if trapped in a dreamscape that only the right question posed at the right time can interrupt or interpret. Some of the best jazz songs ask such questions. Mingus's version of "What Is This Thing Called Love?" for example, which makes sure to never define what it seeks to define, embodies it instead, revels in the unknowns as its very tempo and temperament. Or Tony Williams's "Where" – interrogating that dream to rid it of aimlessness, where are you going / where have you come from / if anyone asks you / I hope you can say".
"I began this reminiscence writing about a year of concerts and festivals, that renewed togetherness and back-outsideness that feels at once routine and rogue after the hiatus, but quickly realized that what's most important to me about jazz right now is what is happening off- stage and backstage, in-between shows and attitudes, when we catch ourselves wondering what we're saying as if trapped in a dreamscape that only the right question posed at the right time can interrupt or interpret. Some of the best jazz songs ask such questions. Mingus's version of "What Is This Thing Called Love?" for example, which makes sure to never define what it seeks to define, embodies it instead, revels in the unknowns as its very tempo and temperament. Or Tony Williams's "Where" – interrogating that dream to rid it of aimlessness, where are you going / where have you come from / if anyone asks you / I hope you can say".
The importance of remembering everything but the music
Posted from npr.orgPosted in these groups: 
Jazz Music
Jazz Music
Posted >1 y ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."The danger of not exploring the ways this music is traded and handed down across generations, becomes collective improvisation as a way of life and not just a way of sounding more lifelike in song, is that the keepers of these stories are not as immortal in the flesh as their sound is in spirit dimensions. In February of this year an LA-based, Chicago-born jazz musician, Derf Recklaw, died after a gig in Los Angeles. Ask me how: He was found waiting for a city bus with his instruments and his phone in his hand. He had performed a show hours earlier."...
..."The danger of not exploring the ways this music is traded and handed down across generations, becomes collective improvisation as a way of life and not just a way of sounding more lifelike in song, is that the keepers of these stories are not as immortal in the flesh as their sound is in spirit dimensions. In February of this year an LA-based, Chicago-born jazz musician, Derf Recklaw, died after a gig in Los Angeles. Ask me how: He was found waiting for a city bus with his instruments and his phone in his hand. He had performed a show hours earlier."...
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