¿Todo Que Necesitas Es Latin?

(written last night before bed)

Today was a day that I needed. Today was a good, happy, carefree day. And I think that I´ll have a really good weekend. After classs, lunch and a nap, I went and finished writing a blog or two (finally, right?) which actually began as just an e-mail for Bethany... I just edited it to make a blog post later. I think there are more things that I can add to my blog about daily life because there are a lot of things that I see and smell and hear that are pretty unique. But tonight was good. After going to the office, I went out to my night of Tapas (this whole week, Jesús has been taking small groups out for dinners of tapas at two different restaurants) and I tried to enjoy myself. I sat with Kim, my very awesome smart Spanish speaking friend and fellow RA, and Jesús and Dr. Van Norman, and I just had a fantastic time talking about the food and about Spain and classes and I spent a great deal of the time speaking Spanish to Jesús. It was really nice to be able to just ignore the negativity and live up the interests I had and discussed. It may have been because the night was all about food, but regardless it was fun. Afterwards, we went to the Plaza Mayor for the celebration of Rachel´s birthday. I thought to myself that I´d have a glass or two and head out. Well... even if I wasn´t so moderate in my approach, at least it was a happy one, as later I was walking home singing 'Spamalot' like it's my job.

There could not have been a better birthday girl than Rachel. Perhaps the least controversial and most easily liked person, she was very cute all dressed up for her 21st birthday night. When she first showed up, there were a bunch of us there and we had wine and stuff but then her house-mate and inarguably best friend and constant companion Allie (who´s very simply adorable - short, always smiling and well dressed) had arranged for some people to go off as a kind of distraction for Rachel while Allie and others brought out a cake with candles and little presents.
As Rachel, P-Coat covered with a homemade yellow birthday crown, click clacked with her dressy heels into the plaza, all eyes from the usual corner of the illuminated stone square looked up from the café tables set outside in the chilly night air covered in plain green tablecloths and now an assortment of half-full glasses of wine and a motley crew of student-priced bottles of wine. Smiling with the honest happiness and excitement any birthday girl deserves, Rachel hopped, skipped and practically jumped around the arches to finally see the lit candles set atop the mousse-cake that Allie had found for her (I would ponder 'somehow', but there are a million pastry shops here, I guess it can't have been too difficult to find). With all cameras towards her, she blew out the candles, plunging the group into a strangely shady but familiar darkness and commences a short celebratory dance to the tune of 'Cumpleaños Feliz' in a semi-drunk manner, remeniscent of Irish drinking songs. There we were: all of different types, preferences, religions, and social classes celebrating the birthday of a commonly loved one in the cold winter air. It was our own personal Christmas, with the best girl of all shared amongst us. A gift not often enough given and in these times of isolation from most things we know, something highly sought. Tonight we shared love, and as the Beatles might say, that´s all you need.

(written much later last night)

The other night Ian wanted to ask me about what I think of Jazz. Because he´s Ian I got a couple minutes in and he just interrupted and talked for 15-20 minutes about Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd and why they´re the best bands ever. It was nice of him to ask - not a good listener, but he can talk.
But it got me thinking about how I think of jazz. I think I have a pretty interesting view of it because I see it as a language, a beautiful language that I speak and understand very well, though I cannot write or read very well. When I hear someone playing jazz, I think of it in the same way some might a poetry session or a lecture or speech or what have you. When I go to concerts it's to me like hearing a book on tape. If there's a really interesting or complex story, I like it. It it's an unhappy or surrealistic or small-cast or religious or 20s era story, generally speaking I will dislike it. Also if the performer only reads the language some and therafter thinks they can speak it, inevitably it will be an excruciating story. Unfortunately I think that the teachers at JMU try to teach people to read the language first and later just hope that they listen and pick up on how to speak. Most never do and it's both frustrating and painful to listen to when you know they haven't really practiced using the language nor have they listened to the language being spoken correctly. The most interesting thing about the language of jazz is that every bit of it is contextual and it say different things to different people But the context is the important frame of reference for the sentence structure of jazz. The chord changes are very similar to situations, there are things you say and in certain ways, depending on the situation. A lot of singers, for example, keep msucially saying 'Hey you guys! That's the bomb?' even though that phrase is outdated an generally out of context for most songs. That is my view of the language of jazz.

I think it would be a most beneficial study of the lanuage of jazz to spend the first year of study entirely listening, as a final at the end you should be given a certain set of chords and by ear you should be able to hum a workable improvisation over top of it. Once a person has the feel of what the language sounds like and basically how it´s structured, it should then be important to teach a vocabulary of different chord structures. For example, a major chord can be similar to the English word 'yeah' in that it's used as a first or last term in a phrase or as a random interjection. A diminished chord is similar to the work 'but,' it begs more and resolves beautifully to many different things. So on and so forth an assortment of vocabulary terms should be taught in writing. unfortunately, I never learned the names or writing for this vocabulary, so really I only know how they sound and how to respond to them. It must be very nice to be able to read jazz as one reads English. There are not enough fluent speakers, and then again there never were. It is similar, one supposes, to Latin these days: popular, elegant, easy to se randomly, but few really know it and it is hardly spoke fluently with grace. Jazz, the musical American Latin.