Where's The Jazz?
They had names
for the sounds they would make
and a love for
all things alive, like
music, damp city streets
and the ocean.
They would lay their hands
on old piano keys
and make them sing again.
Breath new life
into old brass
and make it squeal
again
They had
SaltPeanuts. Salt
Pea-nuts.
They had soul.
They had music.
They had Bop
and what do we have?
Where is Charlie Parker?
Where is Dizzy?
Where is jazz?
2 comments:
I always wanted to write about rock and roll the way Kerouac wrote about jazz.
Now I'm not sure it's possible. The music lead him to write that way. He didn't have it in him. He pulled it all from the music.
Absolutely.
I've been listening to Jack Kerouac radio on LastFM and that's what inspired this. All the old jazz coupled with the recorder readings of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and even some Langston Hughes. Sometimes, they would even be reading to jazz.
The one that really did it for me though was Kerouac's "History of Bop". You can really see his love for the sounds in that one.
It's almost unsettling. We don't have scenes like that anymore. Even the few little jazz clubs I've been to in Brooklyn seem a little stuffy and stuck-up.
WHERE'S OUR JAZZ, MAN?
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