By Tommy.
What makes someone fall in love with instrumental jazz music? My earliest memory of any kind of jazz dates from about 1978, when I was a junior in high school and I worked for an older gentleman in his business. He played the piano, and when he was in college at Cornell University in the 1940’s, he played in a jazz band. Whenever he had a few minutes to himself he would go to his piano room and hammer out a rhythmic sound that intrigued me. He also had an old reel-to-reel player that filled the office with the sounds of jazz. I still listened to my rock & roll albums, but I was intrigued.
A few years later, living in Buffalo, N.Y., I would find a jazz station on the radio. I had to be up before dark, and listening to and learning about jazz while driving to work fueled my fire for jazz. I still associate city driving in the dark with the music. City lights, a hot cup of coffee, and tooling around in my car. Smells like jazz to me.
Our local public radio station has a jazz channel. I listen and write down artists while I am in the car, and order the albums when I get home. Internet radio fills my room with the sounds of jazz when I am working. My day breezes by, the work load feels light, and my spirits keep the beat.
There is nothing quite like jazz, a celebration in all of its forms. Instrumental jazz music is like a ride at an amusement park – it invites you to strap in and hang on for the time of your life. You don’t know which way it will twist and turn, but you know that the underlying theme of the music will finally rise to the surface and carry all the sounds along with it.
At some point you realize that the sound is your sound. It expresses what you are feeling, and the unbridled joy of that realization tells you something about who you are. You are different from those who choose to muddle through life accepting whatever pop culture throws their way, and it is a good difference.
Jazz discovery: when did it happen to you? We would love to have your story posted. Please open this post up (click “Discover Instrumental Jazz” above) and you will see a comment area at the bottom of the post.
Instrumental Jazz Music - tell us your story of discovery!