If you’ve never been to what’s called an open mic jazz jam, it’s an experience I would encourage you to track down.How it works is that there’s a little combo that hosts the gig and after it plays a handful of tunes, one of its members acts as an MC and starts inviting people up on stage to sit in and play a song or two.
Last week I happened to be in New York City and checked in at a spot down in the West Village called Smalls.It’s a great place that lives up to its name. It’s very intimate you could say, but it’s perfect for listening to some jazz. Nobody is there for anything else.
The house band the day I was there was piano, bass, drums, and trumpet. The trumpet player was named Ryo Sasaki and he managed the proceedings. The drummer, by the way, was a treat to see.It was 90-year-old Steve Little who’s played with groups from the Duke Ellington Big Band to the combo that did all the music for Sesame Street. He still lays down a solid groove.
And he needs to, because one never knows exactly how it’s going to hang together when you start inviting other people up to play.There’s a catalog of tunes that they know so the leader picks one, makes sure everybody knows what key they’re playing it in, and off they go.
Each tune starts off with the melody that all the horn players play.It’s referred to as the head.Once they go through that a couple of times players start taking solos over the chord changes. The pattern is usually 12 bars long and people will solo for one or two times through.And then the next player will start. The piano, bass, and drums, keep everything together in terms of chords and rhythms.
More than a few of the horn players who sat in played like they were at an audition of some sort, seeking to impress and win a spot.Without exception they all had good chops, although truly tasteful or unique playing was not quite as common as one might have wished.By contrast the leader of the combo was one of the most tasteful trumpet players I’ve ever heard.
When you sit back and ponder what you’re witnessing, regardless of the soloists and their varied styles, you’re hearing a group that’s never played together before being molded into a unit by the music itself.They all start and stop at the same time, but what happens in between is something of an experiment in alchemy: it’s a group of diverse elements being transformed into something new. The fusion is what makes it art, and it’s what makes the art itself so significant in a fractured society.The experience brings the national motto of the United States—e pluribus unam—into tangible reality.And we need that these days maybe more than ever.
