Blowin' the Blues Away by Jackson Travis

Author:Jackson, Travis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 2. Frames around jazz performance.

When performers successfully synthesize and work with all of the materials of a performance (space, time, tune, form, other performers, and other participants)—when they exhibit ritual mastery—that is when a performance is most likely to proceed to the next level. Performers and other participants then experience sensations or a series of feelings that they describe, like Antonio Hart, as being literally “out of this world.” Every element of a performance seems to fit, and each individual appears to be making a contribution to what is occurring. Some of the feelings associated with possession or ecstasy lead to an apparent nullification of time outside the performance and of space outside the venue. In the process, a musical event is said to be “swinging,” “burning,” or “on,” or described with a similar phrase that indicates positive motion, activity, and good feeling (compare with Monson 1990, 35).

The responses of participants attending such events are variable and sometimes virtually indistinguishable from those that might accompany stirring sermons in African American Baptist and Pentecostal churches or ecstatic portions of African-derived spiritual practices more broadly (Pitts 1988). At a performance by trumpeter Nicholas Payton, pianist Mulgrew Miller, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Lewis Nash at the Village Vanguard in March 1995, for example, the shared nature of response to impressive musical performance was foregrounded by silent, visually perceived actions. In the middle of the tune “Maria’s Melody,” Washington and Nash played an intense groove over which Miller soloed—playing riff-based figures alternating with long, intricate single-line passages with his right hand. One of my table companions, Bess Weatherman, was moving her head up and down in time, entrained to the groove in the same way that I was. As the interaction between the rhythm section members intensified, I looked across the room and made eye contact with Sharon Blynn, who opened her mouth as if silently to say, “Wow,” cocked her head in the direction of the stage, and looked back at me in awe. I nodded my assent, smiled, and turned my own gaze back toward the stage.

In some cases participants clearly verbalize their responses and spur the performers on to greater heights. One might assert that when performers have “said something” to non-performing participants, sometimes those non-performers feel the need to say something in response (see Burnim and Maultsby 1987, 132–33), thus distinguishing extraordinary events from ordinary ones. A striking example that highlights the degree to which blues-inflected performance can generate positive audience response comes from a performance by pianist James Williams, singer Kevin Mahogany, and bassist Curtis Lundy at Bradley’s in October of 1994. Near the end of one of the evening’s sets, the musicians performed the song “Since I Fell for You.” Some of the participants seated at the bar were urging Mahogany on as he sang at the beginning of the tune. They shouted encouragement to him at every bluesy turn of phrase and every embellishment of the tune’s standard melody, and someone shouted, “Go on, Kevin! Sing the blues!” right before the word “blues” came up in the lyrics.

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