the psychology of improvisation

heard on the radio today of a jazz musician from scandanavia somewhere who is researching the psychology of improvisation. what an interesting topic for consideration. I am going to search his work out, and will share what i discover ... 

Was Jesus a jazz musician?

this was the first session I went to on my last day of greenbelt, a huge christian arts and social justice festival in the uk - more posts at sarah tells stories. 

Philip Roderick is involved with a group called contemplative fire, who had led some worship sessions that I had missed and it was too late by now to do anything about that. However, coordinating a jazz church space as I do, I thought I would hear someone else's reflections on Jesus and jazz. 

Really there was nothing new in what Philip said, using language for Jesus and jazz such as flow, zone, grace and swing. there is a dance between structure and freedom in jazz, as there was in the life of Jesus, in what he was teaching the disciples. As he, as we, allow the Spirit to speak/flow through structures, the both/and-ness of things is beautiful. 

All of creation has a melody - we just need to hear. As we interact with others, Philip suggests that it is helpful to find the melody of others and thus be able to walk in time with them. 

improvisation is hugely underestimated according to Philip, though as I rewrite this from my journal, I forget the context of that thought ... later in the session, he spoke about bricolage, french for taking what we have and using just that, and he led us in an improvisation singing vive la bricolage. it was lovely. as community we strive to breathe together, think together, pray together in improvisation. again, the image of community mirrors that of a jazz band, with its delicate balance of personalities, each individual and each group learning the best of the past and adding our own personal vision. One has to understand one's own role in the group well enough to improvise. 

Philip spoke of three elements of a jazz musician: respect for tradition (learning not merely repeating); respect for other players, allowing each person's gifts to blossom; openness to learning something new from an old piece and from each other. Are these elements in all people, living in community? 

Relating jazz to the kingdom, Philip suggests that in neither is their failure - only feedback. Jazz operates on the knife-edge of failure, incorporating mistakes and bum notes. 

And on contemplative prayer, he says that this requires the same attentiveness, atunement and alertness that jazz calls for in order for music to play the performer, in order for us to be played through - hearing echoes of Spirit?? 

Why jazz worship?

This article was helpful as I began to think about creating our jazz church space. 

July 2003 CJA Network Featured Article

Jazz Pianist

Bradley Sowash

Why Jazz Is Appropriate for Christian Worship

As a touring "sacred" jazz pianist (I prefer the word "inspirational"), I spend a lot of time with colleagues and parishioners nationwide who connect with the gospel through this joyous music. People love the sound of jazz hymns and spirituals and I am continually impressed by the relevance of jazz for contemporary worship. Why does it work so well? The answer lies in the parallels between jazz traditions and the life of the church. Consider how readily jazz models the Christian lifestyle:

• Jazz is multi-cultural and inclusive - Jazz was born in America when the harmonic and melodically based music of European colonists eventually blended with African rhythms preserved in the hearts and minds of slaves. As the music matured, black and white musicians continued to learn from each other. In time, famous bandleaders including Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and others led integrated bands. Later, Latin cultures introduced a third influence initially championed by Dizzy Gillespie. With roots stemming from several cultures, jazz continues to be influenced, performed and enjoyed by people of diverse backgrounds to this day. Jesus was radically inclusive. His habit of inviting people of all sorts and conditions to join him in fellowship is an open-armed model of welcome churches seek to emulate.

• Jazz is indigenous but universal – Religious practices tend to reflect the culture that produces them. Yet mainstream American worship styles often feature musical selections which are European imports. Jazz is indigenous to America. Therefore, it is altogether right and appropriate to worship within our own cultural context. Jazz is also now enjoyed worldwide. Musicians from around the world play jazz together whether or not they share a spoken language. God is at once both personally indigenous (the God within us) and universal (the God "out there" somewhere). Similarly, when we gather together to worship locally, we simultaneously participate in a worldwide Christian body.

• Jazz is spontaneous - The essence of jazz is improvisation. Drawing on their training, preferences and inspirations, jazz musicians spontaneously create variations on a given theme. To listen to live jazz is to witness raw musical ideas being given substance often within the framework of a well-known melody. Many musicians describe a sense of the ideas flowing through them rather than from them. This inherent creativity in jazz relies on a connection to the Spirit. Jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli hinted at this when he said, "Great improvisors are like priests. They are thinking only of their god." Jazz imitates God's creation - ever evolving.

• Jazz involves cooperation – Live jazz in any setting is performed and received by a cooperative community. Each musician is called upon to both support his/her colleagues and work as an individual soloist as roles are shared. Listeners inspire the music through their  eactions to complete the circle. While the quest for meaning is ultimately a private endeavor, church life exemplifies cooperation and community building in which participants learn and grow collectively as well as individually.

