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WHAT IS JAZZ? |
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fiat as a flounder on a fishmonger's slab—however brilliant its impression at the time.
So jazz is, in its origins, the music of the American negro. It's music of uninhibited dancing and uninhibited expression of emotion. It's essentially improvised—thrown off in the heat of the moment.
Improvisation
Now this quality of improvisation is a part of the magic of jazz. We all know the fellow with vitality who, in an intimate gathering, will throw off remarks that set the laughter off like a bomb. If we take down the remarks on a tape recorder and play them back the following day, we may well wonder why we ever thought them funny. But that doesn't affect their magic at the time.
This peculiar fascination of the improvised, whether in music or in conversation, is akin to the fascination of a dream. A friend of mine had a vivid dream one night: he dreamt he had invented the funniest joke ever told in the history of the world. It was so outstandingly funny that he was immediately signed up by every TV network and every theatre chain in the world to appear and tell it, and thereby a substantial income was assured him for the rest of his active life. So strong was the thrill of this discovery that he woke up with a start—with the joke still fresh in his mind. He jumped out of bed, tore the pencil out of his pocket diary, and wrote the joke down. Then, relieved at the thought that this joke to end all |
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