I
love jazz. I love Jazz because it is a language. It speaks to a
culture, a sophisticated musical discipline, and a style. For the
longest time, I wanted to like jazz music but didn't. Not much of it,
anyway. I liked Kenny G. The first time I heard John Coltrane, all I
heard was chaotic lines of complex notes hurled out the tail end of a
tenor saxophone. But now, when I hear John Coltrane, I can't keep up a
conversation with anyone else because of the conversation I'm having
with the music. So, what's changed?
In
part, I believe it was because I started to learn to play the sax. I'd
always wanted to play the sax. When I was a kid, my dad asked his
uncle Lester, a professional sax player, what it would take to help me
appreciate playing the sax. Lester told him to start me on the piano,
move to the clarinet, and then to the sax. That way I would have the
rudiments of music woodwind instruments to spring me forward as I
started to play the sax. I never really met Lester. There exists a
sun-bleached photo of me and my entire family posing for the camera on
his back porch but this was before dawn of my consciousness-I was about
three and don't remember it at all. Well, Lester died. And nobody
remembers exactly how, nobody remembers doing it, but somehow his horns
showed up on my doorstep with my name on them. I was 13. I'd been
playing the clarinet for 2 years and I was itching to start the sax.
Problem was, I didn't have one. Not until that day when Lester's horns,
(yep, he gave me not one but TWO saxophones, an alto and a tenor AND a
clarinet) showed up thanks to a mystery and the US postal service. I
scarcely remember a more exciting or more reverent day of my life than
when I received those horns. They are the saxes I still play today. That
day, I remember feeling like something very important had just
happened to my life.
That
summer, I started to blow through the horns and figured out how to
finger the notes and make a decent sound before any teacher got to me.
Lester was right and the clarinet and piano had paid off. As I continued
to learn to play the sax, I began to learn to play jazz. And with just
a little bit of experience of trying to play jazz, I began to
appreciate listening to jazz. Not long after that, I loved it. With a
little experience of jazz, the music meant something to me; I could
understand the sounds I heard as emotions and experiences. I can hear
intervals between notes, feel chord changes come and go and understand
and appreciate the inherent tension and release of jazz. More than that
heady stuff though, I can sit back and feel the groove and swing of
it, I can feel the flavor and texture of it. I can appreciate the
personalities behind the music. For me, when you're invited to see the
bigger picture, I can savor the individual parts better.
This
is often what happens when we begin to understand and appreciate the
underlying form of almost anything be it jazz or yoga. A yoga asana is
beautiful on the outside but understanding the underlying form-the
mechanics of muscles, bones and even subtleties like energy and
intention-makes the posture understandable, enjoyable and enlightening.
Yoga is about understanding oneself deeper. Any deeper look inward,
even just at anatomy, fulfills the ends of yoga.
The
underlying form expresses itself clearly in the outerlying form in our
yoga postures: slumped shoulders might manifest for the depressed or
burdened or shy, broad shoulders for the confident, open-hearted, and
gregarious. As a teacher, I can't read your mind, can't feel your soul,
but I can see how your consciousness produces the product of a very
engaged outer form. So in that sense, I often know whether your mind is
present by how your poses look. The outerlying form reflects the under.
Of
course the underlying and outer lying forms are inseparable. You can't
have the pose without the energy or thought or emotion behind it, you
can't have jazz without its history and culture, you can't have the
blues, without feeling blue. So really what this means is to learn to
see the whole picture is attuning our senses to the specifics and
intricacies of a sophistication of seeing all the parts. We engage on a
deeper level. It makes the practice of jazz or yoga so rich. By
understanding the underlying form, we might acquire a taste for more
complex things like deeper poses, meditation, Coltrane or dark
chocolate. And soon we might begin to understand a little about the
underlying form of all things and learn to see that with increased
flavor and appreciation.
So
maybe, years later, because I've learned a little about the underlying
form of jazz, for my buck I'd choose John Coltrane over Kenny G,
though I still understand Kenny G's technical proficiency and his
beautifully clear and distinct sound. Come to practice this week and
let's focus on understanding ourselves by looking at underlying form
both in practical, anatomical ways as well as conscious, meditative
ways.
Join
me this Friday night at yoga then come and join me at the Bayou where
my band, Jazz Brulee, will most surely play at least a few Coltrane
tunes. Until then, if you're interested click here to hear John Coltrane play Blue Trane, in my opinion one of the best sax solos in all of jazz.
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