Jazz and Zen (2)
Zen is not representative of Japanese culture in many ways, but can better be seen as a rebellion against certain aspects of the mainstream culture. The shared rebellion of the spirit between Zen and jazz finds both these ways of practicing and living to be oppositions to rigidity, conformity and predictability of thought. Both jazz and Zen evolved their practice and aesthetics out of a sense of discarding the accepted everyday routines and habits of thought and experience.
Both "ways" combine the seeming contradiction between resistance-to the accepted-exploration-of the unknown. Rather than rely on tired phrases, either musical or religious, and acquiescence to habits, customs and routines, both jazz and Zen go against the "straight" world. What they both do is follow the saying: opening the hand of thought. That phrase perfectly fits jazz, where thinking takes place in the hands of the musicians and fits Zen, where practical actions are valued over intellectual thought. Unlike the straight world, jazz "thinks" in musical improvisation while Zen "thinks" in spontaneous action.
The refusal of the "straight" can be seen in the constant return to the circle as symbol in Zen and heard in the curved, angular or unusually shaped rather than the straight in jazz. This focus on non-straight expressions becomes an act of rebelling against what is straight in everyday life: the day job, the workspace, the urban environment, the apartment, the practical relationships and all aspects of life that are not open to improvisation. All of these aspects of everyday existence fail, in some way, to circle around to meaning and completeness.
Zen rebelled against the constrictions of Hinayana Buddhism, and evolved into the "great way" Mahayana Buddhism. Jazz is Mahayana practice to classical music's Hinayana. Of course, the relationship is close and ongoing, yet really those two trends occurring in both jazz and Zen are in fact much more closely aligned than they first appear. The roots are the same in both cases, so their similarities outweigh their differences when compared to other expressions and daily activities.
The real contrast with jazz is pop music. Ironically perhaps, pop music, rock, j-pop and even some hip-hop, soul and R&B has become horribly conservative. It pretends to be rebellious, but only offers predictable sounds made with computer beats, the ultimate "straight" machine. Pop music, too, is a musical form that is straight, in that it does not accept or encompass other music. In contrast, jazz circles around to be able to incorporate even the interior structures of pop tunes through complex structures and through improvisation.
Likewise, Zen opens up curved directions in the human spirit, symbolized not just by the circle, but more importantly, by the open circle, drawn by hand, which has a tail that almost touches the head of the stroke, but remains, noticeably and forever, open.
Pop music is a form of standardized thought, as is the everyday world that Zen helps the spirit escape. Pop closes down all open elements by resisting the circular nature of music by thickening its sound, recycling pre-heard melody lines, and polishing production values.
Jazz, in contrast, aims at non-standardized expressions. It seeks for a circular return to music that is not too thick to enter and wants to create never-before-heard melodies. The production values of jazz are not those created by studio technology, but only those created by the interaction of one human being and their instrument.
The emotional qualities of pop music are completely regulated. In short, there is no immediacy, only the pretense of immediacy. Pop music is delivered always at a distance, both in the layers of production and marketing, and the purchase of it in the mass market, and in the emotional sphere as well. In pop music, everything is regulated by some manipulation of sound. The human element, spontaneity, becomes lost. The gap between the musicians and the listeners becomes huge, always with numerous musical and economic middlemen always intervening.
Jazz, in distinct contrast, offers open-ended reactions and feelings that are spontaneous and immediate. The emotional tone of the players translates into musical tonal qualities with unmediated immediacy. Jazz does away with the middlemen to delivery a direct musical experience. Even when recorded, it does not have as much processing and manipulation as pop.
As with Zen, spontaneity is the key point in jazz. The practice of jazz, like the practice of Zen, aims for a return to spontaneity in all aspects of one's body and mind. Players respond to everything in the room, the acoustics, the other players, the audience, their feeling, a memory, the suddenly apprehended structure of a song and even whether they practiced that day and what the weather might be. That is not to say all of those are important, but they could be sources of inspiration and attention to how they work on one's unconscious mind and conscious actions is important for jazz.
For Japanese, much of daily life is not spontaneous, but rather is concerned with the right phrase, the right bow, the right present, the right gesture, or polite phrase. In such a social environment, both jazz and Zen offer an alternative form of acting and being in the world. They appeal to the need to not be conventional and conforming to the pressures of social life, but to turn inward to one's self in order to find more natural and more human ways of turning outward towards other people and the world.
Simply being able to make a mistake and then recover from it and keep going without embarrassment seems an act of great rebellion within the often-strict confines of Japanese society. In this contextual background, jazz and Zen are rejuvenating and intense experiences. They are both ways of moving past social restraints into a another realm of spontaneous action and human experience.