Be Bop

I'm sitting in my studio, completely uninspired after 1 hour's worth of work and I can't get the sexy sounds of Charlie Parker out of my head. (p/s - I also can't seem to change the font on this computer..) So, grab a seat, put down your palette knife and let's talk jazz.

I'm not one who would call myself a jazz conoisseur - I don't always know when someone's playing a 'fat' solo or whether I'm clapping at the end of it because it was really good or because the one's that look like real 'jazz cats' are nodding and doing so. That being said, I would like to be someone who understands jazz - in its discipline and technicality. However, whenever I find ,myself saying (or thinking) that, I kick myself for being too much of a purist or a victim of instutionalized music.

Jazz - in its earliest days, had always struck me as music that was in itself free form - a brand of music that was hidden beneath the layers of pop culture, yet not completely separate from it. Jazz was played, sung and performed whenever the spirit moved you, and was not something that was measured in scales, sharps or flats. That type of free form jazz and its casual essence was epitomized when I saw Herbie Hancock play at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston 2 years ago. After waiting, for a while for him to come on..he finally sauntered on stage, sat himself down, looked right in front of him...then muttered "hm..I forgot my music", casually walked off stage, retreived his sheet music, sat down and played a wicked concert. It never really has to be perfect. The thing with Jazz is that it's culture, it's style, it's love, it's personality, it's spirit. It's not something that's learnt - it's felt.