I remember jazz music as specific moments with my father, intentional moments with reason and setting. He would always play his favorite tunes on the road, when traveling to or at his childhood home, under a devilish sun where the heat spoke loudly, so much you could see the air and earth move to it. Recalling this drags to my center a thought and an understanding that for my father, jazz music was and is confirmation of a voyage, confirmation of arrival, and a blissful nostalgia. This brings me to understand that for every single listener, music is a different idea; a different message comes with it and the feelings of each feeler, are validated, moved, enhanced, or decreased.
I was settling with the belief that this is a way of feeling and a way of breathing. My father’s favorite jazz tunes, always South African were populated by the sounds of Bhudaza, Hugh Masekela, Zim Ngqawane and Oliver Mtukudzi, a rich culture of African feels. Catchy lyrics and rhythms prompted dance, feet tapping, and head nodding for the two left-feet folk. Scents of brandy, Brentwood pants, and shiny leather shoes. Folk who devoured jazz as I grew, cleaned up quite well and dressed for the occasion. Even if the occasion was a circle of friends under the tree laughing and dancing and mostly just sitting and conversing.
In my teens, learning to listen to music and picking out instruments in songs by pioneers of colorful music the likes of the late Bra Hugh Masekela was a habit I had become fluent with, listening to instruments and rhythms separately gave the music different colors, the trumpet was always a joyful, childlike spirit which could also be stern and assertive when the need arose, later when I learned about the spirit of Amanono, I understood this characters that shows up quite a lot in African Jazz songs. The trumpet, a signature to his songs was always the main character of the scenes painted by his music, even those without voice or words painted worlds one could learn from.
When the late Hugh Masekela, and Oliver Mtukudzi came together, more especially in Tapera, I felt a sense of care. The music carried a parent-like energy, a love-filled village coming together under a morula tree to discuss a way forward on how they could save their future, the young. It was with listening to a mix of artists that gave Jazz its colors. It would always be Jazz music but only with the other. Every artist’s contribution to the genre made this huge village of a unified culture with a thousand pages of stories and colors and people and spirits that would stem from each song.
This wholesome past of listening innocently led to this gentle love for the colorful genre, of jazz. Of course a gift for words that built poems and stories out of nothing but breath was a great force of direction into the stream of music, where in digging deep one found the likes of late Moses Molelekwa. A song that I will always hold dear, genes and Spirits resonated with something inside my spirit I can never fathom. Learning of his story and how he left the world left me feeling like I had lost a great healer and muse. In his music, emotions shift gently, and inexplicable. That is one thing I find amazing about Jazz music. The ability to send messages that are without words across the world and the magical ability to bring like-minded people together and in one tune.
So in conclusion, for now, Jazz is a huge village populated by amazing artist translations of the world, experiences, culture, and people. It cannot be easy to interpret a jazz song without lyrics, but feeling and experiencing some of the messages or intentions of the musician is an effortless reaction to the music itself.
