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May 24, 2001, 10:30 PM: I’m hunkered down in the WWUH
business office, muttering curses and glaring blurry-eyed at a
computer screen. This cluttered alcove of radio-activity is quiet
tonight—save for my mumbled profanity—here in the bowels of
UHa’s sprawling Harry Jack Gray Center. Having spent several hours
updating jazz news for the station’s web site (http://wwuh.org), I am very ready to call it a
night, just as soon as I can copy the material onto our URL. But,
nooooo! The “publish” function won’t respond to my commands,
no matter how many troubleshooting tricks I employ.
Never
mind that I haven’t even started working on the ‘UH
program-guide articles which I’m supposed to submit within 24
hours...nor on the weekly tally of our 50 most-played current jazz
releases, due to be sent to the Gavin radio report before 6
p.m. tomorrow. During that same timeframe, I’ll have to listen to
a bunch of marketing people telling me why their new musical
“product” is better than all the rest; I also need to redouble
efforts to publicize the concert we’re co-presenting in two weeks.
And guess what...this jazz director gig isn’t even my “real”
job!
Not
surprisingly then, I’ve begun doubting my sanity of late. (I know
what you’re thinking...some listeners have wondered about my
state-of-mind for years!)
The office chair teeters precariously as I rock, lost in fear and
self-loathing. Why am I
putting myself through all this nonsense? What about my family? My
“free” time? A decent night’s sleep?
Next
door (in the WWUH air studio), one of my comrades-in-sound, Maurice
Robertson, is visiting with Mixishawn, a man whose uncompromising
musical visions have enhanced Connecticut’s artistic environment
for many years. Maurice is playing an album by Sun Ra, in
acknowledgement of the late bandleader’s birth anniversary. The
banshee wail of Marshall Allen’s saxophone, even channeled through
tiny office-ceiling speakers, drowns out my chair’s pitiful
squeaks. Mixishawn begins playing along on wooden flute. Maurice
turns up the studio mike, and his radio audience is suddenly privy
to a raging duet that ignores the boundaries of time and space.
So
much for fear and self-loathing! The purity of spontaneous creation,
propelled from deep within one’s spirit, pretty much obliterates
any negative energy, which stands—or, in this case, squeaks—in
its path. “Cleaning the slate,” John Coltrane called it.
Ok,
so maybe I blew my complaints out of proportion; perhaps I expected
too much of myself, wasn’t patient enough...I’ll get it right,
sooner or later. Meanwhile, there’s no denying the simple truth: this music matters a great deal
to me. And this jazz directorship is something I’ve been
called to do right now. I can’t explain it rationally, any more
than I could tell you why I’m mesmerized by the work of Charles
Mingus, but not by that of J.S. Bach. As R & B philosopher Van
Morrison once noted, “it ain’t why, why, why, why, why...it just is! ” My predecessor, J.O. Spaak, paints a rather dark picture of
“The State of Jazz Today” elsewhere in this Guide. Perhaps I’m
naive, but I refuse to accept his notion that jazz may soon be
reduced to secret-society status...and as long as I have a voice in
the matter, I’ll continue to “reach in the darkness,”
delivering musical beacons to anyone willing to listen.
Copyright©WWUH: July/August Program Guide, 2001 |
