Night Jazz Lessons
New Orleans, 2009

I wake from my nap at 2am
Part of me wants to pace the mad city
He joins me on the sofa
In this room with its high ceilings and countless instruments
He turns on the jazz station where he works

“Would you teach me about the blues and jazz
tonight?” I ask
Why pace a city when I am living with a brilliant man who lives music
An ivy league boy who moved here to play trumpet in dark clubs with old men
He takes my question to heart

I have learned to nibble on other people’s passions

He paints a picture of sounds and melodies and rhythms slowly rising out of the sadness
In the Mississippi delta, off the steam boats that rode up and down the Mississippi
“The blues and jazz were born here
Both were the music of the poor
The blues is like a moan, a continuous moan, a moan of the soul.”

Blues cry is the bending of notes
He explains how the blues is an essential element in jazz that incorporates
“the blues cry – concept of laughing to keep
from crying
Blues is a lament that somehow makes you feel better
It’s like a working through”

He explains how jazz rose out of European military marching music then was flavored with the African/African American component
“What jazz did was work with the uptones.  It’s like a jam, taking classical western influences and adding in trumpets and sax and horns.  Think of it as created by poor black folks getting a hold of instruments and
applying rhythmic parts of their forefathers to those
instruments.”

Jazz has a lift and a lilt
Ragtime provided the lift and Louis Armstrong provided the lilt
“What is lilt?” I ask
It’s when you bend the rhythm
He shows me on the drum, the trumpet

He tells me about the lives of some of the players
“Louis Armstrong grew up an orphan in rough neighborhoods
He was wild and angry and out of control.”

How is it that all those who leave their mark on this world are wild and mad?

I have never studied music although it plays
continually in my life
He pulls out a small drum covered to dull the sounds
“This is a rhythm.”  He taps beats in a continual
pattern on the dulled drum.
“A melody is a pattern of notes.”
“You can play all the right notes, but if you don’t have rhythm then it’s missing what creates the pace of the music.  When I learned music, I learned notes and scales.  No one talked about rhythm.  Yet it’s a pacing that either creates beauty or only sound.”

I start putting together the words
A note is simply placed at a particular tone, but its length is not defined
A tone is the pitch of sound, its length also not defined
 
He breaks down components of music
“Melody = pitch + rhythm in a recognizable pattern
Harmony is the accompaniment underlying a melody
When combine melody, rhythm & harmony you get music (with some exceptions like Gregorian chat – that has no accompaniment and all same pitch)

We listen to jazz and the blues late into the night. 

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