I wonder what it would be like to be old. I wonder if I'll make it to 101. I wonder if I'll still be doing what I love, if I'm lucky enough to make it. I wonder if what I love then will look similar to what I love now. I wonder if I know what I love now. I don't love jazz but it's getting me through.
I guess "what I love" isn't that hard of a question. That jazz quip was half sarcasm. I don't mind this music. "Hating jazz" is such a cliché. There's nothing to hate here, unless you hate old people or something. Who hates old people? I had a week a few weeks ago during which I saw like three separate reddit posts from people asking about why old people smell so weird. It's a chemical thing, and it happens to us all, if we're lucky enough to make it that far. Marcus Allen was lucky. Is lucky. Lucky to be alive, playing saxophone professionally, smelling like an old person probably.
My limitation are somewhere in between "tolerating jazz" and "appreciating good jazz." I can't appreciate something for being good if I don't have experience with comparable data that I consider not good. I can read a long diatribe from Pat Metheny about how much he fucking hates Kenny G and considers his music dogshit trash, and I'll have a good laugh and appreciate a good wind-up like that, but then I'll listen to Kenny G's music and not really understand to the fullest extent how it differs all that much from what Metheny would consider "the best jazz," e.g. Miles Davis or whoever. That's on me, simply because I don't listen to enough jazz.
But it's easy for me to say "I like this" due to my ignorance, which is cool. I like New Dawn, even though I don't have much to compare it to. That reaction is better than "I hate this because I hate everything that sounds like this." That doesn't feel like a healthy reaction to me. It feels uncurious and distant. I'm trying to find optimism in ignorance. It's nothing like that jazz pianist who recently talked about how much he fucking hates André 3000 and considers his piano music dogshit trash. I haven't listened to his music or André's piano sketches or whatever. I'm sure I'd be able to tell the difference but just barely. The professional jazz guy is allowed to be overly pessimistic about the OutKast guy fucking around on the piano, though, because he's studied in the art. He knows jazz. He knows what is good jazz and what is bad jazz. I'm just out here fucking around like some fucking dilettante.
I know stuff besides jazz, though. I know how to listen to music. I know how to let the music seep into you, let it push or pull the needle on the emotional meter for the week. I know what it means for a musician to pour his entire life into his passion. I know Philly, and I know what it means to live in Philly for your whole life. I know what it means to live in and work out of that specific section of Philadelphia for 60 years. I know what it means to be labeled "a Philly artist." I know what it means to be labeled "an afrofuturist" artist (some interesting bleeps and bloops on "African Sunset," basically). I know what it means that you're pushing definitions of what it means to work within a genre. I know what it means when maybe a gentle album feels like a retreat into comfortable territory, away from the experimentation.
I don't know what it's like to be old, but I used to work with old people (sorry: senior citizens) all the time. It was to the point that I at one time harbored aspirations to be a geriatric psychologist. I know what they smell like, and I know how they think. And what I'll say about that is that the old people who felt some sense of purpose were the ones that flourished. We were dumb ignorant teenagers and we used to poke fun at the little old ladies who had meetings about what we saw as meaningless bullshit. Gotta have a committee to complain about the diet desserts they are serving this month?! I'm not a dumb ignorant teenager anymore and I can now see that they were just seeking purpose in life, no matter how small or ostensibly "meaningless." As a young-teetering-on-middle-aged adult, I seek meaning in similar ways now.
Marshall Allen is an old person who is seeking meaning in his art. Sometimes that sounds boring (title track, sorry Neneh), sometimes that sound revelatory (solos in "Boma," the drum solos at around 7:30 specifically, of course), sometimes that sounds like some basic shit that my high school jazz band would've covered, and at a slightly more challenging tempo ("Are You Ready"). And yet there he is, Marshall Allen, 101 years old, playing his music, finding meaning in his art, sleeping on a cot in North Philly, the 2-nonenal chemical compound being produced by omega-7 fatty acids degrading on his skin through oxidation. I don't have any problem with any of this. This is fine. If I'm lucky enough to make it to 101, I'm sure I'll feel the same way.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
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