Religiosity as Expressed in

Bebop Jazz Improvisation

Travis Bille

Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan

Department of Religious Studies

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

In cooperation with:

Dr. Todd Borgerding

Department of Music

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

May 11, 2007

Travis Bille

Independent Study

Religious Studies 446

May 11, 2007

Religiosity as Expressed in Bebop Jazz Improvisation

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors.

The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them,

without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves....

I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one,

there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound.

I must accept their death; I must even want that death:

I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

Jazz music, or more specifically jazz improvisation, has spent the last century

evolving into an art form that many love, few understand, and even fewer have tried to

understand. In this writing from Sartre, he is trying to pinpoint the deep emotion that he

is feeling, but his final resolution falls on giving up. He can grasp what is going on, and

he can describe it in this flow of detail, but he is missing something, and it would seem

that even he knows it. It is an internal struggle; he knows what he wants, he knows how

to achieve that first level of grasping it, but he also knows that, unfortunately, when he

gets there and can take hold of it, it will know longer be what he wanted. So what he

wants now, oddly enough, is to want something else, because only by doing this will he

actually get what he wants. This entire rollercoaster ride has taken us back to the fact that

we still do not know what it is that he, in the end, is trying to achieve, and neither does

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he. He does not understand what the experience is that he is having, nor where it comes

from, but he knows that he wants to have it again. The phenomenon in this aspect of

human experience is that, regardless of how much effort is put forth, the experience can

never be the same. Sartre, like the rest of us, wants to capture this experience, he wants

to “hole them back” so that he can experience the notes whenever he pleases, and thus, in

theory, creating the same experience he had originally. But while he can accomplish the

small feat of capturing them, the experience is unfortunately gone, and the notes are out

of context, leaving a “corrupt and languishing sound.”

This experience is not an unfamiliar one; it is something that most of humanity

experiences daily. It is seen as chaos coming together and suddenly making sense, only

to eventually fall back into chaos. John Carvalho, upon analyzing Frederich Neitzsche’s

Zarathustra, drives this point by stating that, “In modern jazz improvisation, musicians

explore the chaos in themselves and give birth to dancing music (Carvalho 204).” The

result of the experience and the revelation that an identical experience cannot be had

again is often left unexamined. What seems to be occurring is an involuntary acceptance

of the infinite. Essentially, as in the case of Sartre listening to jazz, he has accepted the

fact that this experience will come again, that he will not know when or how, and that it

will not happen or feel the same as before. Because of this acceptance, there is a dual

acceptance that often goes unrealized, which is the acceptance that because the

experience cannot happen the same way, there must be an infinite number of the

experiences that one can have. Chaos appears untamed, and because of this it will not

use the same means of finding its way back to enlightenment.

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Evidence will be examined empirically as an explanation of both why these

events occur in the manner of their occurrence, as well as possible clarifications to their

mysterious origins. It is entirely possible that no tangible solution will find itself entirely

fitting, yet experiential insight alone may provide enough discussion for one to form

one’s own opinion. This proposed insight will come directly from this world of jazz that

Sartre found himself surrendering to. It should well be understood that jazz musicians

often cannot explain the reasons behind what they play, and it would be quite the stretch

to assume that someone else could clarify it for them, but regardless of the fact that they

cannot explain it, they often will try to explain it. Seldom will this explanation be

streams of boastfulness where the musician claims the ability and talent to put on display

everything that he or she just performed, but instead will involve something outside of

the human experience, i.e. a Higher Power, a leaving of one’s body to watch the

performance from the outside, and an extremely relaxed and serene composure in the

midst of an unstable task such as improvisation. Musicians may often speak of finding

themselves improvising lines that they little knew they had in their repertoire, and some

would claim that they do not have it in their repertoire at all, but it is from the repertoire

of “someone” or “something” outside of them, playing through them. They are only a

vessel, but more often than not, they are delighted to be that vessel.

In order to properly assess this subject, there must be an understanding of

experiences related to this in its mystical nature. In a religious sense, it may be

understood in two different lights, the first relating to the idea of forces of good and evil,

as real but mystical entities, working within each individual. The other, a possibly more

plausible account, is a direct relation of this experience with those experiences practiced

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in a church setting or within a religious faith, i.e. prayer, communion, worship/praise. If

considered in the latter context, an immediate direct relation occurs with music written

specifically for the Christian church. Many composers of the broad range of music often

lumped into the giant category of classical music composed liturgical music to

accompany a church service, and with some frequency they would use verses of the

Christian Bible as a means of inspiration. Even in pieces that were not based on church

activities, some composers would continue to attribute their muse to God. When

questioned on the difficulty of a passage in his violin concerto, Beethoven gazed at

Schuppanzigh, his violinist, and scolded, “Do you believe I was thinking of your

wretched fiddle when the Spirit spoke to me? (Hamilton, 174).” While the particular

concerto Beethoven was speaking of was not necessarily written for the church, his words

imply an outside force that spoke to him, giving him his ideas and inspiration for the

piece.

Beethoven’s claim carries a philosophical nature, so the next step is to examine

what the philosophical world has to say on the matter, and in this undertaking, there must

be an understanding that the idea of God can go by many names, some of them taking on

various direct names of God, and others simply relating a concept that is associated with

or attributed to a Higher Power, or the “Spirit.” As is the case with the words of jazz

musicians, the words of a philosopher can take on new meaning when it is understood

that terms they use or experiences they describe may be attributed to God or a Higher

Power.

As a small sample, one particular emotion that is frequently used to describe the

feeling of God’s presence is “sublime”, and the late philosopher Thomas Weiskel picks

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apart this term in many areas of human life, but before he develops this he gives us this

warning: “All versions of the sublime require a credible god-term, a meaningful jargon of

ultimacy, if the discourse is not to collapse into ‘mere’ rhetoric (Weiskel 36).”

