
Ever since I started playing jazz, I’ve been hearing voices. Voices that began so faintly to speak to me, whispering syncopated, melodic words that only I could hear. I didn’t know who these people were and I would frequently ask myself, Who talks like this? I don’t know anybody who says anything like what I’m hearing. Back then, I was just an average and a little bit quirky child that began to carry around this tenor saxophone that was bigger than me, after joining my elementary school concert band. When I got off the school bus in fourth grade with this monstrosity, my parents thought that I was mental. But like all parents, they begrudgingly accepted my decision, and a few weeks after that day, I began to practice the horn full-time. To help me appreciate the music more, my father bought a couple of jazz records by tenor players such as Page One by Joe Henderson and Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins. As I would listen to the recordings, I could hear Joe and Sonny actually talking to me. Over “St. Thomas” or “Recordame”, they would quietly whisper, Hey man, why don’t you pick up your horn and jam? But because I was a beginner and didn’t have any real passion, I didn’t care, thinking that what they were saying was in a language much too complicated for me to understand. Nor did I want to understand. Eventually, though, the voices somehow got me to start taking the music seriously.
Because I felt alienated from many of the important jazz musicians in history when I started out, it took me a while to eventually find someone who could speak to me and take me to their level. The two saxophonists who helped me with this, ultimately, were Lester “Prez” Young and Charlie “Bird” Parker, these rebellious horn players who embraced a new, exciting kind of phrasing and technique. To me, their distinct styles of playing was unlike anything I had ever heard, and they were talking to me in a way that I felt like I could understand, and soon, I found myself beginning to pick up their musicality. At thirteen, I fell in love with Parker’s bouncing and fast-flowing vibrancy on records such as “Moose The Mooche” and “Just Friends”, and I frequently found myself listening to these two specific recordings on repeat, over the course of what seemed to be like almost every day of the year. And Prez could whisper to me at any time and draw me in close, and the conversations we had were wonderful. Prez was like me: he was awkward and quirky, but sentimental and passionate about everything. As we talked, I felt like he was saying: Believe in yourself. You’ve got a long way to go, but I know you can do it. So I started to feel this kind of bigger connection to jazz and began to play more, I found myself incorporating the language of Young and Parker into my own playing. But I needed something more. I wasn’t just going to be the latest incarnation of Bird and Prez forever, and I had to branch out.
Over the next few years, I began to talk more and more to these spirits, whether or not they were dead or living. These jazz players would pass through at any time, like a jam session at Small’s with a guest list only jazz nerds like me could dream of. Voices would come and go, and a different voice would be prevalent each night. As I took my music more seriously, it was as though some of the voices I heard in my head stayed on for much longer periods of time, and it was these voices that would become a guiding light for my music. Parker and Young began to fade more into the background as other, more intriguing voices took the reins. As a musician, it seemed as though the saxophonists that I would start talking to reflected on the way I was playing, especially as I was gaining progress on my improvisation and technical abilities. Among these new, more present voices were John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons. But the biggest saxophonist to become a guiding light in my life was Rollins. Despite our early differences, the bop saxophone player became one of the mainstays of my conversations, talking to me day and night about the music and about life in general. As I would listen over and over again to The Bridge, East Broadway Run Down and Newk’s Time, I began to notice a difference in my own playing due to my talks with him. He would tell me things such as: Man, you gotta push yourself to be your best. This is your life, brother. You gotta go for it, what are you waiting for? The music is yours for the taking! To my adolescent self, these words felt warm and encouraging. His words reached out to me in a way that most people didn’t and he inspired me to continue my deep dive into music, and it began to show over the next few years. Partly because of Rollins, I got a brand new horn, a Selmer Series III tenor, which played much better than my old one. I also purchased a fancy metal mouthpiece, which quickly opened up my sound and technical abilities. And since I was taking the music much more seriously, I began to study the saxophone on a very deep level. And soon enough, both peers and mentors were talking about me. A bandmate of mine even said I played like Rollins! The spirits were doing some good, I suppose. Sonny’s in his nineties now, and if only Sonny knew that I was aspiring to play like him and channeling what he was doing. I was starting to come into my own.
Of course, then I was just an “aspiring” musician. But now that I’m enrolled at Berklee College of Music and am doing music every day, it’s become so real that it’s intimidating. I would be in for a rude awakening, and I quickly lost count of how many times I felt like I wasn’t playing my best. Whether it be at ensemble rehearsals, my private lessons, and even casual jam sessions with my friends, my playing started to feel wrong. I had grown into a person who would be very aware of when I am not playing my best, and it began negatively impacting me. Was I practicing enough? Was I applying myself the way my friends were? How advanced was I getting at my technique and improvisation? It was like I wasn’t reaching the heights I wanted to reach, and these dark thoughts began to affect me even as I was trying to stay positive. Recently, though, there was an incident that made me feel more frustrated than I had been about my playing in a long time, and I almost quit entirely because of it.
