Things on the West End

Like any technocrat of modern proportions, I sit in my office, listening to West End Blues on the computer, while chatting with my best friend from thousands of miles away. The first thing she says is "ah, you're listening to West End Blues" and she goes on to say "that is the best trumpet solo ever written." I agree with her, it is pretty spectacular. Also I wonder how much of our appreciation for Jazz comes from a romance for the fathers who never loved us the way we wanted them to.

Our Fathers come from Jazz era times, (but don't we all?) both dropped out of mainstream culture and because they pursued a mixed lifestyle, or to lift from Jarret, a "saturna" or gumbo of sorts, they often hung onto certain things while letting go of others.
I suspect that Jazz was the thing that connected my fathers generation to the voice of what came before and the improvisation that their lives were to soon become.

But to return to the subject of the West End, this song is all about the trumpet. It has a voice. The two pieces evoke specific and distinct uses of that voice. Armstrong uses his voice in what we call now "old timey" rhythm. But that does it little justice. It evokes his own voice. It evokes him. It is both metonym and whole. There is meaning in the silent spaces in between his phrases, and his humming provides a thread for us to follow. So much is said without words here. His trumpet is poetic. It is neither overstated nor diminishing.

The Payton piece is swing time, it is rhythm and it is big band. It is more modern, more playful and less plaintive. It is full. The trumpet swings from branches of sound and bounces off walls. It is louder and more pronounced. It is also homage like. It takes a standard, a jazz icon and turns it up a notch. It is in honor of Armstrong's sadness. It enters into conversation with Armstrong. (and of course all of this could be wrong if Payton came first, but I suspect that I am right in my chronology). But the significant difference is the trumpet here, Payton's is loud and mouthy and sharp, it knows how handsome it is. It is having fun playing. Armstrong's plays him through it's body.

As I get off the phone, I can't help but think of my father again, and myself. How now all my fathers records are Jazz. How he no longer listens to folk music, though he remembers it well. It is both a return and a divergence, and it contains some of that lonesome trumpet, signaling both an end and a beginning, the West End perhaps.

Drifting on a Read, Dramatism, Burke and Jazz

I initially found "Drifting on a Read" by Michael Jarrett to be a little confusing.  Or perhaps a bit simplistic and sort of indulgent.  It made much more sense when I read the Elements of Dramatism by David Blakesley.  I understood finally just how the Burkean Pentad was being applied to element of a Jazz theory.  Jarrett takes a simple quote from Louis Armstrong, a jazz great and provides rhetorical application in a variety of contexts.  Jarrett explores in these possible  explications, the idea of scene and purpose and agency/agent.  There is a nice synthesis between the two texts.  Blakesley elucidates the Burkean ideas of contextualization and dialectic, he explains dramatism and the pentad through the lens of the Columbine massacre.  Jarrett uses the example of many possible meanings from a single quote.  

The most interesting thing I was able to glean from Jarrett was the idea that in writing and composition we often emphasize what is known, what is explicated and that we don't allow the space for speculation.  He allows speculation its place within the rhetorical structure and he ties it to ideas of jazz improvisation.  

He improvises through speculation and explores how the many possible layers of meaning that could come from a single utterance might further open possibilities for creativity and rhetoric.    Jarrett approaches the idea of jazz studies in composition in a variety of ways.  He does it in historical context with quote and also in theoretical context when he discusses his own purpose in writing the book and ties his work to the work of the writers that have come before.  He examines his own ambition in doing something different than others have perhaps done in their writing about jazz.  

Blakesley on the other hand stays within a theoretical and rhetorical tradition, his work is to contextualize, provide historical understanding and break down the work of Kenneth Burke in manageable chunks that are interpreted and discussed in depth.  I found both his theoretical discussions of the theory and also his examples of the pentad at use to be helpful.  When the terms are being discussed they always feel a little abstract and vague to me, but here, they seem to have an actual use and purpose.  

I felt his affinity with Burke's larger context and purpose to be tender and sweet.  I got the feeling that so much of what Burke was trying to do was to reason with the time he was living in.  He wanted to come to grips with the things that motivate people, especially when they are committing atrocious acts.  Burke wanted to see how we could do it through rhetoric.  How we could, as humans, create dialogue with our own actions as a collective and as individuals.  How do we really understand what happens with language and action?  It is a noble attempt and worthwhile.

Perhaps jazz studies can do similar things for composition, perhaps it could break us out of our comfortable frameworks and plummet us into a land of play and free form improvisational creation.

Slowing down our rhetoric. Ramage and the "Slow Food Movement"

In this section, Ramage compares the (de) evolution of means of food production and distribution to the aforementioned terms of "motion" vs. "act." To act is to to do something with intention. To hopefully, apply purpose to our activities and our thoughts. To engage in motion is merely to be caught up in the swaying movement of "progress" or technology or any other number of experiences in our lives. Ramage asserts that only human beings are capable of "action" because we are the only ones who can understand ourselves in terms of future consequences, whether they be death or merely the way we want to raise our children.

He says, "the production of fast food is, in short, the culinary version of motion. The production of slow food, meanwhile, is quintessentially an act" (Ramage 31). The Slow Food Movement is the idea that we might know where the things we ingest come from. That they may remain connected to our social and ideological frameworks. It is the idea that what sustains us is something that we choose to be connected to. That connection will, as Ramage seems to assert intrinsically, be something that is based on thoughtfulness, sustainability and intention. Our choices will be an act, and not merely something we allow ourselve to fall into collectively or individually.

Moreover, he uses the analogy of the slow food movement to connect to the idea of rhetorical evolution as well. As rhetoric has made its way from classical models and ancient underpinnings to contemporary practice, it has shifted in subtle and radical ways. The Slow Food way of looking at this evolution would then, in turn, be in taking note of these subtle changes, mapping them with a tender eye and not merely with consumerist savagery.

A Slow Food approach would also in turn, ally itself with the complexity that goes into preparation and expression. Not seeing food or rhetoric merely as a set of steps to be mapped and mastered, but rather to place them into the context which they belong. Rhetoric cannot, asserts Ramage, exist outside of its context. It should be aware of the subtle shifts of season and flavor that make it something of sustenance.

He points to the idea that if rhetoric is to really be used ethically, as an instrument of change, then a slow awakening to its shifts and principles should be undertaken. Ramage advocates for a slow down of processes and goals. I find his work useful to my own thinking here because I often feel like things are moving so fast that my thinking is only served best by its mercurial quality rather than its depth. This chapter asks me to consider my own purpose, whether it be in something I put into my physical body, my teachers tool kit, or my mind.
This section advocates deep consideration of principles and ethics, of ideas and motivations in regards to thinking and living. I appreciate his appraisal of what we are losing when we speed things up, when we give ourselves over to commodification and assembly lines. There is an inherent danger in these activities. A danger of losing substance in exchange for accessibility.