Experiencing Jazz: A Listener's Companion by Michael Stephans

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

I suppose when you write a blog about Jazz, there is the presumption that you know something about what books to recommend that describe and explain how to listen to the music.

When asked for such recommendations, I usually respond with the following list:

- Jerry Coker, How To Listen to Jazz. Revised Edition. Jamey Aebersold Jazz Books.

- Scott Deveaux and Gary Giddins, Jazz. W.W. Norton and Co. which makes it available in both a commercial/trade and educational/interactive edition.

- Ted Gioia, How to Listen to Jazz. Basic Books.

- Martin Williams, Where’s the Melody?, Minerva Press.

However, thanks to my recent acquisition of a used copy of Michael Stephans’ Experiencing Jazz: A Listener’s Companion, Scarecrow Press, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, I now have another excellent book to add to my How to Listen to Jazz Recommended Reading List.

The following excerpt will serve as an example as to what’s on offer in this informative and well-written book.

Improvising: The Heart of the Jazz Experience

“Suppose you've just emerged from the subway on 42nd Street in New York City. Suppose also that you have no particular destination in mind; so you decide to head east on 42nd and see where it takes you. You cross Broadway, and then 6th Avenue, enjoying the sights and sounds as you walk. The only guidelines you have are to have some lunch and head back to your hotel by dinnertime,

As you come to Madison Avenue, you make a split-second decision to turn right and head south. You have never been on this street before, and everything you see and hear is new to you. At this point you decide to find a restaurant for lunch. Your only guideline is your budget; so as a result, you discover a tiny Indian restaurant on 38th Street. The prices are reasonable, so you make the decision to have a meal there.

And so goes your afternoon. street after street, you move spontaneously and without an agenda. The only thing you come to expect is the unexpected itself.

Now, move the scenario from the streets of New York City into your kitchen. You're tired of the same old recipes, and you haven't made your weekly trek to the grocery store. So you decide to just throw something together. But what? You decide to make up a recipe on the spot, using whatever available ingredients you have at hand. So into the skillet go the sliced onion, the ground beef, a little chili powder, some sliced tomatoes, and a few black olives. You have no idea what you are preparing, but you do know that you will serve these prepared ingredients over a bed of white rice. If this experiment tastes good, you might try to prepare it again sometime. If not - well - you'll try to invent something else another time.

These two scenarios represent an important part of life and they are certainly at the very core of jazz music for both the performer and the listener. When the jazz musician is through playing the melody of a song, s/he then embarks upon an improvisational journey, not unlike an afternoon in New York City or an adventure in your kitchen. There are some guidelines, however; just as you know how to put one foot in front of the other when you walk down the street, the jazz musician knows how to play a musical instrument and understands the structure of a song, before s/he moves into unfamiliar territory, choosing this note or that, this musical phrase or that, just as you might instantaneously choose one city street over another in your travels, or one spice rather than another in your instant recipe.

This sense of spontaneity that provides the basis of improvisation is what is often known as being in the moment. As Buddhism and other spiritual philosophies often suggest, there is no past and no future; there is only the present moment in which we find ourselves - either as musicians or listeners. Buddhists call this state of attentiveness, samadhi. When we musicians improvise, we are often seated squarely in the present moment of spontaneous creation.  That is not to say that we don't use the lessons of the past to create our improvisations. We bring certain fundamental tools to a performance; things like the knowledge of theory, harmony, and rhythm - as well as the full range of human emotions we feel at that time - in order to craft our improvisations in some way that brings deep personal meaning to us, and hopefully brings the listener into our world, if only for a little while.

As my friend and colleague, New York pianist Jim Ridl, points out, "Jazz is a complex medium of expression. It calls for both musical intelligence and passion. The musician draws on multiple sources: music of all kinds, personal life experience, current events, history, and culture, and something intangible within the self, whether it be called soul, inspiration, the Muse, or the Spirit" (Interview, 2011), Creating jazz, to paraphrase the legendary trombonist and composer Bob Brookmeyer, is the act of telling your story and mirroring the world at large - with all of its emotional ups and downs. In this sense, the jazz improviser says things through his or her instrument that all human beings are capable of feeling as a part of life. That is where the connection between musician and listener has the potential for creating a moving and memorable experience.

Focusing: Tumbling into Selflessness

When we go to the movies or the theater, we watch the production and listen to it simultaneously. This is a given; however, when a film or play has depth and is totally engrossing and engaging (think of your favorite movie, for example), something happens to us. We often move beyond the mere act of observation and into the realm of participation; that is, we empathize with one or more of the characters and laugh at his or her bumbling mishaps (in a comedy) or cry when he or she encounters tragedy (in a drama). We also revel when justice is served and evildoers get their comeuppance. In other words, we are able to experience a film or play, rather than passively watch and listen to the production.

The above analogy holds true for jazz as well, although the act of experiencing jazz can often be more subtif than experiencing comedy or tragedy. In other words, the whole range of human emotions is not as readily visible as it would be in a film or a play. As you experience a jazz performance, you must be open to whatever feelings you might be having at the very moment you are hearing the music. Since art often mirrors life, you may well experience a wide range of emotions, from pleasure and excitement, to sadness and contemplation, and all that falls in between.

Even as jazz musicians strive for a state of samadhi  - that is, total immersion in the creative act - so too can listeners move into a state of absolute concentration. As a listener, you have only to be completely open to the music unfolding on the bandstand or on your iPod or CD player. As multimedia composer and violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch suggests in his book, Free Play, "For art to appear, we have to disappear." In other words, we essentially have to abandon conscious thought while listening to (or playing) music. We have to train ourselves to be present; to allow ourselves to focus upon what is going on at that very moment - much as a child focuses upon something as simple as the act of building a sandcastle. That means, in a sense, to become what we're doing. So when we hear jazz, we have to give ourselves over to the experience, without preconception, judgment, or distraction. In this sense, we are truly experiencing jazz, not merely listening to it.

Sounds easy, right? If my own students are any indication, experiencing jazz can be a real challenge. With our attention spans becoming shorter and shorter, due to the dynamic advancements in computer technology as entertainment, the idea of sitting through a jazz concert or listening to an entire John Coltrane recording in a college music library or at home may seem too much like work.

So how do we create a sense of focus if we want to be able to give our total concentration to a jazz performance? My jazz appreciation students, who over the years have been mostly non-music majors, have discovered

that such listening is a challenge, especially when they are exposed to music that is often under three-minutes in duration; and when they are overexposed to a hit song by a well known popular musician. For example, you might hear a new song by a good singer, and as a result, you download that artist's song or purchase her CD. After several months Df listening to her hit song on your iPod and on the radio, and hearing it as background music in boutiques, grocery stores, and elevators, you become understandably bored with it.

Jazz, on the other hand, is not a Commodity that can be canned and packaged into a three-minute recording. It is not an entertainment and has little "commercial potential." Musicians don't become jazz musicians because the music provides a lucrative means of making a living. As such, the first thing a new listener can do is to cast aside all previous notions of what jazz is, and accept it on its own terms. Before you decide whether you like a particular jazz performance, you must give your attention fully to it. This means openly embracing whatever you hear and avoiding comparisons with any other musical genre. It also means taking the time to learn about it from the men and women who create the music - for they and the music they play are inseparable. This is one of the keys to the samadhi of listening. A fellow musician once said to me that we [jazz musicians] are vessels through which the music of the universe passes; and this is what flows through us and into you, the listener, if you are open to what we have to say; our stories, our lives.”

Excerpted / adapted from Experiencing Jazz: A Listener's Companion (Scarecrow Press, 2014) ©2014 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers /TN