The psychological opinion on jazz improvisation must also be entertained, as it

will always be human nature to give a human explanation, rather than jumping to a

conclusion that requires faith in something outside humanity. Finally, the very words of

jazz musicians themselves, those that find themselves in the sublime state of being a

“vessel,” give the most lucid explanation and the most evidence to submit such a claim as

to be taken over by the Divine, or God, and spontaneously compose music that was

previously unknown to them. In order to further understand the nature of the

improvisation that will be examined, though, the history that brought this improvisation

to the level of Bebop must be used as a foundation for every opinion that followed its

inception.

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Bebop-era Jazz

“When he played, you didn’t compare him to other trumpet players. You didn’t even

think of Miles as just a trumpet player. You speak of Miles when you’re talking about

spirits, about mystical experience (Werner 83).”

-Kenny Werner

While the music that is called jazz has undergone many changes over the century

that it is accepted to have been around, the most prominent of these is the continuous

development of spontaneous improvisation. In early call-and-response forms, the music

that is known as the sounds of American slave fields, one would state a line, and another

would simply repeat it. The first to state the line was practicing a form of improvisation,

but these lines were heavily influenced. When Dixieland jazz developed shortly

thereafter, a melody, as well as a key for that melody, was determined ahead of time, and

performers would play off of each other within the confines of this melody, but specified

roles for each instrument were established and followed, giving very little freedom for

experimentation.

In the 1920s, the Big Band Swing era produced a more free approach to

improvisation by giving musicians a run-through of the melody, also known as the

“head,” in which to create their own ideas based on the chordal structure of the melody,

or the “chorus.” Because of the size of the band, however, solo sections were usually

limited to only one or two choruses, and soloists were given little room to develop their

ideas. They also rarely went outside of the limits of each specific chord that they were

soloing over, and if they did it was more than likely by mistake. Musicians were not yet

aware at that time what lied beyond the chords they knew and read.

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Possibly by design or possibly by mistake, the great trumpet player Louis

Armstrong, in a 1928 recording of an old tune called “West End Blues,” disrupted the

barrier of these chordal limits by using extensions of the known chords in his

introductory cadenza. This recording was later seen as prophetic of the next generation

of jazz, a generation that would test the limits of everything known to the jazz world and

stretch the imagination to staggering heights. This next era was known simply as Bebop.

It may be that Armstrong knew the future of jazz, or it may be that he was pushing it in

this direction, but the jazz world heard, and the jazz world followed.

When the 1940s rolled around innovators like Charlie “Bird” Parker and Dizzy

Gillespie pioneered an era that made arguably the most dramatic entrance since the very

beginning of jazz. There was no more dancing and swinging, but in its place there was

sitting and listening. There was contemplation. This style was not meant to get people

out of their chairs; it was meant to keep them in their chairs, silently pondering the

remarkable complexity of the improvised solo they were experiencing. John Coltrane

and Miles Davis entered soon after. Coltrane gave improvisation an edge that was both

astonishing and confusing at the same time. People did not “get” it, and when they did,

they failed quite often to explain it. Miles grew much and explored often in these first

years of Bebop, and eventually carried the style through several subgenres known as hard

bop, fusion, and the ever-popular modal jazz, which spurred the legendary recording

session for the album Kind of Blue.

The final components were Thelonious Monk, the passionate and sometimes

comical pianist who drove the complexity of the music up several notches, and J.J.

Johnson, who is regarded as the first trombone player to manipulate the stubborn slide

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instrument in order to meet the demands of the fast-paced bebop style. These men gave

jazz a mysterious nature, one that sometimes they could not even describe themselves.

For the first time, religious musicians and listeners were not seeing something that was

played strictly for God; they were seeing something that some of them believed was

coming directly from God. But this experience, the experience of the Divine using

humanity as a vessel, while relatively new to the jazz world, was not uncommon in other

aspects of human life.

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Religious Experience

“Music’s peculiar sociality is not dependent on conceptual thought. Composers,

performers, and audience all bring to music a socially generated stock of knowledge,

which forms the ground of their experiences. But musical experience is not reducible to

that ground, what Schutz calls a ‘musical tuning-in relationship (Poloma, 174).”

-James Spickard

While the church seems to be the standing law on what may be considered a

religious “experience,” each individual is perfectly capable of determining for oneself if

the experience is truly from the Divine. William James wrote of this over a century ago,

as he gave a controversial depiction of religion and the religious experience, defining

religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far

as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the

divine.” He points first to the feelings, acts, and experiences, but says nothing quite yet

specifically involving a church or law. To cover this ground, he goes on to say that “out

of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical

organizations may secondarily grow (James, xxi, emphasis mine).” The introduction

from which this quote is taken was contributed by Dr. Martin Marty, who immediately

comments on the fact that James very bluntly points to these “growths” as secondary.

Marty actually adds to it by stating that James feels they are highly secondary (James,

xxi). In other words, the theology, the philosophy, and the church all come second to the

feelings, acts, and experiences that build them. The experience must come first; a

theology may only grow from it.

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These feelings and experiences are of extreme importance, if we are to take the

word of James and Marty on this matter, and those that have the experience may truly

feel that they are real. Whether it is actually happening or if it is a process of the mind,

the perception is that it is coming from somewhere outside of the “self”, depending on the

beliefs of the individual, with the only obvious exception being those intentionally

producing the pattern of a religious experience for marketability or other reasons. If it is

accepted that the person having the experience does not have any deceptive intentions,

then it would be difficult to argue against the experience happening in some sense or

another. The “Attribution Theory and Religious Experience” states that, “A pertinent

element in this is that research indicates that experiences, as occurrences that happen to

people, elicit attributions to external forces. They are not perceived as being produced by

oneself (Wood 423).”

The religious experience of the specific area of jazz improvisation most likely fits

into one of two research categories. The first kind of religious experience, according to

the Handbook of Religious Experience, an experience that is also the most common in

other fields, is called “confirming.” It carries two subtypes, the first of which is a sense

of sacredness, and the second is “a specific awareness of the presence of divinity (Wood

424-425).” The first does not appear to fit well within this context. The second, while it

conforms to a certain extent, does not quite satisfy what is being described. A musician

can be aware of the presence of a divinity, and indeed this divinity may be present, but

that does not necessarily imply that the divinity is doing anything, which goes against the

nature of the experience as it is normally described.

