All That Jazz

HR-57 -- with its jam sessions, workshops, and music archives -- helps keep jazz alive.

By Ethan Goffman

As musical forms go, modern jazz is a rare bird. Neither popular nor classical, the music mixes African-American rhythms and improvisation with a modernist sensibility. Jazz has been called the only original art form to develop in the United States, yet it is often overlooked and misunderstood in the land of its birth.

In 1987, Congress passed HR-57, a resolution designating jazz as "a rare and valuable national American treasure.” Shortly thereafter, HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz & Blues was born. The club offers regular jam sessions for musicians to sharpen their skills, and for audiences to immerse themselves and enjoy.

Coltrane Calling

On a Wednesday night, the instruments of a standard jazz quartet open with a John Coltrane ballad -- a pure, spiritual saxophone soaring above the big chords of a piano and grand rhythms of bass and drums. My wife and I sit alone in the back, a bubble enshrouded in darkness. The conversation is strictly between the musicians, a display of how, after the big bands died, jazz became an artists’ music at times associated with modern alienation. With its dwindling audience, I wondered: Is jazz bound to become the music of a committed few, an intricate conversation misunderstood and ignored, with no impact on our larger culture? Soon from a nearby table, a trumpeter rises, as tall and
thin as his instrument (what would an orchestra look like,I wonder, if all the musicians were the same shape as their instruments) and joinsthe group. More audience members trickle in. Next a flutist, a stooped old-timer, ambles up for a solo.

The music expands, with clever soloists telling their stories in crosscutting patterns of notes, tricky tempo changes, and instrumental exchanges. The basic song-forms are elongated, individual styles merging into a greater story; the music is not a trickling stream, but a raging river, joining together many smaller tributaries or, to change metaphors, not a clear-cut story, but a grand and sprawling novel. Audience members now fill the room, many swaying to the music. By the second set, the band has expanded, threatening to swell off the stage. The atmosphere has changed utterly, to that of a bubbling, communal celebration.

During the break, I hang out in the back, drawn by the chess sets and the comfortable couches. Tony Puesan, the manager (and a large friendly guy), chats with patrons and musicians.

Puesan discusses the fund-raising necessary to keep HR-57 afloat. Despite a large payment due, the venue is in good shape for the long-term because they’re not far from owning the building outright. If they make this final payment, they will have dodged the rising costs of gentrification, a danger that will undoubtedly snatch many other struggling businesses away from the changing 14 & U St. neighborhood where the club is located.

Big Band Detonations

On Thursdays, the Thad Wilson big band plays. I arrive early to take in the ambience. The HR-57 building is a brick loft with high ceilings and whirling fans. On the walls are pictures of the always jolly Dizzy Gillespie, a smiling Abbey Lincoln, a frowning Miles Davis, and the legendary face of Billie Holiday, complete with her signature white gardenia. Most striking are two large, bright paintings of barefoot dancers swinging to live music; one can almost hear the strains of boogie-woogie emanating from the glowing paint.

The performance opens with a piano trio, from which thunderous waves of rhythm crescendo. Soon a shining horn section joins in the action. While blowing his trumpet, Thad Wilson simultaneously conducts the band with dramatic sweeps of his left hand. The rhythm section and the soloists are king here, with pianist Benito Gonzalez especially notable for his swooping attacks. The music is relentlessly modern, grand shards of sound, with not an old swing-era standard to be heard. Leading up to the break humor intrudes, with the whole band singing in harmony, “Let’s have a break and a meal.”

I study two patrons engaged in a game of chess. Puesan discusses chess strategy with them. It turns out that they help to underwrite HR-57. Puesan says that speed chess is his favorite, since his life is spent in rapid movement between customers, musicians, and money people. He compares himself to Atlas, with the whole world on his back. I briefly wonder whether jazz is more like basketball -- to which it is often compared, due to its emphasis on individual ability within a team structure -- or chess, with its cerebral cleverness.

Nurturing the Bird

Antonio Parker, a saxophonist who shares more than a last name with Charlie Parker, leads the Friday night set. Fast, noisy, and exciting, his solos are nevertheless impeccably planned and fit perfectly into the varied techniques of the rhythm section. More musicians clamber onto the stage, slightly eroding the harmony, but enhancing the spirit and camaraderie. Afterward I ask Parker a few questions. With the glory days of Miles Davis and John Coltrane long gone, and jazz occupying a dwindling portion of the marketplace, what is the state of young
musicians today? Parker says that even since he began playing, the music has expanded into more diverse styles, an “amalgamation of all that went before.” Yet the life of the typical jazz musician is difficult. With limited audiences, Parker says, musicians need to explore a variety of avenues, not only learning different styles, but writing and teaching, as well as taking advantage of new technology to produce their own music.

Jazz, then, is in a state precariously balanced between those clinging to a mythical past and those moving toward an uncertain future. As a rare bird on a planet of dying species, it will likely never quite die, but will maintain a small audience. Meanwhile, it continues to influence musicians of all stripes, as well as a variety of genres. And HR-57, with its jam sessions, workshops, and music archives, will continue to cultivate those musicians called to this precarious passion.

Listen to the likes of Art Blakely and Betty Carter on HR-57's radio station

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A diasporic figure exiled from the great state of Indiana, Ethan Goffman works a motley collection of jobs in freelance writing, teaching, and Internet indexing.