I often recall a highlight from one of my first adventures as a young man, visiting the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania in Africa.
Despite the island itself being one of the most extraordinary places I’ve been, what more often pops in my memory is a sign on the wall of an old junk shop of Stone Town that read something like:
“Suffering is man’s duty and should be his joy.”
How that sign was supposed to help him sell the crap in his shop I’ll never know, but something in that message still resonates with me after all these years: that there is something powerful in the struggle of the artist. There is a force within suffering that makes us reach deep within and create something greater than ourselves. I can often feel this within all types of great music; an expression of, and testament to, the resilience of humanity.
This is certainly present within jazz musicians. In a nutshell, we love to be miserable. And here’s proof. Let me ask you: have you ever been to an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world- Hawaii for example, or Zanzibar (to keep it topical) or perhaps a beautiful chalet in the Swiss alps? These are some breathtaking places. And how many jazz musicians did you see hanging out there? Exactly. Those places are way too pretty for us. But, find us an overpriced rat-infested Brooklyn basement with no windows or heating, and we’ll fight
