Course:Live Jazz Performance
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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I started gigging with Two Apple Tobacco, my friend Dan's jazz/funk/rock band, in my early twenties. My background was in competitive performance of classical music, which did nothing to alleviate my innate perfectionism and anxiety, so the first time I was invited to do a scat-solo in rehearsal scared the living shit out of me. It was like hurling myself off a cliff without knowing if I had a parachute. This experience was amplified in front of a live audience. I sing by ear, so everything was instinct. It did not always go well. At first, I played it safe, for fear of inevitable flubs. But eventually I got braver, began to appreciate the texture of imperfection, and learned to trust myself and the musicians behind me to carry me through on a wave of adrenaline and silliness. To accomplish such a feat you need to commit to it 100% or you will fall on your face.
While living in Belgium I sang with a Gypsy Jazz band called Trotsky Tulsky, who spoke no English and were always super drunk. Unlike Two Apple Tobacco, they never rehearsed, but they sure could play! I showed up for our second little cafe gig to find a crowd of over 100 people waiting for us to start. I’d never performed any of this material with them. I’d provided a list of standards I could sing, and the band started the first tune several keys higher than we had agreed. I took a breath and just went for it. The trust-fall of Jazz is knowing that you are not onstage alone: your fellow performers have your back, everyone is listening to eachother. It was not a perfect performance, but in my 20+ year live-music career it’s one of the gigs I’m most proud of.
The rhythm and musicality of live jazz has deeply influenced all of my writing, but particularly my poetry. Sound is one of my main poetic tools, reflected in lines like “Sticks fricted to smoke/Decadent/Broke” or “that transactional ‘Bing!’/ the acquisition’s static cling…”. I love to play with the flams, paradiddles, syncopation, triplets and other rhythmic thrills of consonance and meter, and with the crooning melodies of assonance.
As a performer, I’m strongly motivated and informed by the feedback of live audiences and my fellow musicians. The grunts of recognition, finger snaps, and verbal responses to work shared in class this term have had a significant impact on my writing process. In my poetry this term, I’ve tried to take a lesson from the scat-solo – I’m throwing myself into poems, embracing spontaneity, accepting/welcoming imperfections, taking risks and letting myself play in conversation (call and response!) with the poets around me. One of my most recent experiments, “To Joy,” encapsulates this feeling, taking a very intuitively-created concrete shape on the page (which I can't figure out how to do in the Wiki!):
You stomping, clapping, squealing, dimple-dizzy twirl, you
eternal ‘woop!’ in this library
of misfortune.”