Art is an expression of life, in its process and its content - how it is made and what it gives voice to. And as such, art is a great storyteller, speaking our individual and collective truths while teaching us important lessons. Art is both a window and a mirror. As a window, art gives us the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the soul of the artist. And as a mirror, art calls us to face the realities of our own lives. It touches our yearnings, plays out our emotions, and draws from our lifetime of experiences. This morning I want to explore the art of Jazz and what it has to teach us about the process of living.

Jazz is a style more than anything else. Jazz was first used as a word in the late 1800's in New Orleans to refer to the unmentionable activities of the brothels, including what was considered to be an unacceptable risqué style of dance and the unusual music that could be found there. Bands that played in the brothels began using the word in their name to advertise this unique style when they played in other venues, with the Razzy Dazzy Jazzy Band being the first to actually use the word in print in 1900. Because of its early ties with the brothels and the fact that Jazz did not conform to classical music standards, it was considered to be a dangerous form of music. According to Raven McDavid Sr. of South Carolina, "the 1919 announcement of the first Jazz band to play in Columbia, … inspired feelings of terror among the local Baptists such as what might have been aroused by a personal appearance of Yahweh [himself]."

The unique characteristic in the genre of music that came to be known as Jazz is its use of improvisation. While improvisation was considered to be new and innovative to most European Americans, it is how most of the world's music is, and has always been, created. In the "Rough Guide to World Music", Hijaz Mustapha writes, "Four-fifths of the world cannot be wrong. Only one-fifth writes down its music, bases it on harmony not melody, sets the play of instrument precisely on paper without the wavering reality of actual life. Four-fifths of the world bases, and has always based, its music on rhythm, repetition, the pulse, the shared song, the theme and variations. The tune is the same, and then it's never the same. Improvisation takes the familiar to new heights of surprise. That's how tradition remains alive, by encouraging a kind of individual difference that eludes prediction."

This tradition was kept alive by the Africans even after they were brought to America to as slaves. To me this speaks of an amazing strength to be found in the human spirit. The African slaves had been stripped of their language and religion, were treated inhumanely, and yet they continued to make music, singing in the fields as they worked, using washboards and pots and spoons as instruments. Using call and response, the slaves would sing of their sorrow and hope, allowing new verses to be added in the moment. Improvisation was a spiritual freedom that couldn't be taken from them. It was this freedom in the musical expression of African Americans that gave birth to Jazz in the early 1900's. And it is not surprising that this style of musical expression was seen as dangerous by European Americans with their puritan tendencies.

In a 1955 essay "Jazz, Hot and Cold", Arnold Sundgaard writes about the spirit of Jazz and the reasons why, more than fifty years after its beginnings, Jazz was still considered a disturbing musical trend by many Americans, even as it was gaining in popularity. I would like to share with you some of his insights.

No tune, in and of itself is jazz. Jazz is a process applied to a wide range of existing music - spirituals, blues, ragtime, or folk ballads, or an idea that originates in the mind, inspired by one's passion and willed into existence by the playing of an instrument. Most jazz is never written down in musical script, no formal score is followed, and no precise method of notation has ever been developed that can capture the rhythmic and emotional complexities of a jazz song. It is in the act of simultaneously creating and performing that we truly find Jazz music. While jazz has been recorded, it truly only exists in the moment and can rarely be duplicated. One of the most highly acclaimed jazz album of all times is "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis. The musicians played tunes they had been introduced to only minutes before they began recording. Several mistakes were made during the recording, and they were included in the final production and have never been considered to be a detraction from the experience of listening and being moved by this amazing collection of jazz tunes. Jazz is not about learning a piece of music that someone else created, and replicating it as closely as possible to the creator's intended form. Jazz is dynamic and thrives on diversity. In Ken Burn's documentary film, "Jazz", Wynton Marsalis says, "The real power of Jazz… is that a group of people can come together and create… improvised art and negotiate their agendas… and that negotiation is the art."

And Sundgaard points out that Jazz, by its very nature, is a kind of freedom rooted in the sense of responsibility. While each member of the band is allowed unrestrained freedom during solo spots, they must always keep in mind the other players and be respectful of the whole group. They share a common rhythm which supports a community of sounds, and through this each single voice is sustained and strengthened. This is a stark contrast to other forms of group musical performance such as an orchestra that holds to a rigid sense of control by both composer and conductor. In this experience, the individual will must give way to an outside authority. Imagine the what the reaction might be if a musician in the Boston Symphony suddenly stood up and played a few riffs of his own!

In Jazz, the outcome is a result of the equally shared contributions of all, without a central authority. While this philosophy could lean toward chaos and anarchy, when functioning at its best, there is unbelievable order as each performer gives and is given, as he sends and is sent. If Unitarian Universalists were to adopt an official style of music - my vote would be for Jazz.

With this process of improvisation, jazz players are able to take a simple tune, and add layers of complexity and rich emotion. Early jazz was often created out of the music form called the blues that used a twelve-bar phrase, the very essence of simplicity. Sundgaard gives an example of how the simplicity of the blues provided the necessary space for the process of Jazz, using the song "Mamie's Blues" which begins with:
Two nineteen done took my baby away,
Two nineteen took my baby away,
Two seventeen gonna bring her back some day.
"Within those three simple lines is compressed all the Odyssean anguish necessary for musical exploration. There is no need for involved rhyming and qualifying clauses - that is the function of the music. Let the trumpet state what departure means and the clarinet will describe what being alone means. Let the trombone tell how long it is between departure and return and then all three, supported by string bass, drums, guitar or banjo, will find a way to say that hope exists and survives the agony of separation."