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The other possible kind of experience is called “revelational.” In this experience

“the person is selected usually via a vision to carry a divine message to others… (Wood

425).” While this definition follows the experience closer, there is no evidence to suggest

that there is a vision inherently involved here, or that the music played is carrying a

divine message. If there is a message being sent through the music, the musicians must

not be aware of it, neither the listeners, unless the message is a simple gift of music.

Religion sociologist Rodney Stark carries a broad experiential view that states

“the term religious experience covers an exceedingly disparate array of events: from the

vaguest glimmerings of something sacred to rapturous mystical unions with the divine, or

even to revelations (Wood 424).” This idea covers much ground, and seems to carry

more experiences with it than are covered with the previous terms. Others, including

noted religious philosopher Rudolf Otto, restricted the idea of a “mystical experience” to

“an experience of unification of one’s self and the divine (Wood 423).” While this at

first would sound very limiting, it actually leaves much open for further elaboration. It

mostly just simplifies the earlier statement from Stark.

These definitions, though their intentions seem to be an attempt to further

simplify a difficult subject, have their possibility of success in the area that they are

addressing, but to attempt a universal definition of a religious experience is a daunting

task that unfortunately but inevitably finds success only in some places and failure

elsewhere. The complexities of the human mind bear technologies that humanity has yet

to understand, so an all-encompassing, solid concept of something as broad as a religious

experience can well be an elusive and frustrating undertaking.

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Psychology of Jazz Improvisation

“Within this outer web we live. It soaks up, transmutes and is charged with human

experience, exuded from the world within like steam or an aroma from cooking food.

The story-teller is he who reaches up, grasps that part of the web which happens to be

above his head at the moment and draws it down…to touch the earth. When he has told

his story—its story—he releases it and it springs back and continues in rotation. The web

moves continually above us, so that in time every point on its interior surface passes

directly above every point on the surface of the world. This is why the same stories are

found all over the world, among different people who can have had little or no

communication with each other (Pressing 148).” -Richard Adams

To build a proper definition for the experience that these Bebop-era jazz

musicians have amidst their improvisations, we must first look to the world of

psychology. Jeff Pressing from La Trobe University has done several studies into the

cognitive processes in improvisation as a whole, with several areas focusing specifically

on jazz improvisation. Pressing’s view is that we improvise to the extent that we are

unpredictable. All that is left is simply repeating ourselves or following orders (Pressing

345). His views throughout his research carry what can only be described as an open

end, which means that, though he discusses primarily the concrete cognitive processes

involved with improvisation, he leaves an area open that he knows cannot be proven

either way in this form of research. The possibility that he leaves open is that of an

impact from the unexplainable, though only once does he actually refer to God as an

option for this unexplainable force:

“The generation of seeds is an associative process. That is, each new seed generated will

almost always be the result of combining previously learned gestures, movement patterns

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or concepts in a novel relationship or context. The conservatism of this process derives

largely from the limited resources of cognitive processing available for real-time

composition. But all or nearly all improvisation traditions also proclaim the notion that

completely new and unprecedented seed ideas sometimes spontaneously occur. The

origin of such material is often ascribed to God, mysterious higher forces, or undefined

transpersonal powers (Pressing 351).”

What is admittedly happening in the experience of improvisation is a gathering of

“seeds” into an organized, comprehensive performance or composition. But he does not

rule out the concept that there may be seeds generated spontaneously, and humbly admits

the limited cognitive resources that would be available to an improviser for real-time

composition, or improvisation. In other words, there is the possibility that an improviser,

or more appropriately, an improviser’s brain, though most likely using influenced and

trained material, cannot process so much of this previously learned material at a rapid

enough pace to correspond with the time in the music, therefore some of it must be

“new”.

It must also be kept in mind that the processing of this material not only takes into

account the notes and passages played, but also the mechanical act associated with

playing a musical instrument, and this does not exclude the voice as an instrument. The

improvising musician is required to take into account both the passage and the body

motions or manipulations of the voice simultaneously in order to produce the desired

effect. To break down these cognitive processes, the origins of all actions, according to

Pressing, are generated from “long-term memory, short-term memory, and the ever

mysterious ‘new ideas’ (Pressing 353).” Though long-term and short-term memory is

unmistakably present, the mind-boggling rate at which information is put forth in an

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improvisation is not likely to be the result of these processes alone, which is why there

must be room left open for spontaneous actions. These actions are certainly ever

mysterious, but little denied and unfortunately even less understood.

In all of his research, there are two concepts that present themselves often enough

to be considered themes, and the first of those themes is the continuous presence of terms

and ideas that a religious person may and often will attribute to God, and this carries

through to the second theme, which is called automatization, defined as the “uncanny

feeling of being a spectator to one’s own actions, since increasing amounts of cognitive

processing…are no longer consciously monitored (Pressing 359, term and definition from

A.T. Welford).”

The first theme is quite obvious when looked at from this perspective that there

are many ideas that can possibly be attributed or directly considered to be God. Pressing

discusses a study that involved three historical approaches to philosophies of intuition.

The first of these is Classical Intuition, which is a “special kind of contact with a prime

reality, a glimpse of ultimate truth unclouded by the machinations of reason or the

compulsions of instinct (Pressing 147, emphasis mine).” And again, to leave the

discussion open, he adds: “Knowledge gained through this kind of intuition is unique,

immediate, personal, and unverifiable (Pressing 147, emphasis mine).” Not only do the

ideas of a prime reality and ultimate truth hint towards what must be unknown or

incomprehensible to the human mind, it is admitted by clearly stating that it is, in fact,

unverifiable. Pressing then makes the connection with improvisation by acknowledging

that the “notion of tapping a prime reality is very similar to the improviser’s aesthetic of

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tapping the flow of music (Pressing 148).” The concept of the prime reality is later

described in more detail, making the argument ever more convincing:

“The prime reality is referred to as ‘the perpetual happening’ or ‘duration.’ The mind of

man…is shielded from the perpetual happening by the intellect…In the perpetual

happening itself, all events, objects, and processes are unified (Pressing 148, emphasis

mine).”

