Genius Guide
September 2001
"As I sat there, trying to avoid listening to the news for just a few moments, I put in some Louis Armstrong. West End Blues. Because it sounded like America to me."
Genius Guide to Jazz
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My Country 'Tis of Thee
By Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
I went in to work on Tuesday morning, September 11th, and a co-worker told me about the unfolding events. "A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center." they said, slightly concerned, but yet unaware of the magnitude of what was happening. My first thought, certainly, was not of the horrific events we would all become too aware of in the coming hours. My first thought was that an errant private plane had crashed into the building, a terrible accident.
I was wrong.
I work at Circuit City, which happened to be a good place to be at that moment. I had dozens of TV's of all shapes and sizes to follow the tragedy (does tragedy no longer seem to be the appropriate word? It doesn't seem strong enough to define this). I stood, transfixed by the surreal pictures. My mind was having a very hard time accepting what I was seeing. Jetliners smashing into skyscrapers, massive buildings crumbling into dust; it looked more like a movie, but it felt like something far, far different.
The store was empty, needless to say, but for the employees and the random customer who had not yet heard the news. We stood and watched, trying to make it make sense. It never did. It never will. We will never be able to ascribe a satisfactory cause to this event, and we may never find a resolution. Thousands die on the despicable whim of evil cowards and we can neither explain their motives so that we can at least frame this with some context, nor can we ever expect contrition from them. It is a moment in history that will forever have no real beginning, only a cataclysmic climax; and no definable end, only a dark, hollow echo throughout the rest of our lives.
Circuit City showed no signs of closing for the day, so I took my lunch hour as scheduled. As odd as it sounds, the first restaurant that came to mind was McDonald's. I normally don't care for their food, but for some reason, it just felt American to me. I sat in my Korean car, listening to my Japanese stereo, eating a Quarter Pounder, fries and a Coke. The burger and fries, as greasy and anti-nutritious as they could be, were purely American food. Exported to virtually every nation on the earth, they had not been absorbed into other cultures. A Quarter Pounder in Moscow is the same Quarter Pounder you'd get in Roanoke, Virginia. It is defiantly American, not trying to justify its worth or swaying to the prevailing winds wherever it may be. It is what it is, and you can accept it or not. And if you don't, it doesn't matter. It is still what it is.
And so it is with jazz.
As I sat there, trying to avoid listening to the news for just a few moments, I put in some Louis Armstrong. West End Blues  . Because it sounded like America to me. The whole of our character, born of a melange of disparate cultures and colored by our collective experience, rang melancholy and real and knowing even though eight decades removed; still to witness a Depression, a World War, a fallen young president, a symbol of our technological superiority exploding before our eyes on a bright Florida morning, and now this. That frozen ghost of an afternoon in 1929 somehow knew me, and knew my pain.
The power of all art is transcendence. It may lift us out of ourselves, to a promise of something more beautiful and meaningful than anything we could have dreamt for ourselves. Or it may act as a mirror to the soul, casting our eyes inward to a truth we had not realized in our own being. Jazz, in a single instant, can do both. On its surface, it reveals much about the collective ingenuity of America to create something completely unique, something more in its whole than the sum of the pieces combined to create it. And in its heart, countless voices combined to strip away division and speak of the commonality of all humankind. Within the intricate beauty and relentless innovation of jazz, there are ancient truths. Love feels the same to white as well as black, pain wracks the heart of Asian as well as Caucasian. To be lonely, tired, angry, or ostracized is to be human. To smile, to dance, to celebrate, to live in every sense of the word is an experience we share by the very fact of our being. Yet, even in its universality, it is still distinctly, unrepentantly American.
I thought of someone sitting half a world away in their Korean car, listening to West End Blues on their Japanese stereo, searching for comfort, if not understanding, in a world suddenly unfamiliar. If jazz, our own creation, has the surpassing ability to overcome time, race, distance, and self, then it must speak of the stock of those who created it. We are both inventors and heirs. It is within us to draw from jazz the inspiration and strength to overcome, and salve for our aching souls as we do. Louis Armstrong would have had no concept of what has happened in this very different world from his world in 1929, but he would have understood the pain. And his trumpet would have sounded just the same. It is what it is.
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