POSTLUDE

Around Midnight

It is around midnight on a Saturday in Los Angeles.  Several young, urban Christian missionaries walk around the area where a jazz instrumental performance is about to begin.  They hand out leaflets, spreading the message of salvation, invite anyone who will listen to their meeting at another location.  The meeting time coincides, or conflicts, with the time a performance is about to begin.  It is an area in Los Angeles of cultural storefronts - dance and percussion studios, jazz performance rooms, art galleries, and the like.  The missionaries - a racially mixed group of mostly young women - do not relate to the culture.  People in need of God are socializing.  They sit and stand about a sidewalk cafe, move around, some into the cafe, as the cafe’s band is getting into its first set for the evening; others stroll to another jazz room around a corner and down the block.  

Would these missionaries have walked about the environs of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in exactly the same way, where a concert, say, of Mozart was about to begin, and invite anyone who would listen to their meeting about to begin at another location?  As an enticement, they offer that they will have music at their meeting.  They have a band, they say, that can play anything, including jazz.  “Like what you can hear, coming out of the cafe?”, they are asked.  “O yes,” they quickly respond without thought.  It’s all Rock and Roll to them.  Popular music; and their band plays popular type music - with Christian words, of course.  Further conversation reveals that their band is a Contemporary Christian band; that is, the Christian version of a top 40 band.  Members of these bands often claim to play jazz, which they do not.  Having uninformed ideas about what jazz is, they play accordingly.  

These inspired missionaries, acting on the Great Commission, do not recognize the context into which they have walked.  They do not see that it is more than a Saturday night outing.  It is a place (a rare one, at that) for jazz to happen.  Socially, the first integrated culture in America, in which the finest creative American musicians forged its greatest music.  Reflected in these young evangelizers was a familiar middle-American attitude toward jazz, considered still to be a commercial nightclub music, a form of popular music born and raised in sinful environs.  That is partly true, particularly about the sinful environs.  But, is Chandler Pavilion any less sinful an environ?  Would they walk about that Pavilion on a concert night and try to pull people away to hear the message of salvation, using the promise of a Contemporary Christian band to entice?  They feel perfectly at ease to do so in a jazz context, to walk right into and through a culture they do not appreciate and which is invisible to them.  Suddenly, an argument breaks out between a proselytizer and a community member - over Christians believing theirs is the only way.  

Around evangelical circles you will hear that culture does not matter.  Okay.  So, try to remove country music from some churches and their communities; or the hymnal; or Gospel; or a cappela-only singing; or Contemporary Christian Music; or European pre-20th century classical, and let’s see how unimportant culture is.  Whenever I hear pious noise against culture, it is invariably against someone else’s.  

In the street window of that jazz room around a corner and down the block from the cafe, raised upon a rest and opened to a page, is the Koran.  Islam understands.  This is a cultural community historically ignored and, on occasion, openly denigrated by leaders and members of American churches.  It is fertile ground for Muslims.  

Duet

I was running over some material on piano at a church in Honolulu when a young American of African descent stepped into the auditorium to listen.  When I paused, he approached to tell me how much he liked what I was doing.  Identifying himself as a flutist, he asked if he could play a tune with me.  We did.  He turned out to be a talented musician.  Afterwards, in answer to my question, he said he was living on the “Big Island,” Hawaii.  An odd place for such a musician of his background to be living.  Perhaps because we had just had a meeting of musical minds, he suddenly, in an unbroken stream, blurted out his situation.  He was an artist out of context.  

He was sheddin' and playing flute on the streets noticing how the young walk by without relating to his music what Bill Evans and Coltrane represent he was planning to be a revolutionary against a society having no understanding of his culture it’s a rejection kids and everybody they love classical and pop he realizes that but if he has to sleep outside money and struggle people living out on the streets f- - - it he was preferring to go out as a warrior like in New York everybody’s conforming there’s no more nobility no one anymore with vision that’s why jazz is fine I mean I walked in and heard you playin’ I mean that was like. . . phew!  

There was more to what he said than what I have put down here.  To a passing stranger it could have sounded like ranting.  But, I understood every word, felt every sentiment, knew the anger and frustration.  But, I could not say anything.  I was overwhelmed by the sense of his aloneness and struggle, and the inadequacy of my speaking under such circumstances.  I’m an artist and follower of Christ.  I gave him my card, asked him to call.  Perhaps I could show him what I was doing, writing this book, writing up plans for Job’s Piano, to let him know that there is someone - a fellow - in the world who can actively relate to him, his situation, and his culture.