Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
of Stanislaus County
June 03, 2012.
June 03, 2012.
Welcome to our Annual Jazz Sunday.
I’d like to especially welcome our
guest musicians!
This morning I want to challenge us, leaving
us as much time to enjoy the music as we can, to think about the title of
today’s sermon: Jazz and Other Theologies.
Sharon Welch, a professor of mine from
seminary, wrote an article called “Lush Life: Foucault’s Analytics of Power and
a Jazz Aesthetic.” In her piece, Welch quotes Foucault saying some radical
things. Just one example follows:
I can’t help but dream about a kind of
criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a
sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen
to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but
signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them
sometimes—all the better. All the better.
Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a
criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible
storms.[i]
Foucault’s dream might resonate very
well with us. We dream about life enhancing criticism, or said another way: we
long to discover a discussion about important topics that encourages growth,
instead of just being another version of “but this is how we’ve always done it.”
Jane Lynch gave the commencement
speech this year at Smith College. It was a very funny and poignant speech, it
can be found on youtube[1].
In her speech, Lynch talked about her transition from a “very serious actress”
to her time in Chicago at Second City, where she learned to “improv.” That’s
show biz talk for improvising on stage together.
Lynch told the new Smithees to
remember the lesson of “yes/and.” Yes/and means that you take what the other
actor has given you, and instead of stopping the conversation there, you offer
them something back to work with.
Instead of this exchange “The sky is
blue.” And “Yes it is.” Which is a “Yes and Stop.” An example might be “the sky
is blue,” followed by “Yes it is, and oh my gosh, do you see that giant blimp
in the sky?”
Jazz is musical form of Yes/And.
On the page, we’re given a structure:
chords, a melody; and that’s it. The rest is a conversation between the person
who wrote the tune, the person who arranged the tune, the person up front
counting the beats, the musicians reading all those tiny black dots and
squiggles on the page, the soloist who is relying on all those people to
support her or him as they are creating music.
And all of these people are in
conversation with the listener.
All of these people are saying
Yes...And.
This is part of what makes Jazz so
amazing. While no music performed live is ever exactly the same piece twice,
Jazz expects wild variation.
Like our own religious liberalism,
Jazz expects you to do the work of engaging with the material. Even as
listener, you have a role to play in the conversation.
And unlike, say Dvorak’s New World
Symphony, the first piece of orchestral music I ever played, and still love,
Jazz expects the unexpected.
If I broke out with a random melody
during the clarinet solo that goes like: (hums the tune) the conductor would be
far less pleased than Karen might!
Like other faiths, our faith is like
music. We have a structure, we have a history, we have rules of engagement.
But unlike many other faiths, we allow,
no, we encourage improvisation.
The key to good improvisation is not
just to have a wild hair and then go off. No, the key to good improv is to know
all about the structure of the song you’re playing in, to know the key, the
tempo, the melody, and then to step out onto the ledge and let your spirit
speak.
Each improvised melody is a critique
of the song from which it grows. The solo is a commentary on the melody. It can
go along with, or be a counter point to, the primary melody. But no matter
which form it takes, the improvised melody is in conversation with the original
tune. Let us, like Foucault, have a dialogue that is life giving, a theological
yes/and.
This is the Jazz aesthetic that we
seek in our spiritual lives.
Let us step out onto the very edge of
the stage of life and take chances. Let us say Yes more than No, let us reach
out a hand to help another, let us take our mission as a faith that shows the
miracle of humanity’s loving ability…
And let us play!
Jazz and Other Theologies
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry
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