See You When You Get There

I am tempted towards nostalgia.

But I live and want to move forward.

So forward it is.

With a handful of guiding paths from the masters – Miles, Keith, Coltrane and the rest – I know I need to pursue the inner prompting towards a path dynamic.

Now I understand. Nostalgia pulls us down into the past victories and failures. It gives a woozy feeling, reliving the victories that were.

I remember the stages, the in the zone moments, the ride, the rush. But the relevance of all these only exists in my mind. It is, in truth, only relevant at a personal level, which means nothing to the whole world unless it touches souls.

This is perhaps why Carlos Santana continues to travel the same path towards “touching the divine”. Though I don’t subscribe to it theologically, I seem to suddenly comprehend the credibility of Mr. Santana. Music is confluent. Art is confluent. Its relevance and effect is as good and strongest as the culture and the community it represents.

Keith Jarret said something about it that still moves me now. This is my rephrasing of that Jarret interview in Keyboard Magazine, 1993. Though not in toto, he was saying something to this effect: What we have are be-bop pray-ers, people who pray and give homage to the church of bebop. What we need are bebop play-ers, play-ers who play music. Charlie Parker was not playing bebop, he was playing music and how he perceived it to be. When we consciously make an effort to “play” bebop, we can never ever play bebop.

Miles concedes: to always look ahead, and never look back.

Paying homage to the roots is a totally, entirely different beast. The need to know the roots and how we are intertwined to it is essential. Yet we do not stay there, as the same nutrients and sap flowing in us and leads us to branch out. This is the blood that flows, and keeps us breathing towards other phases.

Yet the common denominator is the proverbial artistic spark. It has to be left unbridled, and if it finds its ultimate expression on a single note form a clinking glass rather than a Coltrane Ionian modal head, so be it. 

The blind allegiance to a single profile of music - brought about by the demand of consumer culture to neatly profile artistic expressions into record bin categories - continues to create a backlash on both audience and musicians . This “Retro jazz here/ smooth jazz there/ black metal here/only punkskaters allowed/bebop is king/we are the ska guys/classical is the real music” mentality has turned the most venerable language of music into a trash talking circle.

That’s why there are small puddles of stagnant water, where sadly most wallow and die in because they are not aware of the teeming waters outside that waterhole. The music and art is safe, recycled, replete with all the affirmation, but that is where everyone throws their own wastes too.

That’s where I come from, but that is where I do not want to end up in.

There are wider vistas outside, a much bigger world, a deeper ocean, where surely other pilgrims like me would be happily pursuing the same in reckless abandon.

I hope to see you when I get there.



Tiano BM 2016