Is the Culture of Music Time-Bound or Infinite?
Since culture is horizonal it is not restricted by time or space. . . .
Because culture as such can have no temporal limits, a culture understands its past not as destiny, but as history … as a narrative that has begun but points always toward the endlessly open.
—James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
The Zen Buddhist concept “beginner’s mind” is a wonderful place of joyous curiosity and exploration of mystery. Discovery after discovery fuels passionate engagement. But beginners—especially young beginners—often, maybe inevitably, hold misconceptions that only learning and experience can dispel. For instance, as a young teen saxophonist, not much older than the photo of me playing in college above, I’d hear recordings by early jazz pioneer Sidney Bechet and not only think that what I heard was old but also easy to play.
That’s not just young. That’s dumb. Of course, attempting to play the saxophone with the sound, style and technique of one of the OMs (Original Masters) of jazz will quickly disabuse a youngster of such a misguided notion. Even Wynton Marsalis.
Wynton was far from a beginner when his father, Ellis Marsalis, gave him a Louis Armstrong recording and suggested that he try to learn the solo.
Teenage Wynton came back humbled: he couldn’t play it.
When Oscar Peterson was a teen wunderkind on piano in Canada, his father didn’t want him to, as my kinfolk would say down South, get “too big for his britches.” His dad played a recording by the incomparable Art Tatum. Peterson had thought he was all that; he was indeed very good, but was overconfident. Hearing Tatum, Peterson couldn’t believe his ears—he told his dad that there must be two piano players performing!
Young Oscar Peterson
No, it’s just one man, his father said. Peterson didn’t play the piano for about a month after this intimidating experience, but soon regained his confidence. Oscar Peterson became one of the greatest jazz virtuosos in history.
But the idea underlying my presumptive ignorance above, about the “old” style of Sidney Bechet, is truly insidious: since it’s from the past, I felt, it must have less value because “today” we have (supposedly) advanced beyond that.
Such an idea is false because quality and value aren’t confined to a time period.
Quality and value are the stuff of meaning. Traditionally, meaning derives from culture and myth.
A culture can be no stronger than its strongest myths.
—James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
Jazz is a living art derived from the stories and myths of America, and the cultural and spiritual creativity of Black Americans. Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum and others of the early recordings of the musical idiom that became known as jazz aren’t confined to a linear and chronological time period. Such grandmasters, through their art, bring the eternal into time, the infinite into the finite, all while affirming life itself.
They are infinite players of the infinite game of culture.
Just as an infinite game has rules, a culture has a tradition. Since the rules of play in an infinite game are freely agreed to and freely altered, a cultural tradition is both adopted and transformed in its adoption. Properly speaking, a culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition.
—James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
Upcoming Events
April 16-18: Integral Practitioners Convergence: Evolving Integral Practice in a Time of Cascading Crises. Meridian University has added a day to this online event, first discussed here on April 5th. I’m tentatively scheduled to speak on a panel, “Wisdom and Spiritual Development,” on 4/16 @ 2 pm. Register for the event and check for details and confirmation.
April 20 @ 12 noon ET: Black Feminism and Womanism: Soulful Critique in a Pivotal Time w/Loretta Ross, Imani Perry, and Toni M. Bond. Hosted and facilitated by Greg Thomas. To register for this free session at The Stoa, click here.