In a religious setting, or more specifically a Christian religious setting, to say that

the mind of man is shielded from something by the intellect sounds an awful lot like the

moral of the“Fall of Man” in the creation story from Genesis, and by that definition, the

something would be God. As the story goes, when humanity ate of the forbidden fruit

from the tree, they were given knowledge, or the intellect, of both good and evil. In

Christian tradition, the result, because the knowledge left them in a state where they were

no longer rightly related with God, is that they were thus shielded from Him. The

perpetual happening once again seems to be referring to the idea of order out of chaos,

with the result being unification.

The notion of automatization, from his second theme, is in a sense related to an

out-of-body experience. The difference is that in an out-of-body experience, the entity

that exists outside the body is performing the actions, while the body remains stagnant or

may be performing nothing out of the ordinary. In the case of this experience through

improvisation, though, the entity is observing the body performing extraordinary actions

that the body was formerly incapable of performing. Pressing describes it as an attention

strategy which “leave(s) all detail under control of unconscious processing (Pressing

359).” Though not quite known where this strategy originates, Pressing suggests as an

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explanation that this is a process located at lower levels of the central nervous system.

He then describes it in further detail:

“At its limit this approaches a meditation-like state, where the player’s consciousness

mainly ‘stays out of the way’ of the developing music. This attention strategy is

normally considered to produce better music… (Pressing 359).”

In its entirety, Pressing’s analysis provides a deeper understanding of the

mechanical processes associated with the simultaneous act of realizing and interpreting

the desired effect along with engaging the body to produce said effect. What is left as an

open forum is how the human mind in the nature that it is understood is capable of

generating this flurry of multiple actions at such a rapid rate. The choices here appear to

narrow it down to something in the lower levels of the central nervous system, or a

religious experience. It is a transpersonal approach, as he states that “Musical

improvisation has…been considered as a vehicle for consciousness expansion and the

tapping of deep intuitions (Pressing 142).” Exactly where this expansion of

consciousness and deep intuition is located and pulled from is a question that takes what

has previously been discussed from psychology and expands the philosophical mind to

examine this mysterious spontaneity that is regarded as beyond human capacity.

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Philosophy and Imagination in Religion and Improvisation

“For the imagination is very mighty when it creates, as it were, another nature out of the

material that actual nature gives it….In this process we feel our freedom from the law of

association; for although it is under that law that nature lends us material, yet we can

process that material into something quite different, namely, into something that

surpasses nature.” (Stevenson, 253)

-Immanuel Kant

Kant and other philosophers in their time were able to contribute something to the

mystery of spontaneity and imagination that surpasses the limits of what can be accepted

by concrete disciplines such as psychology. Thomas Weiskel illustrates this difference

when discussing a disorder he calls the “reader’s sublime.” He quotes a clinical

description from Roman Jakobson, who says that patients of this type “grasped the words

in their literal meaning but could not be brought to understand the metaphorical character

of the same words.” (Weiskel 30).

Weiskel develops this further by relating it to a reader who is “confronted by

theological mystery, the dark conceits of allegory, or any text whose ultimate meaning

lies in just the fact that it cannot be grasped (Weiskel 30).” The distinction provided is

roughly a similar one to those that can see and understand how improvisation can

coalesce as a religious experience and those that cannot see past the notes played and the

form they follow, in other words, the black-and-white. It is the difference between seeing

what is on the surface and seeing what is a level or more below the surface. Many

philosophers have long been a friend of this form of deeper experience, as many writings

suggest a deeper and possibly ultimate meaning in the fact that a concept simply cannot

be grasped, or as Kant says “surpasses nature.” Their writings do not mean to arrogantly

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grasp it, but rather to force the readers to accept what cannot be accepted, and possibly to

see the irony. No one is forced to accept the experience as truth, but because it cannot be

proven to be an untruth, the reader is forced to accept that they cannot know. Only those

that have had the experience can provide a glimpse into its nature, but even still they have

not fully grasped it.

The insights provided here may only serve to confuse the issue of this gray area

involving the mysterious “new ideas” and spontaneous, unlearned improvisation, but it is

possible to detail circumstances where the gray area can have some kind of explanation,

even if the result is still gray.

An intimidating obstacle in this explanation is solving the riddle of the

imagination. It is clear that, while the imagination is, in essence, perceiving that which is

not real in the direct sense that it is perceived, it is also acknowledged that what is

perceived in the imagination is possible to exist spatio-temporally. Kant shows this when

he divides the power of intuitive ideas into the senses and imagination, sense being the

power of intuition when the object is present, and imagination as the power of intuition

when the object is not, though it is still possible to exist (Stevenson 239, from Kant’s

Anthropology). Weiskel further elaborates with an example:

“Looking at the boundless ocean or infinity of stars, we feel that it’s all simultaneously

there, coexisting with us; we think (denken), a realm of existence that we’re unable to

cognize (erkennen). Comprehension is thus the imagination’s application of the timeless

idea of reason, but its putative collapse does not render apparent the role reason has been

playing. Instead the imagination feels a defeat, and reason appears, freshly and finally, as

its savior (Weiskel 40).”

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While he states comprehension to be the imagination simply applying reason, there still

seems to be confusion as to why this process still is not working to explain it away,

leading to its “putative collapse.” Reason then appears and explains everything in a

manner that the mind can grab hold of; some minds will find reason rather quickly and

easily to avoid the frightening realization of the relative smallness of humanity, while

others will linger in the moment for as long as it is given and search through it until it is

surely out of reach.

Kant, who at this point seems to be invoked in a rather lengthy, somewhat

agreeable conversation started by Weiskel, plays off this fear:

“The man that is actually in a state of fear, finding himself good reason to be so…is far

from being in a frame of mind for admiring divine greatness, for which a temper of calm

reflection and a quite free judgment are required. Only when he becomes conscious of

having a disposition that is upright and acceptable to God, do those operations of might

serve to stir within him the idea of the sublimity of this Being, so far as he recognizes the

existence in himself of a sublimity of disposition consonant with His will, and is thus

raised above the dread of such operations of nature, in which he no longer sees God

pouring forth the vials of wrath (Weiskel 94, from Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime, pp.

