Topic: Those “Muddy Root” Sounds we call Jazz Entry 3

Title: Jazz as a Basis for your Personal Growth in our Culture Part 2

Video Inspired By: The Dogon and Afrikan-American Mastery Systems are the Same (Episode #092)(LINK) https://youtu.be/hzAOuyNgROk

Sometimes the Ancestors and God know so much more than we do, when their wisdom is partially revealed, we become shocked by how thorough it is. I decided on a whim to make this the 9^th posting for this series, it is placed right after a posting on Maat, Maa and the Afrikan in America’s belief in God’s presence in the Human Being. At the end of this Entries first part I wrote the following words, “the mystical aspect developed and carried through Jazz’s creative process is desperately needed to transform today’s Urban Pop music back into its native forms”. This mystical aspect is rooted in a spiritual integrity so deep it poured into every musical art form we created up till corporations imbedded themselves in between the musician apprentice system and the circuits wherein their craft could be perfected through playing and distributed to the public via arenas once dedicated to artistic presentation and quality. With corporate embedment, musician development became less and less important to the underlying goal of making money. This underdevelopment and in many instances, dedevelopment (a process where artists who were once developed are pressured to bend to more simplistic methods of music playing, composition, performance and arrangement); resulted in the art form known as music become a tonal product devoid of any true musical qualities – hence the way “popular music” sounds the way it does today. I can go on and on about this subject but I am not writing this entry as cover for a slam piece undressing today’s music, no – this short bullet point history serves a broader purpose, it gives a visual reference for you to imagine how non-native cultural cues can infiltrate and redirect our thinking.

For Afrikans, rather on the continent or anywhere throughout the Diaspora, including in the United States; music communicates with us on multiple levels and depending on the intent behind its creation, music can inspire us to greater heights, it can depress our motivation, it can feed our self-worth or our insecurities, it can even transplant us to a different time and place (don’t believe me, ask the Old Folks in your life what happens when they hear a certain song). With such immense power over us, music has to be rooted in systems that are developed specifically for our cultures preservation and our collective (individual) development. If it is not curated by these systems, then music will become detached from its vehicle – our culture, becoming, instead, linked to another culture; where it then communicates not what we need ourselves to be to each other, but who or what that culture needs us to be to each other. In a great discussion by Dr. T’Shaka during an interview by Phillipe Matthews, he comments beautifully on how the system used by the musical industry to develop jazz artists is so far removed from the old system of creating jazz masters that the result from this latter system is more technical players than the former system whose efforts created players with authentic styles that were usually in some part innovative but in all parts creative and inspiring.

This musical apprentice system is similar to the one both 2pac Shakur and Kendrick Lamar went through, though their development was different by dent of the musical style their art form was being curated for. In 2pac’s case he attended a prestigious art academy helping his artistic range far more than would have been possible if he didn’t have that training. He also had to go through a period of skill development that was far more institutional then many of the Jazz greats and legends before him. This period of skill development included recording music that would be critiqued by his peers prompting him to either adjust his style or change aspects in it, resulting in his lyrical technique and presence as an artist growing as his inherent talent become sharpened into a mold which his true creative self could shine through. Lamar’s development mirrored 2pac’s save one exception, he did not attend a prestigious art school; instead unlike 2pac, Lamar was trained in the street craft of battle rapping. A “quick on your feet” thinking method that challenges the artists who participate in its most rawest form, to not only find creative ways to say ordinary, brutally honest, combative, self-deprecating or strategically/ academically intelligent comments; but to be able to do this as a response offered mere minutes after their opponent had finished their verbal attack on them. It was a psycho-audible or mind-to-mouth strategy battle that prepared Lamar to create music as a means for responding to the needs (read: openings presented by society) of his community. Further, unlike 2pac, Lamar was able to live long enough to see this training transformed into something more potent than its original intent, a strategy for developing talent outside the crafts intended apprentices (Sza is a great example of this).

How does this connect to Jazz? Well it’s hard to communicate here because I haven’t drawn out the processes completed, but as Dr. T’Shaka notes in many of his lectures including the one this entry is inspired by; the four levels in the Dogon apprentice system, collapsed into three by the Afrikan-American, can be seen in both of these artists development. I’ll leave you to fill in the details (yup, you have homework). Let me know what you find in the comment section.