From darkness to light.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

During our recent trip to County Mayo we listened to Stephen Fry reading ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’. When we discussed this with my family we talked about the way that the books became gradually darker – even though the first book has its share of darker moments. This made me think of the current trend towards the dark. Venerable comic book heroes now appear in ‘graphic novels’ in often markedly darker incarnations. Every television drama, film and soap opera has to carry its requisite ‘darker’ themes (even though my family recommend both ‘Killing Eve’ and ‘Luther’ I have still not managed to watch either of them!) – it seems as though the dark is a ‘comfortable’ place to be for a great deal of what passes for popular entertainment.

Don’t get me wrong, I am alive to the fact of a lot of this being ‘fiction’, but fiction, like any creative endeavour is a reflection of contemporary times. Although the jury is out as to whether life mirrors art or vice versa it is true that the world seems to have become a darker, more violent place where many seem to reach for violence as the way of solving the simplest of problems. Yet darkness is important, imagine trying to get proper rest without the night falling! Without the dark we might never recognise the light, and in literature darkness and light often exist in a uneasy tension and many great works of literature (including  the Bible) feature a journey from darkness to light and these words are often used to illustrate an inner, spiritual journey as much as a physical journey towards the dawn. Maybe, in a sense, all journeys, either inner or outer, begin in the dark of ignorance as we learn new things as we go. I heard the novelist Salman Rushdie describing the novel as “a journey towards the truth”, and it struck me that that comment could be glossed to suggest that literature is a journey towards light, the light of understanding and the broadening of experience. But there is a cost to this process, be it Christian’s journey to the Celestial City in Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, or Jacob’s wrestling with the mysterious stranger by the ford of Jabbok in Genesis, or the odyssey of the two policemen Rustin Cole and Martin Hart in the first season of ‘True Detective’. Everyone has to contend with darkness and, if necessary fight against it, as Bruce Cockburn put it in his song ‘Lovers in a Dangerous Time’; “you have to kick at the darkness until it bleeds light”.

As a person of faith I often find myself lamenting the way that the church itself has been as agent of darkness, wilfully enforcing ignorance and blind faith in contrast to the light of understanding and rationality. But like much in life this is not the whole picture – in its better moments the church has also stood up against darkness and ignorance and brought light into some very dark places. It is a shame that so often we forget that other story where we are told that the light came into the world and the dark could not over come it, or, in some translations, understand it.

All that Jazz…..

Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

For those of you who read the by line above and think of the Kander/ Ebb/ Fosse musical ‘Chicago’ from the 1970’s that’s OK, but this post seeks to reflect on a question that was put to me by a friend a long time ago – we were talking about what we were listening to then and I answered “a lot of jazz”, and he said “why jazz?”. I remember thinking (as I have since), should I give him the long answer or the short one. The short one would have to do with the way good jazz makes me feel; exhilarated and filled with a sense of adventure, it swings and is filled with a funkiness that is hard to beat, and if you are in the mood you can even dance to it! The long answer is too long and far too nerdy to go into here!

But the expression ‘all that jazz’ can be a euphemism for something other than music. The mighty Google informs me that the expression “was used informally to mean ‘meaningless talk’ within a decade of the word’s first appearance in its musical sense”. Yet for me, the first time I heard jazz was an experience that was far from meaningless, I have written here before about my introduction to jazz through the fusion/ jazz rock that achieved great popularity in the 1970’s but it wasn’t long before I was listening to everything from King Oliver to Duke Ellington and others too numerous to mention. I learned that a lot of people would ask “why jazz?”, my parents (even though jazz was in the Frank Sinatra and Vic Damone records my father listened to, and there was also Tommy Dorsey), and my friends in the midst of the rock/ blues/ singer song writer years. I kept marshalling my arguments, pointing out that jazz, along with blues, was the root of a lot of popular music, and that jazz musicians could take music into new places because of their proficiency and improvisational abilities (it’s no coincidence that so many jazz musicians continue to earn good money as first call session musicians on many a pop record!).

In the end it does all comes down to taste but I do find myself getting slightly annoyed when jazz is downplayed or ignored, dismissed as wilfully obscure or as overly intellectual, yes, listening to jazz demands a great deal from the listener but the rewards are generous and this music is just as important as other expressions of popular culture. As a fully paid up member of the ‘angry old man’ brigade I fume (quietly) when the BBC cuts it’s meagre jazz output yet again and jazz is sidelined in favour of classical music or the latest auto tuned pop sensation. But the music remains in all its glory, whether on vinyl or compact disc, or streamed to your favourite device. I would dare to call it more than music, it is a heartbeat that speaks in history of the struggles of a people and which also allows musicians and listeners to reach further and aim higher. OK rant over!!!

(This post was fuelled by Gary Burton, Herbie Hancock and Duke Ellington – I want to recommend particularly Herbie’s 1999 album ‘The New Standard’ where he and a crack band of contemporary jazz musicians interpret songs by Peter Gabriel, Don Henley, Paul Simon and Lennon and McCartney. It is, as one critic puts it, well worth investigating!).