My morning meditation email didn’t so much ping, as riff its way into my inbox and consciousness. This daily reflection was hip. Dare I say it really swung, baby.
Titled The Jazz Gospel, it came from my subscription to The Center for Action and Contemplation—the New Mexico hub of Franciscan priest Richard Rohr and all his cosmic coolness.
To me, Rohr is the Tom Hanks or Dave Grohl of spiritual guidance—relatable, funny, liberal, and universal. The daily reflections from his center help set me straight for the day. It’s not about churchin’ up, but more a way to tap into something lyrical and bigger than myself before the coffee and clock kick in.
As part of a series connecting art and contemplation, today’s meditation celebrated jazz as non-verbal prayer. How a sax solo can be a spiritual squeal, reaching up up UP, and how improvisation comes from a mystical place.
Dig this divine excerpt:
“When Miles Davis blows the cacophony that can barely be contained by the word song, we come closest to the unimaginable, the potential of the future, and the source of our being.”
- CAC teacher Barbara A. Holmes
Ok, Miles Davis was a well-documented dick. But you get the point. His music was about the spirit of possibility and channeling something higher.
Jazz is a tough one. Jazzzzzz as the snoring-sound joke goes. For some, jazz means brunch piano, or worse, the genre hijacked by music graduates who play only for their peers while fetishizing form and gatekeeping the music every girlfriend hates.
But that is not the jazz Holmes means in her meditation. She goes on to paraphrase historian Martin E. Marty (real name, guys):
“The key to understanding links between worship and jazz is subsumed in the word awe. This is an emotion that is accessible to everyone. He says that ‘jazz can erupt in joy.’ Joy infused with the riffs of awe tends to be unspeakable…”
My dad owned a 1980s-era Lincoln Continental, the colour of a terrible knee-scrape. I was about 10 years-old, and we would cruise around Calgary (windows up, his cigarette lit), listening a well-worn 8-track of The Downchild Blues Band.
When the sax solos burst out of the burgundy dashboard, my arms would pop with goosebumps. I would feel a rush I didn’t quite understand. What was happening to me?
Years later, when I played old-school jump blues with The Dino Martinis, that feeling would return. I wasn’t a trained sax player or a scholar of scales (regrettably), so I played by feel and fumble. Often, I didn’t get lucky. But when I did, building a solo to a soaring howl, the band would lock in, the floor of dancers would shift, and the air felt electric. It was those goosebumps again. Something almost spiritual.
Today’s meditation made perfect sense out of something that makes no sense. Music is invisible, as is the spirit.
Of course, it’s Coltrane that took us to post-bop church, seeking transcendence through jazz. A Love Supreme, his 1965 masterpiece, is a wordless poem of gratitude to a higher power and a real trip when the listener is in the zone.
Spiritual Jazz saw subsequent giants reach for the sky, most notably Pharoah Saunders, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, and Alice Coltrane. These days, it’s saxophonist Kamasi Washington carrying the torch with an otherworldly combo of choirs and jazz frenzy. I wore out his lauded double album The Epic a decade ago, and still return to its opening track to lose myself in something vast.
But one doesn’t need a certified spiritual jazz record to be moved. I receive just as many feelies from an R&B sax honker like King Curtis as I do John Coltrane. And when Lenny Pickett hits those impossibly high altissimo notes in the closing theme of SNL, it’s something truly sacred. (Really. Listen to him wail here).
I don’t think I ever outgrew the air band inside my head. Sometimes when I get lost in an emotive horn solo through my headphones, I picture it’s me doing the playing. I figure there’s more to this than a juvenile game of pretend. I’m seeking to get inside the sound. And maybe that’s a kind of prayer in itself.
I will be revisiting today’s meditation a lot this year, like placing the needle on a well-loved Blue Note LP. As The Jazz Gospel so eloquently puts it:
“A jazz quartet can utter things in the presence of [the spirit] that mere words fail to say.
A saxophone can lament on behalf of those who feel helpless.
A piano may offer intercessions for those who are in need.
A string bass can affirm the firm foundation of faith.
Drums and cymbals may call pilgrims to break into joy.”
Count me in, band. Again from the top…
Jord, this piece hits right at the heart of what makes jazz beautiful - the power of emotion without words, transcending and elevating.
For me, I’ll always remember the day we were playing records in your parent’s basement, and we played “What it is” by Miles. That moment truly changed my life. The door to jazz was opened a crack, and we’ve spent the last 40+ years prying open the door. So glad to share this passion with you and am so thankful to read your piece.