Last weekend, I received a master recording of my friend’s composition “Rites Of Passage,” a recording of which I had the privilege of being the tenor saxophonist on. Hoping to post it on my social media account, I listened to it only to be horrified to discover that my performance was, in my opinion, the worst thing I had ever played. Everything felt off to me – my intonation, the quality of my sound, my understanding of the changes – and it was too late to fix it. In all honesty, we didn’t really rehearse for it that much and the engineer could have done a better job, but my dreadful performance was still a major letdown. My first semester at music school was coming to a close, and “Rites of Passage” seemed to be proof that I hadn’t improved at all. Therefore, I concluded that I would never succeed in music, with neither talent nor any motivation to improve. It was like the spirits had left me, or, more likely, that I had failed and they were scorning me for my failure, and the more I thought about the voices being gone, the more devastated I felt. Ultimately, I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. I would quit music school after this semester ended and jjseeeee3loeforget everything I had ever tried to do to be at least some kind of successful musician. It was too frustrating for me to handle, and for the rest of my life, I told myself, I would have to live with the fact that I had messed up big time. It was over. And I had to get rid of the very thing that had caused this pain: my useless, good-for-nothing horn.
As I prepared to toss my saxophone down the compactor chute, I heard a whisper, though the words failed to be clear. I ignored it, feeling too depressed to listen to whatever the hell this voice had to say to me. The door to the compactor at my fingertips, I opened the chute only to hear someone scream, STOP!!!!!!!!! It was like the handle to the chute door had stung me, and I recoiled in horror as I tried to figure out who dared speak to me that way. I waited, but the voice did not come back and I remained petrified. This angry voice had instilled a fear in me I had never felt in my life, before or after. Thinking that the voice would not come back and that I was hallucinating, I tried opening the door again, only to be slapped in the face and knocked to the ground without any hesitation. Scared shitless but needing an answer, I annoyingly, but fearfully, asked out loud, “What the hell do you want from me?” Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned around, and came face to face with the pale, white, ghostly figure of Sonny himself. Somehow, he had materialized without me knowing. The voices had something to say to me, and afraid for my life, all I could do was listen.
Son, he said to me sadly, I know how you feel. But you can’t throw your life away! This is the path you have chosen for yourself, and there’s no turning back now.
“But I’ll never be good enough,” I moaned. “Why should I waste my time at something that I will never be good enough at? What’s the use?”
But you’ll get better, he replied with a grin on his face. You know, I used to always think about that stuff. I never thought that I’d be good enough, yet I got to where I am now. I came all this way, and you will the same way I did.
“It’s so easy for you to say! It wasn’t that hard for you because you’re so great,” I exclaimed. I had totally gotten offended by what he had said. Even though I still considered him the best, I was starting to feel as though he never wanted me around to begin with.
Was it? He asked. Think about it, man. We’re in the same boat here, you and I. I’ve learned that you’ll never get anywhere if you’re too hard on yourself. The consequences will be too great! You have all this great potential, and it would be a shame if you left it alone. Blakey said that jazz washes the dust off of everyday life, didn’t he? Well, what about your life?
I almost opened my mouth to retaliate, but quickly stopped. He was right. There was so much potential in me, so why should I let some bad recording cause me to forget about music altogether? Sure, I was not getting to the level I wanted to be at, but I wouldn’t just let myself fail! As Art Blakey once said, music had washed away the dust of my everyday life and provided me with this kind of clarity. I chose to play this music because this was my calling, and I felt right at home,
“Mr. Rollins, you’re absolutely right,” I confessed. “What’s the point of wasting my time only thinking about my failures when I could be doing something about it?” As I picked myself off the floor, took up my saxophone, and closed the compactor door, I thought I saw him wink, with a grin on his face unlike any other I had seen. I decided to get some practice in before my school day, and I would start by transcribing his solo on “We Kiss in a Shadow,” from East Broadway Run Down. I had so many musical things to do that even this transcription couldn’t wait. As the remaining elders begin to fade away, such as Haynes and Rollins, it’s my turn to fill in the gaps. The music world is my world too, and there is no time to waste. It’s time for me to set the bar higher than I ever have before.
Victor Freitas, CCO, via Wikimedia Commons