Lyrical Jazz and the Value of Dissonance

I realize that I don’t say nearly enough about jazz in this column. That may be because I’m usually thinking about something else entirely. This month did, uncharacteristically, have some jazz in it and I’m pleased to discuss it as a service to my readers who would much rather not deal with my cloudy state of mind. It’s not much, but it is something. Those who are less than beguiled by my perpetually mixed feelings may feel free to turn the page at the end of the jazz portion of our program.

On October 15, my wife and I drove to the Kirkland Art Center in nearby Clinton, New York, for another transcendent concert featuring Rossano Sportiello with Monk Rowe and his trio. (Full disclosure: Monk is a board member of Syncopated Media, Inc.) Where I live might be termed, if not the middle of nowhere, then a small somewhere between larger somewheres. Clinton is about 13 miles from the middle of my somewhere. And yet I find that the most magnificent musicians in the world show up in my neighborhood. I don’t know how that is even possible.

Trying to talk about jazz in other than purely technical terms may result in gushing. I’d rather not gush. As one who has attempted musicianship over the past 50 years I am in awe of Rossano’s lyricism, lightness of touch, and rhythmic confidence. He plays songs that I play but they sound better when he does it. Add to the foregoing that he is a wonderful guy. He kept the music playing in his apartment all through the pandemic, available for all with an internet connection to hear; those Covid-era performances are archived on rossanosportiello.com.

The concert was a much-needed, spirit-elevating respite from what I have come to consider the Great Slog, or business (such as it is) as usual. I can’t even begin to discuss that which we were slogging through, but that this issue of The Syncopated Times exists at all feels miraculous. More even than miraculous, it feels sore. I’ve done this trick before, many times. Exhaustion plus dread equals another day at the office.

The one sure cattle prod that drives me through wearisome inconvenience to the completion of my layout in time to meet my printer’s deadline is my increasing loneliness as a purveyor of an independent media platform. Yes, that is intertwined with my obligation to subscribers, advertisers, and the larger community of musicians and enthusiasts who need their stories told. Nonetheless, I’m just beginning to fathom what it means to have a newspaper that isn’t answerable to a syndicate, a media group, a network, a hedge fund, a venture capital consortium, a private equity firm, or a vast conglomerate in which all the members are compelled to sing as an immense, harmonious choir. My almost-unique luxury is that I may express dissonance.

Now that Paramount and its subsidiaries and Warner Brothers and its subsidiaries are all massed under the baleful umbrella called Skydance, a shrill and cloying harmony rings out over the vast distances of our land. This is what some would hail as Unity but which I suspect is totalitarian uniformity. Is it anti-social to flat that fifth or add beats to that interval?

When the media juggernaut must present the illusion of an opposing view, it’s easy to reach into the prop closet for a scarecrow. The actual scaredy-cats are the subsidiary networks themselves, who grow nervous when faced with the prospect of reporting the news or cracking a joke (particularly in connection with the name of an influential person). As our recent media history in this country proves, there are some people you can’t joke about or even talk about. The anodyne is always welcome.

I’ve received some juicy scolding from some of you for things I’ve said in this space. But that pales next to the relentless abuse directed at me after I made and posted a mild meme on Facebook about a certain beloved chainsaw-wielding space-travel enthusiast. The Almighty Zuckerberg made sure that the angriest people online saw it. I merely suggested that if they believed this person were to give every American child a share of stock in his company, I had a square inch of the Yukon to sell them.

One respondent suggested I was “jealous.” I said, “Yeah, I’m just gutted that I don’t have $300 million to influence the outcome of the Midterms.” Which brings us to the overlap of media monopolies and those possessed of obscene wealth spending millions of dollars to sway the outcome of what should be a democratic process.

When I was in grade school, I had a nice little jaunty cap that I used to wear. One day, two kids ganged up on me and snatched it off my head, throwing it back and forth to each other. They were playing “keep away.” I went home in tears, expecting my mother scream at me for losing it. She drove me back to where the incident occurred and the cap was hanging from a rung on a telephone pole, slightly soiled. I never felt like wearing it again.

Right now, Democracy is the perfected game of Keep Away for adults. There’s always somebody bigger, snatching it from us, throwing it to other powerful people out of our reach. The major media platforms control the narrative and the billionaires finance their pet candidates. The object of the game is keep necessary power out of our hands and entirely to themselves.

No matter how tired and unwell I may be or what personal and household catastrophes may befall me, I am not about to relinquish this platform, this pulpit, this soapbox, this unique share of TST stock, this square inch of my personal Yukon.

My dissonance is not for sale at any price.