The most common form of jazz heard today is often called “straight-ahead jazz.” Whatever the piece, the basic structure is simple: the melody is stated, it is improvised upon, and then a restatement of the melody is played in closing. Improvisation is jazz’s hallmark, and the directions in which the various members of a particular combo might go in a certain piece can become so dizzying and complex that one loses track of the original melody. Nonetheless, the melody is always there; the musician is commenting upon it and finding unimagined corners and depths within it. This is why the restatement of the melody at the close of piece is rarely a flat return to something already heard. Instead, this moment is often exultant and joyful, and the hearer usually realizes he has discovered something profound in what he thought was mundane.
This is, of course, the pattern followed in classic presbyterian preaching. From the pulpit, the text is read. Then, the preacher explores and comments on the text, bringing out its truths which are so obvious, yet to which we all have been blinded in our previous reading. In the best sermons, there are moments which are intensely interesting, yet seem to bear little relation to the text at hand; soon, however, we realize the text speaks directly of those matters, and our paltry imaginations have been futilely limiting the scope and reach of Scripture, just as we have vainly thought to live by our own lights, outside the control of our God. Then the preacher brings us back to the words of the text itself, and we rise for the hymn knowing we can never hear it in the same way again.
Jazz and preaching, then, are kindred art forms. In one sense, they are parasites on the work of others. In a more true sense, jazz and preaching express the fullest and deepest devotion to their texts, displaying their riches and demanding their hearers and the world pay heed.
Miles Davis and me: birds of a feather, baby.
No comments:
Post a Comment