I just put on Gretchen Parlato’s ‘Holding Back the Years’. It is so soulful. It takes me to that place, that place where you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is such a thing as beauty, and that there is something inside of me that calls back to it.
I’ve listened to that song several times since hearing about it a few years ago, but this time I decided to buy the album. Had a quick preview on iTunes and it all sounds pretty good, so why not? I’m always up for more good music in my possession. I don’t want to make purchasing music into a comfort drug, something I do when I’m trying to run away from some other problem, but I do want to be surrounded by jazz.
Listening to jazz reassures me that everything will in fact be okay; that everything in fact is okay. It’s easy to get caught up in worries without jazz, it’s possible to get caught up in worries even with jazz, but then I’m not really listening. This type of jazz especially – vocal, summery yet soulful – reassures me, perhaps because it takes me back. It reminds me of when I taught English in Japan, at one of two places I worked, the one that always had a summery, jazzy kind of music playing. At the time I found it slightly annoying, and of course this that I’m listening to now is far better than that was, and it’s not like that was the best time of my life either – I had to be older than I felt and I missed university and friends my age. But in nostalgia you tend to remember the good things, and just the fact that you remember a time when things were different, and you got through that time, so you’ll get through this time too, is encouraging.
(I’m listening to the album right now, so this which I’m writing might not make complete sense.)
Maybe that’s part of the reason I want to do a jazz radio show next year. University is in part a place to do things you won’t get to do again, like lots of sports and musical stuff. I’ve never had anything to do with radio, and I don’t think many people listen to the university station, but I think it would be fun to do it even if no one listened. Ideally, I could play the music I like, and maybe someone else out there would like it and start listening to it, and then a few years from that point they would listen to it again or still be listening to it and be reminded of past times.
I don’t just want people to listen to jazz for the potential nostalgia, that can happen with any type of music regardless of quality. Thanks to a single night I now have a slightly positive association with songs as awful as ‘In My Head’ by Jason Derulo and ‘Tik Tok’ by Kesha. I want people to listen to jazz for a greater musical appreciation. It pains me so much to hear people say things like ‘jazz is dead’, like a friend once did. So they don’t hear jazz in their everyday lives. Jazz doesn’t come crawling to you begging to be listened to, like some other forms of music. It has more dignity than that. But a special friend could possibly make an introduction.
Or they have a very narrow definition of jazz. Big band is great, but there’s so much more than just that. And elevator music? Well…I enjoy it, but it’s a shame it’s become such a derogation. I think it’s fair to say that elevator music has been for jazz what greeting cards have been for poetry. Propagation, sure, but a diminution.
That’s all I can think of to say about that right now. To be honest, I just went and watched some YouTube videos, and that kinda killed the jazz and writing moment. Oops. I make those kinds of mistakes often, and not obliviously. Oh dear.
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