Why Did It Take Me So Long to Meet Jazz?

A friend recently gave me Jazz Profiles: The Spirit of the Nineties, a book consisting of interviews with some big names from the nineties — people like Wynton & Bradford Marsalis, Cynthia Blackman, and Joshua Redman. While the book did leave me inspired to check out a few albums (like Oscar and Benny from the Benny Green interview) and left me with a few good tips for young musicians like me, it also left me with a burning question: why did it take me such a long time  to meet jazz?

In the interviews, Nicholas Payton says that he “grew up at [his] father’s rehearsals listening to some of the greatest jazz musicians in New Orleans.” Geri Allen heard the music “as a little kid, as a little toddler, and maybe even pre-birth” since her father was a big fan of jazz. Benny Green recalls hearing his father on the tenor sax and being “exposed to his jazz-record collection.” Craig Handy began the tenor sax at the age of twelve when he heard Dexter Gordon on the radio.

So why is it that these great jazz musicians met jazz so early, but jazz didn’t hit me until high school? It’s not that my interest in music in general was triggered at the same time — I started taking lessons before I even started kindergarten; I played the flute later in elementary school, where it was retired by the end of the sixth grade. Perhaps it was because I enjoyed the solitary nature of the piano more than its actual music at the time — I enjoyed playing it by myself, and only by myself. But that was classical music. In my sixth-grade brain, jazz didn’t exist.

As for concerts, I played in them. Outside of a few orchestral concerts I attended when my sister was playing the violin, I did not get exposed to much live music. I did get a chance to see violinist Midori Goto and pianist Robert McDonald at the Walt Disney Concert Hall when I was twelve, but the only memory I have of that concert is waking up from the comfy seats of the theater to the bright lights and applause at the end of the concert, watching Goto take her final bow. As for live jazz? The closest thing I came to a live jazz performance was a music education performance by the Alley Cats, a doo-wop singing group. I left my fifth-grade class for their hour-long performance in the middle of the day; they were initially a few awkward men in bowling shirts — but the moment they began singing, I was immediately fascinated. And then they disappeared. For the rest of the week I tried finding out what it was that I had heard that day, but I had no luck. I gave up and moved on.

Somehow for almost ten years a jazz tune wasn’t on long enough for me to catch the bug; no one tapped me on the shoulder and said, “hey, you know that song you just skipped over? It was completely improvised.” What I’m trying to say is that I’m frustrated. I get frustrated when I read articles about how young people don’t listen to jazz anymore — as an elementary or junior high school student, how on earth was I supposed to find it on my own?

This realization began gnawing at me the moment I was accepted into the upper jazz band at West Ranch High School — I was playing piano for my junior high culmination ceremony and I got a tap on the shoulder from the junior high band director. I’d never spoken to him before. He only had one question for me: “Where were you?” He’d been managing a jazz band at the junior high, but the first time I’d ever heard about it was on the last day I would ever be attending the school. It was as if that jazz band was some secret that only the select few could know about — it was hidden from everyone but the band kids under the cover of football and spirit days and  honors classes at the junior high. Even later, I discovered that the neighbor that I’d been living next door to for eight years was a jazz fanatic — halfway into my sophomore year of high school.

Jazz isn’t supposed to be a secret. It’s intended to be shared — even my jazz teacher sometimes tells me that improvising is a compilation of everything you’ve ever heard. That’s why I smile when I hear about people like Jason Parker combating the whole “jazz is dead” notion by sharing their music with young people like me who didn’t have immediate access to it. Whether you’re a jazz musician, a jazz instructor, or just someone who’s got a penchant for jazz, please don’t give up on us. Please don’t conclude that we’re uninterested; please don’t assume that we’ll think jazz is boring. Granted, it’s probably a better idea to hand us Kind of Blue before you give us Vijay Iyer (even KKJZ’s Leroy Downs told me with a chuckle that “the world’s not ready for Vijay”). But by handing a kid a jazz record or taking him to a jazz show, you’re giving him a chance to discover something he never knew existed. He might not like it, and he might love it. Believe me, coming from my experience with jazz as that teenager who’s supposedly not listening to it anymore — it’s more than worth a shot.

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