• Jazz has a range - Sometimes meditative, sometimes celebratory, jazz touches us by speaking directly to a spectrum of emotions. Without this ability to reflect the full range of human experience, it never would have lasted. Louis Armstrong was right when he said, "What we play is life." The church year reflects this range of experience from the wonder of Christmas through the reflective Lent season to the joy of Easter and from baptisms to weddings to funerals. Once the worship enhancing powers of jazz are understood, it is hard to understand why any church would not want to, at least occasionally, incorporate this rich and uniquely American musical style into its programming. Churches who have already taken this step report the following:

• Jazz makes for excellent evangelism – With outreach as a priority, many churches have  discovered that the uniqueness of a jazz worship service holds appeal and potential healing for people whose past experiences have led them to consider organized religion uninviting, dogmatic, irrelevant or even repressive.

• Jazz offers a tradition-based alternative – Most mainstream churches are interested in balancing heritage and contemporary relevance. When experimenting with new forms of music or worship practices, inevitable complaints follow regarding the abandonment of church traditions. With roots reaching back to African-American spirituals and European folk songs on up through Duke Ellington’s famous sacred concerts and New York City’s jazz vespers scene of the 1960’s, jazz renditions of the remarkable American hymnody we inherited link the past to the present.

• Jazz has cross-generational relevance – Contemporary services utilizing popular music have proven successful in attracting younger families to churches. And why not? Even Martin Luther understood the importance of including compelling music in worship when he wrote, "Why should the devil have all the good music." However, a pitfall of offering too narrowly defined contemporary music for worship has the unintended effect of dividing the church into age demographics since older members are likely to prefer traditional fare. The toetapping wide appeal of jazz, on the other hand, draws people of all ages and backgrounds thereby creating a diversified community of worship and a sense of belonging for the individual parishioner. Author Bishop John Shelby Spong points out, "The church will die of boredom long before it dies from controversy." By preparing a feast that for the mind and senses that includes prayer, spoken word and the appeal of culturally relevant music, a church that is willing to embrace jazz sends a message that it is visionary. It says "we are willing to experiment with the recipe for bringing about a greater contemplation of God.". And in the words of Biblical scholar Marcus Borg, "Churches that are full of God are likely to find their pews full of people."

© 2003 Bradley Sowash

www.bradleysowash.com

 

The story of Black Wood Jazz

Black Wood Jazz began three years ago. I had just finished coordinating the nitelife program for NCYC (National Christian Youth Convention, Uniting Church event for 16 - 30 year olds) 2005, at which the jazz lounge had been quite popular. I was looking for a space that invited questions and encouraged discovery, rather than some church spaces that offer answers and encourage acceptance of the status quo. I thought that if I was looking for such a space, perhaps others were too. So I gathered some friends and we started to create spaces for deep thinking and discovery of the Sacred in our lives. We decided that the soundtrack to our discoveries would be jazz. Live jazz. 

For the past three years we've been creating four spaces a year, and I will begin to put up photos and summaries of our discoveries in those spaces. We're going to create two spaces each year from now, as the Blackwood Uniting Church community becomes busier, and those of us on the team also become busier. The spaces are still valued by the community, within and outside the church, and especially at the pivotal moments of the faith. So our two spaces will be at Christmas and Easter. If other issues pop up that invite deeper thinking and conversation to the melodies of jazz, then we'll add a third space to the calendar. 

I hope you find our story interesting, and would be delighted to hear of ways it inspires others to discover the Sacred, connect to the Holy Story, and reach beyond the conventions to invite people inside and outside our faith communities to think deeply about the God who writes the song on our hearts. 

God Delusion

In August 2007, we tackled the arguments of Richard Dawkins. He had some strong accusations of people involved in religion, and we wanted to think about what he was saying, and decide what our opinions were. We viewed some scenes from a program on the ABC (Australia) programme Catalyst. What follows are some of the responses to come out of our conversations. 

We have within us all the capacity to hurt and harm and to help and heal. What choices do we make? 

