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From: 2010-09-23
Read On...
Jo McQue
I was raised an Afrikaner in an English environment in a small town on the Natal South Coast.
I had a little artistic talent but loved music, for which I had no talent at all - my family stuff cheese in their ears when I sing and my sole piano lesson when I was about 10 ended when my teacher ran for cover.
Music, art and literature have always been a vital part of me. My first great love in music was and is Leonard Cohen, I love Brueghel's fat little peasants and I'll read anything for as long as it will hold my attention, but Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle stand out amongst the thousands of books I've lived in.
I turned up at FMR when an invitation was extended on air for voice auditions for classical presenters - I could recognise some of the tunes and could even pronounce some names. I hadn't thought about Jazz but was informed immediately that I had a "jazz voice" and would be considered for Jazz rather than Classical presenting. Up until then my CD collection had been filed under 3 categories - Leonard Cohen, Classical and Not Leonard Cohen or Classical. I subsequently found that I had plenty of Jazz, all filed under the last category. I had to learn fast and I'm still learning.
I'll give you a few of my favourite quotes that will tell you why I do this:
"One of the defining characteristics of jazz has been its resiliency. You could drop jazz in the middle of Wyoming, blindfolded, in the dead of winter and with nothing more than a can opener and four raw veal cutlets and it would not only survive, but come back to avenge its father's death and marry its high school sweetheart."
From the Genius Guide to Jazz, June 2003.
"In American life you have all these different agendas, you have conflict all the time & we're attempting to achieve harmony through conflict. It seems strange to say that but it's like an argument that you have with the intent to work something out, not an argument that you have with the intent to argue. And that's what jazz music is.
They're musicians, & they're all standing on the bandstand, each one has their personality and their agenda. Invariably they're gonna play something that you would not play. So you have to learn when to say a little something and when to get out of the way.
So you have that question of the integrity, the intent, the will to play together. That's what jazz music is.
So you have yourself, your individual expression & then you have how you negotiate that expression within the context of that group.
It's exactly like democracy."
Wynton Marsalis: Ken Burns - Jazz
I love the humour, the irreverence, the dedication (to important stuff - like music) of jazz and its musicians.
A Spanish author wrote that he loves the "insolence and ingenuity" of jazz and that's exactly what appeals to me about this music. I love the way it speaks to any hour or age - but most of all I love the soulful cries of Coltrane's saxophone and Davis' trumpet at 2am when you feel that you're alone with nothing but that mournful cry to give voice to the demons raging inside you - a voice which leads you, sometimes not too gently, to a tentative truce, until the next time...
Mind you - it's also lekker to dance to....
As Joan Rivers said, when you're over 50 you have 2 choices - death or humour.
Catch Jo on The Jazz Lounge every Thursday night at 19:00
