Jazz and Zen (1)

Spontaneity is at the core of both jazz and Zen. The overlaps and parallels are hard to ignore when listening to really great jazz improvisers, and easier perhaps, when listening in a country with a long Zen tradition. The silence of meditation may not always be filled up with jazz solos in one’s head in return, but the connections can be found in considering both of these amazing cultural forms. Since Japanese musicians have a high degree of cultural awareness, it seems that Zen may be, if only unconsciously and indirectly through the larger culture, be an influence on jazz musicians in Japan much more than in the west.

One aspect of Zen thought and practice that is important to understand is how much it is a reaction against the popular culture and ideology of the times, both then and now. Zen spontaneity evolved out of dissatisfaction with stale tradition and dominant social structures. Zen, therefore, is almost always a rebellion against political, artistic, and social forms that threaten to crush natural action and true human feeling. Jazz, too, continues to react against structures, whether the tightly set chord patterns of popular music or the idea of musicians as entertainers only. Jazz rebels against the concept of music as a pre-set, pre-determined form, and, like Zen, demands that people act purely in the moment, without reference to past learning or future anxieties.

Like painting, poetry and other cultural expressions of Zen, jazz could be said to be the practice of a set of musical theories. Jazz musicians, like Zen practitioners, though, always take their theory with a high degree of skepticism. That is, theorizing in abstract ways tends to move away from concrete realities, and often ends up in hollow music. In Zen gardens, the mind is always brought back to the rocks, plants and walls of the garden whenever the mind starts to float away into transcendent formulas or abstract musings. In jazz performance, the musician too is constantly brought back to the concrete sounds, rhythms, and tones of music. Jazz, though, is rarely an individual practice, but also incorporates the concrete expressions of the other musicians. In these ways, the abstract is not shunned, but not invited in, either. In the best of jazz and of Zen, the concrete and the abstract work together as a single, unified force.

The paradoxes of Zen transpose almost perfectly to jazz. In jazz, the “sound of one hand clapping,” one of the most popular meditation devices, corresponds to the necessity of music having space and non-sound in between beats or notes. As many jazz musicians have said, they play the spaces in between the notes, rather than the notes themselves. Zen, too, emphasizes the essential nature of expression and thought as containing emptiness at its core. The “face before you were born” paradox captures the nature of jazz improvisation, since jazz soloing creates a constantly new melody over a previously played form. That is, the breaking and recreating of a melody becomes a continual sense of “being born” for the musician and listener as individuals, but also of “giving birth” to what is, with each solo, essentially a constantly new song. The coming into and passing out of existence is what creates the beauty of jazz. Zen aims at that understanding in a spiritual sense.

Zen and jazz both work with paradoxes of acquired skills and free expression. The more a musician gains control over his instrument, the more that musician can be free of its limitations. The more a jazz musician understands musical structure, the further the musician can depart from those structures in their own unique way. The practiced control over technique allows more uncontrolled explosions of emotion. Zen, too, follows similar learning trajectories. The more one meditates, the less one has to concentrate. Forcing breathing emerges out into natural breathing when taken far enough. The harder one focuses on the teachings, the less one may understand, until the time when attention shifts, and insight can then flow naturally and spontaneously. “It just comes naturally” is the aim of both. These conundrums are not easy ones to work through, but they are at the heart of both practices.

What Zen and jazz both search for is a moment of natural expression and pure action. So much of contemporary music is controlled, rigidified, and in this day and age, even computerized. Within this technological repeatability of music, much is lost. Zen, too, reacts against this domination of sterile, rigid forms of action, thought and feeling, and helps the individual search for a natural means of expression. Jazz musicians are always searching for that one perfect melody line, and search for that every time they improvise. Zen practitioners search for that one moment of perfect wholeness. Neither one is an easy goal most of the time, but the search is as important as the achievement.

This is not to say that jazz musicians are all really Zen monks, nor that western musicians are missing some understanding, but just that the two traditions can help to enlighten the other. They are both ways of performing human nature more strongly and authentically. Zen tradition may not inform Japanese jazz musicians in their day-to day activities and attitudes, but lurking in the collective social mindset, these Zen concepts are always accessible.

Zen and jazz both raise the act of creation, whether writing calligraphy or taking a drum solo, to a high position of great importance. The value of genuine spontaneity is a lesson that has to be learned over and over again in human experience, and it is always a relief to know that the lesson can be learned again and again with humility, humor and great sense of swing.

December 7, 2007