The importance of remembering everything but the music
Poet and critic Harmony Holiday spent her year interviewing descendants and torchbearers, finding that the soul of jazz needs preserving offstage and outside of the booth.
I began this reminiscence writing about a year of concerts and festivals, that renewed togetherness and back-outsideness that feels at once routine and rogue after the hiatus, but quickly realized that what's most important to me about jazz right now is what is happening off- stage and backstage, in-between shows and attitudes, when we catch ourselves wondering what we're saying as if trapped in a dreamscape that only the right question posed at the right time can interrupt or interpret. Some of the best jazz songs ask such questions. Mingus's version of "What Is This Thing Called Love?"
