Images of Jazz

Jazz has always been one of those genres of music that I can honestly say I've always enjoyed. Understood, however, is a completely different thing. I cannot say that I truly know jazz. Whenever asked about my taste in music, particularly when it comes to jazz, I will say that I appreciate the music as much as anyone can who does not fully understand what it is their listening to. I'm upfront about this, but mostly so that I don't find myself in some kind of musical terminology-throwing contest of which I would surely lose. I hesitate to discuss this type of music (as is obvious by my late blog posting) because I'm simply not sure what to say about it.

That brings me to the point of this blog entry today: to discuss the two different versions of "West End Blues," by Louis Armstrong and Nicholas Payton. I shouldn't be so hard on myself, I suppose, when it comes to my lack of understanding of jazz. It is music, afterall, and I do love music. So I'll simply describe both pieces as I heard them and share the images that came to mind as I listened:

Louis Armstrong's version (or was this the original, I'll assume?) reminded me of a lazy summer day, rocking chair slowing creaking back and forth, the neighborhood children running around with dirt on their knees chasing after the ice truck. I say this as if it was some distant memory of mine. I was born in 1979. It is not. Regardless, the unmistakable scratchy record playing sound would bring most back to a distant time, whether we were there or not. I enjoyed its mellow, feel-good time, and its classic jazz melody. In this piece, it seemed as though the trumpet and piano, along with the other horns, took turns contributing to the overall piece, like sophisticated children practicing what their parents taught them about sharing. I smiled as I listened.

Nicholas Payton's version was a stark contrast to Armstrong's. Right away, I was jolted from that front porch rocking chair into a busy city street in New York or perhaps New Orleans. The energy of the piece made me feel like it was meant to accompany someone who had somewhere important to go, important people to see and meet. The confidence of this person bubbled over into the streets where his heels clicked along in an upbeat and hurried fashion. The trumpet in this piece seemed more throaty and agressive (if this could describe the sound) and was far more in control of the music than Armstrong's piece. This little trumpet never learned to share, perhaps. It definitely owns the song. It also feels like the players are standing before the listeners saying, "This will move you, will shake you, will make you get up off your feet and dance!"

I can't pick a favorite between the two because they both are so strikingly different. I'm not even sure I would have recognized that they were both "West End Blues" if they hadn't been paired together for this particular assignment. Regardless, my opinions of this piece are limited to what I believe the music is saying, the images in conjures up, and of course how well it moves a "non-jazz-knowing" person. Maybe I'll become an expert one day and have a far more sophisticated appreciation for these two songs.

David Blakesley describes Kenneth Burke's pentad as the motivation behind action. Because dramatism helps us understand why we act (or say, respond, believe, etc) in a certain way, the pentad seems to be an approach to help us learn alternative ways of acting. When we say the word "race," for example, we associate a multitude of ideas, problems, identifications and so on with that word. Eventually we can no longer talk ourselves out of these ideas because as Blakesley notes, "our terms use us, rather than the other way around." In order to create meaning behind the word "race" in a way that helps us understand all different perspectives, we can use the pentad to force ourselves to break down previously held notions of race and create new ones.

I believe that the pentad, if used thoughtfully, could be a starting point to understanding our world and the strife that exists within it. It certainly won't result in a world of people joined hand-in-hand to circle the plannet, but if we could at least come to an understanding of why we disagree with certain ideas then we can "act" in a more positive way.

This idea needs some solid grounding from anyone who understands dramatism better than I do. Any thoughts?

The Role of Rhetoric in Self-Identification

In John D. Ramage's Rhetoric: A User's Guide, he discusses the subject of identity and how one comes to create and understand his identity. In the beginning of the section titled, "Essence v. Substance," he defines essence as "some part of us--perhaps physical, perhaps spiritual--that make us who were are, that if removed from our identity would change our identity." Later on, he explains that we come to an understanding of things when we compare one thing to another. Rhetorically, this can be understood to mean that an apple gains its meaning by using other words such as "fruit," "red," "juicy," or "round." The same goes for "finding one's self." In order to discover one's essence, we can only look to the words that have been laid out for our choosing. Essentially, then, this search for identity is merely a search for the perfect word to satisfy our need to classify and categorize (or uncategorize) ourselves and to differentiate between what we are and what we are not.

So here's my question: How unique are we when we must resort to prefabricated words to identify ourselves? When a person spends his youth (or even his lifetime) trying to discover himself, has he always innately known who that person is but simply didn't have the words for it and therefore remained unaware? If so, do these decades of unrest and confusion circulate around the need for language to give us self-satisfaction?

If our identity depends on the right combination of words that others before us have created, then perhaps the people who have their own truly unique identities are those who cannot express at all what it is that makes them unique. If this is so, then perhaps we should all simply stop trying to find ourselves or rather begin to revere those who are mute or live in distant monasteries devoted to lifetime vows of silence. We should never attempt to discuss who these people really are because it is not possible to give them a unique identity because simply describing them breaks up the originality with our prefabricated words. And the rest of us must accept the fact that we are all the same and different, unique and unoriginal until someone creates a new word out of no other previously known words to describe us.

Or perhaps there is an infinite number of ways to combine the words we have been given and for eternity the English language will create new and unique ways to help us find ourselves?? :)