Jazz is itself, but also (for me and others) proxy for the history of African-American(?) experience. Slave music, the field holler, Congo Square, Tin Pan Alley, recombinant pop, then postwar neoclassicism: that burst of speed and intensity. Ramping up to the New Thing, Free, tribal reassertion. Urbanized new Americana. Music perpetually seeking its own roots. I relate to jazz as an outsider: borrow, not inherit. But the music teaches me to see 'inheritance' otherwise, as participation. Jazz teaches generous consciousness: honour history as the moment. Carry history as wisdom. Jazz becomes a shared homeland; I'm an immigrant become a citizen.
