The William Parker concert at the Guelph Jazz Festival Saturday morning was like discovering a new spice I plan to use in cooking. He played two pieces, great intensity. He explained the piece off the top had to do with an idea he had about a landscape where moments after Martin Luther King was murdered, his spirit hovering in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and then Crazy Horse’s spirit traveled to meet with him and shared insights about freedom and how it is an internal thing. I couldn’t hear Parker’s unmic’d voice as clearly as I would have liked but I think that was the gist of it. Fifteen minutes into it some loser’s cellphone blared dumb ringtone for 5 seconds. I looked down from the balcony to see if his expression changed to something more disappointed but he didn’t want to dignify the interruption and retained his focus with the music.
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Later the 2cnd piece was as great an improvisation as you expect from someone introduced earlier as a world class musician even though it was the sales & marketing person from the college radio station making the claim. She might be the greatest sales & marketing manager in the history of jazz concerts but seemed to me this situation should call for the poet laureate of Guelph or at least Karen Houle (who probably is the de facto PL of G).
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I liked the second piece more. He started with a concave bow made of something rigid. The bowing thread very taught. He playfully played with harmonics a long time, inspiring and eventually morphed into a rhythm different than what usually passes for legit in freely improvised music. This pleased me much because I too like injecting melodicism or rhythmic grooves instead of remaining committed to playing free at all costs. Sometimes I think the players that avoid groovy rhythms or melodies are missing the point. Free means free, in the same record store you find William Parker you also find Avril Lavigne, has nothing to do with right and wrong it’s a reflection of what is organic, worth considering everything is just co-existing.
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Sometimes I think an interest to approach consciousness as the most urgent of priorities also makes for the development of best realizations of music. A pleasant surprise when next he started to sing the following lyric inside his piece:
I want to be a real human being not an avant garde,
I want to be a real human being not an avant garde,
It is more avant garde to be a real human being