When Dawkins says that teaching faith is wrong, we said: 

Rational argument may lack compassion and morality / define indoctrination vs helpful teaching & nurturing / neither do a lot of Christians believe in God who 'keeps us safe from harm' / what is life without hope? / I'm a Christian and I don't believe in preaching fear & hellfire to children. But I do believe in telling them about a God that loves them and wants them to love all people / or we believe in the Bible as it is intended - the story of the people of God and their relationship - not literal history - why was he able to become an athiest after growing up in the church - but things other children will just believe 'nonsense'. That's an insult to me & my intelligence & faith / I've never seen a single instance of religion originating evil rather than religion being used to justify pre-existing greed & lust for power / any religion that is not faith affirming misses the mark / people believe in what they want to believe in / he hasn't looked at the full spectrum of faith and so has not made a complete or fair argument /if he was brought up Christian what happened to make him so angry? /  yes, we do believe in the mystery of God - and that is what is so beautiful about it

When Dawkins pits reason against faith, we disagreed in these ways:

religion doesn't pretend to have all the answers / several well-structured studies have concluded that stronger mental health occurs when people feel that they are part of something bigger that is worthwhile / faith goes beyond the rational, without being contrary to rationality, viz. 'irrational' / even if religion was the root of all evil - doesn't that mean that God is evil or that God doesn't exist / not all people of faith are non-thinkers or illogical thinkers / we are intelligent people and we believe / it is true that unthinking faith is not very helpful in the long term / religion can no more be contained in one basket than can science. religion contains questions & mystery, as does science / the variety of beliefs within even one church disproves Dawkins' view that believers are all the same / rationalism taken to its logical conclusion denies the existence of the human spirit, our humanity & human compassion / what's rational about quantum mechanics? / he's a fundamentalist opposed to fundamentalism 

When Dawkins pits reason against faith, we agreed thus: 

if faith really is unthinking, then it can indeed result in evil / it is true that unthinking faith is not very helpful in the long term / Euler (a mathematician) found reason to support his faith when he discovered an equation he considered too perfect to be anything other than Divine / righteous faith - righteous unfaith? 

We also agreed to a point that faith can divide:

faith does breed intolerance to some things such as poverty and war and other injustices / yes - the fundamentalist end of religion is dangerous / fundamentalism generates intolerance, fundamentalism grows churches, because you can hand over your thinking to someone else!

However, we also think that faith doesn't have to be divisive: 

people of faith are just as scared of fundamentalism as people not of faith / just because someone follows a religion doesn't make them good - what an assumption!! / pushing beliefs onto other people doesn't belong to people of faith / i don't believe there are 'good' and 'evil' people, there is the potential for both in us all / intolerance is a wide-spread human trait with or without faith: scientists are not immune / there cannot be a successful, fully literal believer because the Bible is self-contradictory / intolerance occurs when we strive for absolute certainty / St Francis of Assisi? Fr Damien? Mother Teresa? / he is taking all the bad examples of people in religion. there have been so many good religious people and he is only observing about 10% of the religions out there / good people do evil in the name of religion only when religion is subverted by evil people to serve their secular cause / 

and to summarise: 

It strikes me how dogmatic Dawkins is / we generally object to Richard Dawkins' generalisations. he makes statements which do not include all believers!

to Dawkins' assertion that religion is the root of all evil, we respond with the statement that faith is the root of all hope. 

We also considered writings at these sites: 

http://www.journeyonline.com.au/showArticle.php?articleId=977 - Peter Harrison's response to The God Delusion

http://www.journeyonline.com.au/showArticle.php?articleId=993 - reflecting on a seminar analysing The God Delusion

Live Fire

May 2007, Live Fire, was Pentecost and the ascension of Jesus in one night. Wow! 

We hung a semi-transparent white sheet of material from the ceiling and projected onto it flames that moved and clouds that descended and ascended, as we heard the stories read aloud. If I can dig up a photo of it, I'll add it to this post.  

We also had people move among the rest lighting candles we'd each been given, symbolising the apostles taking 'the fire' out from Jerusalem as commanded. People brought their fire/candle with their money offerings as a symbol of our offering ourselves and our gifts back to God. 

Really moving space this one. 

Christmas 2006

Early in Advent of 2006, we held Jazz on the Lawns at Nunyara Conference Centre, Belair. We had 100 people or so on the lawns that slope down the hill from the front of the main building, eating picnics, or meat from the bbq put on by Nunyara, and icecreams. Later, people could buy coffee from a group supporting refugees in South Australia. Kids (big ones and small) could have their faces painted. And in the background, the sun slowly slid toward the horizon, drawing its red, orange, yellow, purple tail behind it, over the city of Adelaide. Magic. And of course, there was live jazz. 

Liz Chehade (now Tobias) brought a group of friends, and they played superbly as usual. To be out of the warm late afternoon sun, they played in the shade of some of the trees. 

Vincent's Chair also played beautifully from the balcony of the main building. 

Looking back, there are things we'd do differently. Set up some shade for the musical instruments. bring the people and the bands closer together. Not have a drama. advertise the availability of coffee, and who the proceeds support. advertise other foods for sale. 

Still, the response was positive, the jazz was excellent, and people had a good time. It's certainly a great way to connect with the wider community, as many who came had little or no connection to the Blackwood Uniting Church community. We would do things differently, though.