113-14)).”

As a relation to improvisation, it can reasonably be assumed through this writing that

Kant would see an improviser unable to experience the Divine through the improvisation

as being fearful of how big the world is around him, or in this case, how big the music is

around him.

The difference here between imagination and reason was one of the topics in the

Sixth Meditation from Rene Descartes, where he distinguishes imagination from pure

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understanding. Descartes says that when imagining a triangle, “I can see the three lines

with my mind’s eye as if they were present before me.” But in the case of a chiliagon (a

thousand-sided figure), he can understand the definition and its use in mathematical

functions, but cannot imagine or perceive all of the sides in the same manner. The

parallel exists in the idea of imagining something so big that the mind cannot possibly

comprehend, but upon backing down one shows their fear of the size of the idea. If

reflected upon calmly and freely, while success is surely improbable in this particular

case, one is showing an unsurpassed confidence that will lead them not to the pinnacle of

success, but much closer than a person that gives up based on the reasonable idea that

failure is almost certainly inevitable.

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Philosophical Understanding in Bebop Improvisation

“You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the world is constantly

saying within you.” (Werner 77).

-Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch

The great musicians of the Bebop era were known, if for nothing else, to have a

calm reflection, and definitely free judgment. Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk was

completely uninhibited by his mind, sometimes to the discomfort of his audience, to the

point where “it was said of Monk that he could make a concert grand sound like an out-

of-tune upright (Werner 89).” What was significant was that Monk played with

absolutely no fear. While he may have acknowledged the process around him as bigger

than him, he embraced it in a way that those around him felt very deeply. There was no

reason in his mind to try to play all of the “right notes”, because that was not what he was

feeling inside; that was not what wanted to pour out of him.

The vast number of musicians that Miles Davis played with in his earlier years

often recalled the staggering amount of freedom that they were given in his band. Pianist

Herbie Hancock spoke of the long solo sections they were allowed, where Miles would

walk off stage to allow the improvisers to do play as they saw fit, which essentially meant

to just play the first thing that came to mind, even if it did not come to mind. Hancock

described saxophonist Wayne Shorter taking a long solo in which he would be telling a

story. When Hancock came in to solo after, he would also tell a story, but it had to be a

different story, providing an unmatched versatility to the music. When they were

finished, Miles would come back on stage and summarize the experience that had just

taken place through his own improvisation. It was not a summary in a sense where he

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played the same things as previously played, but in Hancock’s words, he would “put a lid

over the whole thing.” (The Miles Davis Story, 2001).

In a New York Times article, pianist Keith Jarrett, who played with Miles in his

later years, gave a dramatic description of his experience playing in his band:

“Whatever clothes Miles wore, it was always Miles in those clothes. Whatever noise was

around him, Miles still played from that need, his sound coming from that silence, the

vast liquid, edgeless silence that existed before the first musician played the first note.

We need this silence, because that’s where the music is (Werner 83, quote from Keith

Jarrett).”

This is the point in the music where reason has not yet spelled its collapse. When the

musician suddenly reasons his music to be merely human and cannot see it has being

consonant with the will of God, the music will reflect the musician’s merely human

capabilities. There are an inordinate amount of terms to describe this unity with the

Divine, one of them coming from Jarrett’s words when he speaks of the edgeless silence.

He is not speaking of silence in literal terms, but in the figurative sense of silencing the

mind, the human mind. This silence is also related to the sublime experience, where the

improviser is able to surrender his own human thoughts in order to allow for a higher

inspiration, one that is not concerned with making mistakes; mistakes are human, and in

the mind of this improvising musician, the music is not.

Weiskel wrote at length of the sublime experience in the final work of his life, a

book called The Romantic Sublime, before his unfortunate and untimely death. He never

implied a specific divine force at work in this concept, but always referred to something

that is beyond what we know that must be at work in the sublime moment, or else it is

deception. This is a key distinction, as only the mind of the performer can truly know if

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the experience is sincere. It must be understood here that the concern is not whether the

experience is real, only that it is not concocted for deceitful reasons, such as self-

promotion or identification as a religious figure. Weiskel warns of being wary of the

motive for the experience before attributing meaning:

“The notion of ideology is rather portentous, not to be loosely invoked. However broadly

construed, ideology is not relevant unless we find that the movement of the mind in the

sublime moment is not necessary or autonomous, but instead masks the project of an

ulterior motive. We could then be led to substitute the usual efficient causality of the

sublime moment (in the theories, for example, of Burke or Kant) an emanational or

teleological causality. Until the ulteriority of the sublime moment has been

demonstrated, as opposed to merely asserted, it makes no real sense to interpret its

‘meanings’ (Weiskel 37).”

If the experience is only asserted, it can be flushed away by a dozen psychological or

sociological ideas, but if somehow demonstrated, it leaves an open question mark in the

mind of the audience.

The reason for this question mark comes from two places, the first of which is the

ulterior motive, which, in effect, can lead the audience to believe the improviser’s

assertion of a spiritual experience, or to doubt it based on other various actions of the

improviser. If the assertion is deemed insincere, or the demonstration lacking, then the

perception, no matter the reality of the experience, will lead to question or outright

omission.

The second reason for this perceived question mark is, quite clearly, if the

audience does not believe in any form of higher power, and through reason does not see it

as feasible for such an experience to occur. There is a strange phenomenon that

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transpires here, because there are noted instances when the performers themselves do not

believe in the presence of a higher power, but as they find themselves in the music, there

is an eerie sense within them that something bigger is at work. This does not, in turn,

necessarily urge them to suddenly believe in some higher power, which is why the

feeling is a difficult one to describe.

