Jazz Lessons

Last week on World Jazz Day, I was blessed to spend the evening at a jazz club.? I was reminded of what a privilege live music is.? The Gh Jazz Collective was playing, and the beauty of jazz was evident.? The miracle of this genre is the reminder that someone in that group, was at least at one point playing something that had never been played before.? The wonder of the improvisation that jazz allows, is that blank canvas at every performance, to paint a music colour that one only knew about on the spur of the moment. And the flair with which they performed was inspiring.? If it takes 10000 hours to be good at something, they had paid their due.

There was an Afro-Brazilian singer who was singing in Africa for the very first time.? She did not want to say anything before she performed, because she was convinced tears would just fall. So she sang, the most amazing rendition of a Stevie Wonder song I had ever heard.? And when the sax, keyboard and trumpet took over to complement her, it was just an amazing aural experience.? Suddenly the years seemed to fall away, and she seemed to? stand in the place her ancestors had been stolen from all those years before. They may have sung with that voice, on this ground centuries ago.? And now, the way history works, that voice had returned, shrouded in the rhythms of jazz that our forebears took across the oceans. Now their daughter had reunited with people who looked like her forebears… and the effect was magical.

I was reminded of the magic of our music, and our musicians.? There is a privilege that we have, being born here close to the root of all these rhythms that we take for granted.? I am sure that the rhythms she felt from the traditional drums pelting out multi-pitched cadences, resonated with something deep within.? Something that is ingrained somewhere in our DNA, which is impossible to understand.? Its a deep wrong, to lose the ones who make music, when they are so young, and KODA came to mind.? To sit and listen to this mastery and know that I would never hear his mastery live again, was numbing.? I have heard his music, he had even been kind enough to do the rhythm mix for one of my own songs.? Its catastrophic, that we have lost him so young.

Its catastrophic to lose masters of an art.? Every community that will thrive, must guard the ones who have become good at what they do.? It is the responsibility of leadership, to sustain community, so that its masters recreate themselves, before they die.? It is the only way to keep community relevant to the world.? It is the only way to retain value and perpetuate growth.? Sweden has the world’s largest dollar billionaire population per capita, but it is also one place where health care and education are free.? In Sweden, when a business venture fails, it is possible to ask the government to pay the broke founders a salary until they think a way out of the mess. They have sustained their wealth, by protecting their creators.

On a daily basis, as maestros in surgery, medicine, nursing, teaching continue to flood out I am struck by how much is needed to stop this haemorrhage. But as the concert ended, I was also struck by the opportunity that this country has, for new people to shine.? I am encouraged by the opportunities we have for new leaders to sprout.? There is something to learn about jazz… its a blank canvas, and everyone has to improvise. Maybe there is something in that genre for us today.? When the singer start singing something she has never tried before, the keyboardist has to reorganise, and follow… the drummer has to regroup, the horns… everyone, has to find a way, to go with the flow.? From the chaos, something beautiful emerges, something jazzy. And that is what the applause is for.

From the hot chaos of these difficult todays, may something beautiful emerge.