Jazz - the harmony of disconcordance

Saxaphone, trombone, drums, the strings and the guttural to high pitch sounds - the Jazz of it together and in dis-concordance make me imagine life and reflect on it. Happy and sad, together but independent, a coherent direction with individualistic streaks. 

Confessions of my jazz love affair is almost like an imaginary woman. This jazz was aspirational, the characters who played and appreciated it had a distinct charm. The notes of this attraction were dark, of a soul that felt, of meanings that escaped me, happiness in being lost away, expression, grounded, without trying to be appealing, letting the pain and furrows through without fear and need of acceptance. For all that it meant, I can understand now, back then it was black magic, wicked, attractive but not comprehensible. Between the bouts of rock, metal and liberal doses of pop, this creature of jazz would would raise its head. 

Seeing jazz in its raw element, up close and personal in Europe and US shed of its unapproachability. Hearing it more often on my play lists while sitting on my desk during the PhD, it was my company in my world of transplant immunology. Sometimes in the background as a mellow piano sometimes my celebration in the loud notes of the trumpets. Followed two courses on understanding jazz. These courses I did in all earnestness but they focussed on the understanding the emotional outbursts, making formats to an asymmetric expression. I learnt the details but saw the overall picture becoming less enticing.  

The professional world has left me looking for my moments of peace and reflection. In the metro I do not wish to the chatter or any lyrics, neither am I heartbroken or yearning for love. I am pensive and need jazz. Hearing it on my headphones I can sense the music taking its course like a meandering Brahmaputra in Assam plains - slow unhurried and with an amazing force carried nonchalantly. Its this self belief that allows for each instrument to express itself and have its time under the sun. A string or trumpet breaks out in a cascade usually non-musical from the rest. The others sit back and observe, cajole and encourage. Its unhurried, its freedom, its nurturing freedom and its not time bound. I can hear the intensity of the breakthrough instrument, its the expression of the musician, its as it would sound to him not to the others who hear him. He is lost in his ecstasy, and gives me a chance to enter his ecstasy of breaking out. And then the tiredness and ease off after its crescendo. Follows the turn of another soon after. 

On an afterthought, maybe the courses did add an underlying understanding of jazz. Maybe the nuances comprehension. Maybe there is need for order in making the disarray. Maybe its a conscious, well planned and well rehearsed disarray. I do not wish to know about this, lest the seduction of silhouettes becomes nudity under the glare of neon. 

I yearn for more jazz as the soul freshener. Now starts the quest for better headphones - the soul and the material intertwined.