Jazz musician Paul Wertico, commenting self-reflectively on this matter, states

that he is “not necessarily a religious person, by and large, but there are many times

where I’ll play music and just kind of look up and say, ‘Thank you.’ And it’s a strange

feeling. It’s like I’m in touch with something so big and the joy is so incredible. And I

don’t even know why. It’s not like I’m looking up and I know there’s a heaven and a

hell, but it’s like I’m thanking the big picture for just the opportunity as a human being to

feel this way—which is incredible (Berliner 393).”

It is no matter if Wertico specifically designates the God of Christianity or any

other higher power as the “big picture,” because if the earlier definition of religion

provided by William James is applied, Wertico is essentially describing a religious

experience. It is based on the experiences, feelings, and acts, all of which are displayed

in Wertico’s statement. All that would appear to be lacking is an understanding of how

this places him to stand in relation to the divine, which could be contested if his

description of the “big picture” is acceptable as a divine or higher power. An institution

and theology are not necessary, as these are seen as a result of the experience, not the

foundation that allows for it. Wertico’s experience, if it can be considered in some form

to be religious, may offer sincerity in its purest form. Being “not necessarily a religious

person,” if it is true, he would be left with no reason to deceive for any religious purpose,

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which in effect closes the book on one of the main reasons for a deceptive ulterior

motive.

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John Coltrane (1926-1967)

“John Coltrane stretched the form of life… He is a shining example of working on

oneself, of changing and growing. He searched through heroin and psychedelics and

finally found God. Trane’s path was a classic struggle to discover Self… (Werner 184).”

If there is ever a conversation concerning spirituality and music, the most likely

musician to be discussed would be the legendary saxophonist John Coltrane. Coltrane

first burst onto the jazz scene when he started playing with Miles Davis. He was a

member of the group alongside Miles and fellow saxophonist Julian “Cannonball”

Adderley, and he continued with this group for an extended period of time because of the

freedom that Miles allowed him and their close relationship. Eventually he found it time

to create his own band, to the devastation of Miles and the rest of his band, to pursue

some new ideas. This path led him through a time of turmoil that involved several drugs,

but eventually he came back and started delving into Eastern spirituality, which had a

major influence on his hypnotic approach and solos in his later years on tunes such as

“My Favorite Things.” Originally written for The Sound of Music, Coltrane gained the

rights to the piece and turned it into an instant jazz standard, as it became his most

requested tune (The Coltrane Legacy, 1985).

Coltrane’s pattern through life seemed to follow in a consistent manner. He found

ways in which to invoke something into his music that he consciously would not have

applied. In the early years his playing this did not consist of spirituality, but rather a drug

of choice.

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This was essentially the beginning of a search for Coltrane, one that unfortunately

some musicians find necessary when the notes become stale. Kenny Werner describes

the trying times that Coltrane experienced with more detail:

“Early in his life, John Coltrane found heroin. A bit later, he used LSD. The psychedelic

drugs of the sixties and seventies gave the user a different kind of experience. You got

the buzz, but a window would also open that allowed you to go beyond physical reality

and explore other realms of consciousness. In this state, the musician could see and hear

on other levels. With heightened senses, it was possible to milk the ecstasy of each note.

But after the effects of the drug wore off, the window always closed, making the natural

state feel dry and intolerable. Eventually, for John Coltrane, the search led to no drugs.

Toward the end of his life, his path had evolved into meditation, diet, and spirituality

(Werner 84).”

What he seemed to realize towards his later playing years was that there must be

something out there that keeps the window open; something that does not always fall

back into that stale state. When a jazz musician is just beginning, the music itself and the

attitude crack the window open allowing them to see and hear things more clearly. But at

some point, something needs to be added, because the musician will eventually hit a

plateau. There is no more moving up and growing in this manner, only stagnancy with

no direction. In this state, some musicians will turn to drugs, for exactly the experience

that Werner describes, but if they make it out alive, they often will leave it when they

realize that it is only temporary, and especially if they find something to be more

permanent.

John Coltrane found this permanent state. What is unique about Coltrane is that

his experience when he became more spiritual was rarely questioned. This may be

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because he is often described as a very quiet person, but along those same lines he is also

pointed out to be an extremely calm, relaxed, and confident person, not carrying an

attitude that would mistake his spirituality for a gimmick. Drummer Elvin Jones, who

played with Coltrane both in his days with Miles Davis and later with Coltrane’s own

quartet, talks about how he would walk on stage without saying a word, pull out his horn,

and just start playing. Sometimes it would be a new piece, something neither Coltrane

nor the band had ever played before, and the band would simply have to follow (The

Coltrane Legacy, 1985).

Coltrane’s wife, Alice Coltrane, herself a pianist and harpist, witnessed his

progression through the spiritual life, and was able to link his spirituality with his music,

because as Coltrane was developing himself spiritually, “we were seeing the results of it

musically.” She goes on to say that since his spiritual quest began, all the way through

his album A Love Supreme, “We were seeing a progression toward higher spiritual

realization, higher spiritual development.” (The World According to John Coltrane,

2002).

It seems rather evident that Coltrane’s spiritual experience was something that he

not only portrayed, but it also carried through to the audience, and even to his band.

Roscoe Mitchell, another saxophonist at the time that played with Coltrane, asserts that

he “definitely think[s] that Coltrane’s music was spiritual. It represented something that

was more lasting, if you think of it in musical terms, than I was used to hearing. His

music was more meditative, it pulled you in…and once it pulled you in, you sort of

soared with him (The World According to John Coltrane, 2002).” Elvin Jones reiterates

the effect that Coltrane’s spirituality had on him, stating that it was something “that he

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put into everything he did,” and adding to it the fact that “it was something that

everybody could recognize.” He continues:

“He was just a spiritual man. In my reflection, in my association with him, he was like

an angel on earth. It struck me that deeply. This is not an ordinary person. And I’m

enough of a believer to think very seriously about that…I’ve been touched in some way

by something greater than life (The Coltrane Legacy, 1985).”

