I am already tired of politics and nobody has voted yet. Democrat and Republican: my social media is full of fury, rage, and depression. Of course, there are other people posting cat videos, but those jolly souls do not need encouragement. They already live better lives.
Here is good, good news about America: time tends to purge away the dross and leave pure golden, goodness. If you need evidence, think of jazz, think of the blues. If America were to disappear tomorrow, we would be remembered for a few things, but I think jazz would be one of the greatest. Jazz was born of a combination of genius and the American sin of racism. Nothing justifies the sin, and the music witnesses to the sorrow, but the genius transcends the evil.
Jazz had roots in the church and in “dens of vice.” Musicians of color had a hard time getting work, but God and the devil have always competed for the best music. There may have been a time when jazz like ragtime couldn’t be enjoyed, loved, or understood apart from vice. Time has healed that wound. Jazz remains erotic, but without the exploitation of the “cat house.” Jazz is high without needing to be drunk or stoned. Jazz has transcended whatever was base in her roots to ennoble her creators and become one of the great American expressions of art.
I am no expert. Marrying a trumpet player is like being married to the President: you know your way around the place without getting the key. I try to sit, listen, and love quietly as a result, but the luminous performance of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band made me want to say, thank you. Experts might mock my lack of daring . . . though the crowd wasn’t just people my age, it was about half hipsters. The music was lovely, pure, and true. I could have watched Charlie Gabriel play all night, because (somehow!) his sound, his body, and his very being had become one. When he would stand, I wanted to cheer a cultured sight, sound, moment. I have heard just enough trumpet in thirty years of following Hope to know how good Leroy Jones is. He led, coaxed us to join in the music, and seemed unhurried. There were no weak links in the band and I will never forget the evening.
The selections were a mix of sorrow and joy . . . standards including one by Handy, one of the greatest American musicians and the “father of the blues.”
It is odd to be deeply happy after hearing the blues, but I was.
Why?
This is the best of America: what will remain when the hot political air has risen to Heaven and been dispersed. This is gold with the grit, after decades purified into pearl. This is the what people wanted even when they went about getting it in bad places . . . humanity wanted the beauty that was often so destructive. It is never the beauty that is the problem. It is never the pleasure or the joy. The twisting, objectification, destruction of that evil cannot defeat beauty. Art is what humans created in the image of God must do, because He creates, we create. Critics of any new art form often miss the coming pearl, and the gold already there, for the place of birth, but great good can be born in a stable!
The blues endure because until Heaven, sorrow endures. Jazz endures because we are souls embodied, bodies with souls. Jazz fuses them, teases them apart, and brings them back together.
I am not discouraged, because I saw what His children can do one night at the Preservation Hall.
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