I remember now, what the fuss was all about. Live Music. To walk into a bar with no plans past drinking beer with an old friend, and to find oneself suddenly among the grand company of old acquaintances, people of many nations, and then, just as the conversations are really starting to warm up and laughter punctuates every sentence, the Jazz Band walk on stage under the green and orange lights, instruments in hand.
There is magic in the world.
The Django Rowe Quartet are soaked in it.
They come out swinging, they take the crowd with them straight into the night where every knee is tappin', every finger snappin', every head bobbin'. I look into dark corners and see romance, couples breathing into one another's ears as their conversations become public in their intimacy. Near the stage a group of young bloods, serious jazz heads, sit with heads tilted upwards and their eyes transfixed. There is a cool religiosity in their expressions, reverential without being worshipful, they are studying the music, taken, as I am taken by the masterful playing; and there is a thing about masterful playing – it looks groovy, it moves easy, and each corner of this quartet are dancing to this shared hallucination that is JAZZ.
I am drawn into a conversation with a man named John, who when I asked him if he was reading anything at the moment, answered Bertrand Russel's History of Philosophy, and I knew that I had found an instant friend. I told him about Cicero, he told me he was reading the pre-Socratics, we touched on Zen Buddhism and Marcus Aurelius and Alain De Botton and Jazz was the soundtrack to our electrified conversation. As one musician took their solo the room would shift direction, like a change in the wind turns the heads of tall grass. As the next stepped up and took the lead, the world would tilt again, all our conversations underscored by the philosophy of Jazz, the sharing space, the listening attentiveness, the room for solos, for monologues, and the space to scat, or whisper, or to stay silent and just listen.
I am spell-bound by the forms the musicians take, coiled around their instruments. The saxophone player sways and shimmy's and plays a squall of sounds, melodies yet made sweet by the siren song of his instrument's voice, and by the lover's heart that beats inside his chest. The downright unassuming groove of the bass player; only someone who really knows themselves, who lives in their music can move and play with the confidence she displayed. The drummer who, so far from keeping time, seems to make time, make space, occupy empty pockets, tickle the tiny hairs of my ear and sway with a swung groove that has the whole room sizzling. The guitar player, unbuttoned shirt, unbrushed hair, and an untroubled virtuosity that sets the room alight, that sets the setting sun blazing upon his serene face.
For me, Jazz is both deeply intellectual, and hip-shaking visceral. There is a humour and a hubris in the extended solos, but simultaneously, a good solo makes use of the soap-box to say something really good and worth the time it takes to say it. I laugh and I smile and my beer is ice cold and the crowd are perfect; they cheer every solo, they nod their heads and take pleasure in every subtle shift of melody and rhythm.
I remember what the fuss was all about. Live Music.
Tonight is day one of Zero Active Covid Cases in South Australia. September 2nd, 2020. Wednesday night at the Grace Emily Hotel, Adelaide.
The Quartet are:
Gio Clemente - Saxophone
Steve Neville - Drums
Dylan Paul - Bass
Django Rowe - Guitar
(For the show I was at, Tasha Stevens was on Bass)
Here is some live footage from last month, at the Grace Emily: July 1st, 2020