John Coltrane, in the jazz world to this day, is a legend. Some would classify him

a genius in his field because he was the musician that played like no one had before him,

and when he was done, everyone wanted to play like him. Unfortunately, no one ever

could, and that continues to be part of his legacy. His sound was alarmingly original and

not easily imitated. If it was imitated, the feeling was not nearly the same, as Coltrane’s

music seemingly came from a deeper place, and an imitation would only be coming from

Coltrane. His genius was derived from the distance between him and the next closest

musician, along with the fact that no one was trying the things that he was trying. He

expanded chord progressions to places no one had ever seen, and in one of his more

popular pieces, called “Giant Steps,” a tune that has long been a test piece for jazz

musicians because of its unorthodox chord leaps, he even created a new progression.

Because of his spirituality, his music came from a place that, while others could

recognize it, few or none could understand. His imagination was unmatched, which is a

creative feature that Kant associates with genius:

“Genius is the talent for producing something genuinely original, something for which no

determinate rule can be given, so that not even the artist or author can say how he or she

came by his or her ideas. For the imagination (in its role as a productive cognitive

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power) is very mighty when it creates, as it were, another nature out of the material that

actual nature gives it.” (Stevenson 253, from Kant).

Coltrane’s calm, reflective manner in his music showed his deep appreciation and respect

for not only the music, but for the spirituality of it and the experience that some higher

power was giving him.

Improvisation, in this manner, is very much a form of meditation, because it

involves tuning everything out to focus solely on the music and the spiritual guidance that

may be leading the music. Werner says that, “A quiet mind allows the artist to tap into a

wellspring of Divine Music within. Having experienced that state, all other goals seem

insignificant (Werner 80).” In effect, he is stating that this music from the Divine is

already within us, but players like John Coltrane were able to focus clearly on their inner

self in order to find it and project it. At this point, there is no need for any other goals, as

this is the highest point one can musically reach.

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The Genius, God

“A meditation rose in me that night

Upon the lonely Mountain when the scene

Had passed away, and it appeared to me

The perfect image of a mighty Mind,

Of one that feeds upon infinity,

That is exalted by an underpresence,

The sense of God, or whatso’er is dim…” (Stevenson 255).

-Wordsworth, from The Prelude

Biblically, the idea of God using a human musically as a vehicle or vessel is

spoken of in several instances. In many cases, when jazz musicians feel a religious

experience in their improvisation, the words they use to describe this experience are an

echo of verses in the Christian Bible or of other interpretations in religious circles.

Singer Carmen Lundy, when reflecting on her jazz experience, relates it to her

church experience and draws an analogy between them, “What I hear in jazz is also

spiritual. It involves that same kind of interaction, that ability of people to have this

musical experience at the same time that they are actually participating in it….You hear

someone clapping this way, and someone else clapping another way….You are all

beginning to clap more, and the spirit is getting more involved. There is some feeling

coming through the music (Berliner 391).” The parallel that she is suggesting is the idea

of church worship, but done in an improvisational way. Worship has become more and

more an integral part of a church service, to the point where worship is becoming its own

church service, much the same way as prayer. This is quite important, as prayer and

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worship are seen in the Christian church as deeply-felt interactions with God, and

possibly even more so when done on a more personal level.

The distinction that is made here is that Lundy is not describing a Latin Mass or

the singing of a traditional church hymn. She is not even necessarily describing a form of

accepted modern Christian worship music, i.e. Christian rock, Christian hip-hop. Rather,

what she is talking about is a collective improvisation, where each member is feeding off

one another as well as feeding off of God, or the Spirit. This is collective improvisation

not so much in the form of Dixieland jazz where there are defined roles, but in a form

closer to free or avant-garde jazz, where there are few or no limits and nothing is wrong

as long as it comes from God. Everyone essentially wants the same thing, but each is

given different means to get there.

The idea is that if there is a multitude coming together for one purpose, to invoke

the Spirit or God, then there is greater power in the music and more freedom in the

improvisation. In the Christian Bible, the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12:4-5, “For as in

one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so

we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one

another (HarperCollins Study Bible, 1993).” Of course, this does not mean that only as a

group can improvisation truly invoke the Spirit, but the idea of an individual entering a

group allows individual more freedom, almost as if God is welcoming the new guy.

Lundy’s personal experience is a bit different, even though she draws it from this

earlier one, as she later describes how this is related specifically to her jazz singing

experience:

“Sometimes, I really feel that I am just the vehicle, the body, and that something is really

singing through me, like I am not controlling everything that I am singing. The last time

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I sang, I thought to myself, ‘Gosh, I feel like something is just singing through me.’

That’s what I meant by the spiritual thing (Berliner 391-392).”

This personal experience can come in a variety of ways, but Lundy captures one

of the more prominent ways, developing the idea of God using the improviser as a vessel,

and thus allowing both the performer and those listening to feel, whether they realize it is

happening or not, a closeness to God. Even from a somewhat depressing book in the

Bible, we hear the words from Job 35:10, “But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker,

who gives songs in the night... (Holy Bible, NIV, 1984, emphasis mine).” If God is

giving the songs, then surely He is allowing for the reception of them; it is the musician’s

responsibility to accept and receive the song. As Christians are taught to live like Jesus,

the Christian Messiah, this brings new meaning to John 14:10 when Jesus says, “The

words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does

his works (HarperCollins Study Bible, 1993).” Because Jesus is considered in

Christianity to be God in one form or another, he is essentially saying that the closer one

is to God, the more God is able to speak through him. In a jazz improvisation, if an

improviser is surrendering to this level, then God’s message in the music need only pass

through the musician and out their mouth, or in the case of an instrumentalist, it has to go

through one more extension.

An interesting hermeneutical approach appears when biblical verses are seen in

this form. These are essentially life lessons that Christians are taught from a very early

stage after becoming a Christian, but somehow the parallel was never made to other

aspects of life. Kenny Werner takes the spiritual teaching, an idea carried by many

religions, of it is better to give than to receive, and he creates something refreshingly

original out of it by interpreting it to mean “by giving as much as you can to something,

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you become a channel to receive (Werner 189).” The teaching is not simply stated as one

being better than the other in the obvious sense that sharing is better than selfishness, but

he adds a level that applies to many facets of life when he relates it to musical

improvisation. When one gives as much as they can strictly to God and to the music,

God’s channel to that person is opened up, and they are prepared to receive the ideas that

are a perfection and genius that they cannot fathom.

