Jazz - The Ultimate Black Music During Black Lives Matter

Lately, unrelated to BLM, I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz. White TV show hosts, podcasters, etc. have wisely talked about listening to black people rather than talking. In that vein, I recommend listening to jazz as it is a singular Black American achievement. It is funky and sophisticated. It has a long and complicated history. It has been an ambassador for black people outside of America in places such as Europe. And it is intimately intertwined with the racist experiences, achievements, tragedies, and genius of its musicians.

Some discoveries have been Kenny Dorham ‘Quiet Kenny’, Dexter Gordon ‘Go’, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers ‘A Night in Tunisia’, and Cannonball Adderly ‘Something Else’.

You don’t have to get a record player, there’s plenty of stuff streaming. But I recommend starting with the albums I mentioned or the usual suspects such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Dizzy Gillespie. And find out about their life stories. Because even the always smiling consummate entertainers such as Louis Armstrong had a lifetime’s worth of experiences that dig at the core of the Black American experience. I’ve been listening to the Dexter Gordon biography ‘Sophisticated Giant’ by his widow Maxine Gordon.