This is the quality of expression found in jazz, with or without lyrics, that has made it such a compelling art form. Jazz players seem to stretch the limits of possibility, getting more out of their instruments than is mechanically possible, bringing a sense of urgency to their music. And in this way, jazz speaks to a yearning in humanity to get more out of life than seems possible and live on the edge of experience - a quality that has added to its appeal for some while making others who see stretching the limits as daring and risky, and something that should be all together avoided. approach with caution.

Sundgaard concludes his essay with this paragraph: "Since the time of New Orleans, jazz has run the gamut from simplicity to complexity. Life, it has been observed, has run a similar course. If jazz is a reflection of life, as it seems to be, why then has it aroused such antagonism among many people? First, I think, because it challenges complacency. Secondly, because it refuses to be bridled by the accepted and equivocal standards of society. Thirdly, because it is never still; it does not hesitate to press forward on every boundary of the emotions no matter how they may be denied. But most of all it has tried to speak without guile or circumvention to the troubled mind and bewildered heart. As long as doubt and loneliness exist this music will try to speak to them. There will always be people who do not wish to listen; to them the music is disturbing and they either deny the existence of bewilderment or they wish to escape its deeper meaning. But disturbances of the mind and heart cannot be quieted by logic or quelled by ridicule. As long as this is true, jazz - as a voice from within - will find expression and survive."

Accepting Sundgaard's premise that jazz is a reflection of life, what lessons can we learn from jazz? I believe jazz can teach us the art of improvisation, whether or not we consider ourselves to be musicians. We can bring to our lives a creative openness to each moment that can give birth to unforeseen journeys and opportunities. David Rothenberg explores the possibilities of living as an improviser in his article "Spontaneous Effort: Improvisation and the Quest for Meaning", which I used in this morning's reading, and he makes some interesting observations.

One aspect of improvisation is the learning that must first take place. I couldn't begin to create jazz on the saxophone because I don't know how to play the instrument. And even if I could play the saxophone, I would have to have some knowledge of musical movement and how to blend sounds. But there is difference in gaining knowledge and rehearsing. Gaining knowledge is essential to improvisation, but rehearsing is not. While it is necessary to cultivate the necessary skills, improvisation is about making use of all that has ever been learned in unexpected ways. When Picasso was once asked how long it took to make a painting, he replied, "All of my life."

Improvisation doesn't mean there aren't rules to follow. In fact some teachers of Jazz insist that it is only by learning all the rules of chords and movement than one finds the freedom to throw it all away and begin creating melodies never heard before. Stravinsky said, "I place so many constraints on myself only to have greater freedom of expression." Only when we understand the limits and know where they are can we begin to explore all the possibilities. Often times, our limited knowledge leads us to believe the range of possibilities is much smaller than it actually is. We live our lives much smaller as a result.

Deepening our knowledge also allows us to understand what is essential, another important aspect in the art of improvisation. Jazz musicians must contribute what is essential in the moment and not waste a single note. Rothenberg tells of learning to play the jazz clarinet and how his teacher would make him play a single lone note over and over, shaking his head each time and saying, "No, not right. You haven't yet got the sound." His teacher wanted him to make each note matter, "to sing like it was the final knell heralding the end of the world, perhaps, the last gasp of music anyone would hear. The tone had to be absolutely necessary, sudden, immediate, essential, impossible to forget." Looking at each moment in life in this way - discerning what is essential and needed in every moment as if it might be the last moment, making each moment truly matter, can help us respond to the unexpected turns in life in ways that will lead us down more satisfying and meaningful paths.

The scariest part of improvising for me lies in the possibility of making mistakes. What if I mess up? There is a sense of security in doing what is known and responding with a well thought out plan. But in some ways, life does not allow us to always do that, it forces us to improvise, because life is not predictable and can't always be planned for. I was talking recently with my best friend from junior high and we were reflecting on the unexpected turns in our lives. I said, "our lives have certainly not been what we imagined they would be back when we were fourteen." And she responded, "Thank goodness, they would have been very boring lives if they had!" Improvisation allows us to play with life, be open to new possibilities. Life is fleeting. Improvisation celebrates through music what we know about the immediacy of life but are reluctant to admit - in music each "sound disappears as soon as it stops. No music can be held down to marks fixed on a page. It is fluid,… created in the moment, never to be recaptured again." This reminds me of the saying, "This is life, not a dress rehearsal" We only get this one chance to make the most of what comes our way. Mistakes are made along the way, or unexpected outcomes may be the consequence of decisions made. But this, too, becomes a part of the necessary knowledge that allows us to continually move forward in positive ways. Rothenberg says, "Years of practice combined with an attentiveness to the spontaneity of the surrounding world itself can be enough for each person to be ready to let loose his or her own unique songs."

Rothenberg concludes his article by saying: "I used to wander the world looking for a reason to stay any one place instead of any other. All I needed was a sign, a commitment, or something essential out of the realm of possibilities. This still remains as a theme of my search: a new chord, a new rhythm, one can play any note. Which one is right? How can we be sure? There is no way to plan or answer. The right choice looms and crashes over us and then it has happened and it is gone and there are more decisions to make and no more advice and endless possibilities and too much information and no time to choose and the fingers move and the air is blown and I am traveling somewhere new and I don't know why and each experience piles on top of all the previous ones and I know I will forget none of them; they'll only be transformed into materials, images, fragments to be combined and recombined as the suddenness of art. I'll do other things in life, have a family, run organizations, motivate people, and still I won't know how to make it through tomorrow. It will not come out as I have planned. The world is too wonderful for the map to be the territory. The path looks different going up or going down… If it is really possible to see the world like this, then the most serious of journeys is also the most astonishing."