Werner’s ideas on God’s role in improvisation seem to be quite clear. It is hard to

identify whether or not he believes that one can truly imitate or be God in a sense, but he

seems to have a philosophical idea that it is possible, even if the likelihood is close to, or

is, nothing. This is not something that one can see, and most likely would not even know

if it happened, as the word “improvisation” itself comes from the Latin improvisus,

meaning “unforeseen.” (Spencer 124). In order for this theoretical idea to happen, the

performer would have to be in a position of complete and utter surrender. Cynthia

Winton-Henry, an improvisational dancer and minister, provides a closer look at this

when she says, “Creation is the playground. Improvisation is the play. Creativity is what

happens when they come together….In this kin-dom, we play ‘follow the leader’ with the

Spirit and ‘tag’ with the Holy.” (Spencer 125). Werner elaborates further on this idea of

surrender leading to perfection:

“There is a place inside each of us where perfection exists. The genius, God, lives there.

All the creative possibilities of the universe are to be found there. It is the innate ability

of each of us to be God, to behave with extreme dignity, to conduct our business in a

righteous manner, and to channel an endless stream of life-enhancing ideas and

celebratory sounds for the upliftment of mankind. This joyful noise is the sound of the

Supreme Being manifesting through us (Werner 77).”

35

Surrender, at least at a certain level, opens up the imagination, and Werner seems

to be saying that somewhere in the imagination one can find this perfection. Leslie

Stevenson, in The Twelve Conceptions of Imagination, goes through various forms that

imagination may take on; several of them could apply here, but one in particular, number

twelve, seems to show the imagination as a direct result of something higher. It is, “The

ability to create works of art that express something deep about the meaning of life

(Stevenson 258).” The meaning of life is the age-old question that many would simply

shrug their shoulders, possibly because of the fear of something that big. To Werner, as

well as to many Christians, the meaning of life is to find God, in some way or another.

Werner’s path follows a road that John Coltrane seemingly followed, which is to find

God somewhere deep within oneself, and once found, to release it musically.

For the jazz improviser, the spiritual journey to find God, or something higher

than the music, can be an increasingly frustrating path. The words of Werner imply that

the experience is something that can be held onto and lived repeatedly and continuously,

but the reality of it, as Sartre realized in his earlier quote about listening to jazz, is that the

musician in this experience eventually accepts reason and allows their own humanness to

enter. The distinction that Werner realizes is that, while drugs can open a temporary

window, as time goes on that window opens a little less, until it is completely shut, and

either a new path or a new drug is needed. If the latter is chosen, the process repeats

itself, but if the former is chosen, and the path opened up eventually by musicians like

John Coltrane and Miles Davis is followed, the process grows and is allowed to happen

more frequently.

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What Sartre expresses in his understanding on jazz is that the window may only

be open for a brief time, and when the human mind, possibly by default, falls back into

the fallible state where reason is god and the human is the center of the universe, the

window closes. Sartre insists that the musician must allow it to close. It must be

accepted and understood that it will open again, but if this is not accepted and the

musician attempts to keep it there on his or her own, it will be corrupted with the faults of

humanity.

At this point, the musician is caught in a struggle of the human self versus God,

where God may be sensing that the musician is telling Him, along with Frank Sinatra,

“I did it my way.” Any effort to capture that moment again, in the same way, fails

because of the very fact that it is complete surrender to God that leads to the experience

in the first place. By attempting to force it to come back, the musician is either trying to

do it alone, or an even worse endeavor, trying to command God.

It is essentially a process of the mind and spirit, where the human spirit is trying

to connect with this Holy Spirit, and when that connection is broken by the human spirit,

the process can only be renewed, but never captured. As Sartre dramatically proclaims,

“I must accept their death; I must even want that death.” In jazz improvisation,

especially in the form of stimulating Bebop style, only when the death of a religious

experience is acknowledged can the process of a new one begin.

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Works Cited

Berliner, Paul F. Thinking in Jazz: the infinite art of improvisation. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London. 1994.

Carvalho, John. “Improvisations, on Nietzsche, on Jazz.” Nietzsche, Philosophy and theArts. Edited by Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell and Daniel W. Conway.

Cambridge University Press. United Kingdom. 1998.

Hamilton, Andy. “The Art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Perfection.” British Journal of Aesthetics. Vol. 40, No. 1. January, 2000.

Handbook of Religious Experience. Edited by Ralph W. Wood, Jr. Religious Education Press. Birmingham, Alabama. 1995.

HarperCollins Study Bible. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. New York, New York. 1993.

Holy Bible. New International Version. Zondervan Bible Publishers. Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1984

James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience. Penguin Books. Middlesex, England. 1982.

John Coltrane: The Coltrane Legacy. Jazz Images, Inc. USA. 1985.

Pressing, Jeff. “Cognitive Processes in Improvisation.” Cognitive Processes in the Perception of Art. Edited by W. Ray Crozier and Antony J. Chapman. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. North Holland. 1984.

Pressing, Jeff. Generative Processes in Music: the psychology of performance, improvisation, and composition. Edited by John A. Sloboda. Oxford University Press, Inc. New York. 2000.

Spencer, William David and Spencer, Aida Besancon. God Through the Looking Glass:

glimpses from the arts. BridgePoint Books. Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1998. The Miles Davis Story. Channel Four Television Limited. Sony Music Entertainment,

Inc. New York, New York. 2001.

The World According to John Coltrane. Masters of American Music Series. East Stinson, Inc. USA. 2002.

Stevenson, Leslie. “Twelve Conceptions of Imagination.” British Journal of Aesthetics. Vol. 43, No. 3. July, 2003.

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Weiskel, Thomas. Romantic Sublime: studies in the structure and psychology of transcendence. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London.

1976.

Werner, Kenny. Effortless Mastery: liberating the master musician within. Jamey Aebersold Jazz, Inc. Indiana. 1996.

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