"Jazz- Feel The Spirit"

Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
February 14, 2010 Mardi Gras Sunday

Back in 1972, I made my first visit to New Orleans to march in a Mardi gras parade with my Navy ROTC band.  I was the band commander, and I led the band with my baton on our parade route.  We saw all kinds of people and drew lots of catcalls and shenanigans from the crowds lining the streets.  After our parade we were able to watch a few other parades – I remember the Bacchus parade.  We took in all the bawdy sights in the streets and clubs of the French Quarter.  It was, as they say, a “wild and crazy” time.  It was maybe a little too high-spirited for me, a small town boy who had never seen such things.

I remember going into Preservation Hall and sitting on the worn wooden floors to hear traditional Jazz – what they called Basin Street Blues.  I recognized most of the tunes, “St. James Infirmary,” “Didn’t He Ramble,” and of course “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In.”  Preservation Hall is still there to do just what its name says, to preserve the old tunes and style of jazz.  Back in 1972, as a college student during the Vietnam War, I was into Rock ‘n’ Roll and other anti-establishment music.  I liked hearing the old songs there in the Quarter, but afterwards, I didn’t pay much attention to jazz for awhile, thinking it was, well, just too OLD.  I wanted music that spoke to my generation, music that represented the cultural revolution we were experiencing.

Years later, after I had learned a few things about the blues I sourt of came in thru the side door and began to appreciate jazz more.  I discovered music that is fresh, varied, vibrant, and fun.  I found that beyond traditional jazz there were many avant-garde forms of jazz, and that jazz has often been associated with and has spoken for the social rebels of America.  What I experienced with both the blues and more joyful jazz songs was a sense of transcendence.  When I was feeling down, I could identify with the blues, feel less alone, and regain my courage.  Listening to jazz often made me feel ecstatic, just happy to be alive – no matter what my mood had been beforehand.
Underlying the joyfulness of jazz is the suffering of African Americans.  Jazz was born out of spirituals sung about the suffering of slavery, Jim Crow, poverty and discrimination.  Jazz demonstrates that human beings can endure the worst forms of degradation imaginable and survive—but more than survive, to find joy in living.  Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp declared, “Jazz is a symbol of the triumph of the human spirit…It is the lily in spite of the swamp.”  Mardi gras uses jazz, costumes, dance and other methods that help people to go beyond mere survival to feel joy in life.

Mardi Gras is famous for its unrestrained passions and sensuality.  That kind of thing makes a lot of us nervous.  We worry when people have too good a time.  We’re afraid we might lose control.  Maybe that’s part of our Puritan heritage.  But what we lose by being too inhibited is that wonderful experience of letting go of control and letting the music and the celebration transport us.  We all need to let go sometimes and let life itself just carry us.  All of us need to feel joy – to get beyond our ordinary daily lives and experience something on a higher plane.  My wish for us is that we have such joyful experiences often.

The ecstasies of jazz music can buoy our spirits and get our bodies moving.  In addition to all that, jazz is a good metaphor for liberal religion.  It can speak to Unitarian Universalists who struggle with traditional religions, and it can help us resolve our tensions between individuality and community.  Reverend Suzanne Meyer, who just died about a month ago, rest her soul, a former minister of First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, drew a comparison between jazz and liberal religion. “Jazz, as metaphor, can speak to us religious liberals about the balance between improvisation and discipline, between acceptance of individuality and the demands of community; about that delicate balance we strive to maintain between the need we have to be open to innovation, improvisation and individuality in our religion, while at the same time having respect for needs of structure, tradition and community.”

Jazz, like Unitarian Universalism, started as and continues to be a rebellion against orthodoxy.  Neither is content to conform to the established doctrines and methods.  Hobsbawm writes:  “Jazz is neither self-contained nor unchanging.  Jazz cannot survive like baroque music, as a form of archeology… It is in its nature music without precise boundary lines.”  UUism likewise is composed of several spiritual and cultural sources and continuously evolves.  May we always keep on innovating and incorporating aspects of art, science, religion and culture into our search for meaning.

In Jazz, as in UUism, everyone shares the stage; there is no “boss” who has the last word all the time.  It takes all the players to form the ensemble, all players contribute.  The music alternates between the group playing the melody and individual solos.  There may be a big name entertainer at the front for the band, but each of the players gets a chance to shine.  “Jazz is individualistic and collective, limiting and freeing, creative and structured, spontaneous and organized.”   UUism encourages people to grab their instrument and wail.  It asks each of us to become proficient at the basics of religion and then to push beyond our previous limits and solo, to express our unique spiritual synthesis of all we have learned.  And, it asks that we practice our chops so we can make beautiful music together within our congregations and communities.  Then the discipline of staying within our UU principles and purposes provides the structure, the drumbeat if you will, that allows us to play together.

UUism, like jazz music, is not static; it must be performed every time we come on stage.  Each time it might come out a little differently.  Like jazz, we have a diversity of cultural influences in our history.  We started with Christianity and Scientific Rationality, added Transcendentalism, Hindu and Buddhist thought, mixed in Spiritism and Evolution then Humanism and Native American sensibilities, Feminism and Paganism.  When we juxtapose all the religious philosophies with psychology and a dozen other fields of knowledge, what else can we call it but Jazz?  But, what matters in the end is does it ring true to our experience, and does it have the power to transform human existence for the good?  In Unitarian Universalism as with Jazz, the truth is in the playing.