Ataraxia & the Jazzer
March 15 2009

Ataraxia: freedom from disturbance and pain that characterizes a balanced mind and constitutes its first step toward the achievement of pleasure.

It's a term taken from ancient Greek philosophy. What could be more removed from jazz than ancient Greek philosophy? Ancient anywhere philosophy, for that matter?

Yet the jazzer- and the Pianobabbler is one -has a deep relation to ataraxia. Deep, and paradoxical.

The ultimate goal of every jazz player, arguably of every artist, must be to give pleasure to the listener, and in so doing, to themselves. It has to move the listener away from disturbance and pain. It creates a simulacrum of ataraxia.

This doesn't mean the music has to be "pleasant". It can be disturbing. Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit comes to mind. It can be painful. Some of guitarist Sonny Greenwich's playing, for example, seethes with emotional hurt.

The pain and disturbance, if any, in the music connect the listener with life. That connection must help distribute the listener's own pain and disturbance, offering relief. Of course, if the music is happy- just listen to Oscar Peterson, Jim Galloway, or Elizabeth Shepherd in this department -it delivers the listener to a pain and disturbance-free place. Ataraxia.

True ataraxia should come from within. It's the reward for doing the work. The work of philosophy, psychology, the spirit, whatever. The work. Like hard abs, it's an achievement.

We jazzers can't hand freedom from pain and disturbance to you listeners. But we can give you a thumbnail snapshot of it. You can look before you buy.

Now, here's the paradox: if there was ever a line of work, a business, a profession that was pain and disturbance-filled, it's jazz. That's not a whine. Just a fact.

The jazz business is a weird combination of the creative, the ruthless, the collaborative, the competitive, the beautiful, and the ugly. We create music, but we wrestle for gigs. We please audiences, but we hardball negotiate for fees. We soak in the adulation, but we beg for calls to be returned.

We are artists, marketers, p.r. reps, roadies, sound engineers, manual labourers, mind workers, managers, agents, producers, designers, bottle washers, and CEO's, all in one.

And what really sets us apart, is the narrow size of our market. Pop artists share many of our burdens, but they have a huge market. Classical musicians have a small market, but much state and private support. We jazzers are largely on our own, scrapping over relatively small stakes.

And yet, and yet... neither the Pianobabbler nor most of his colleagues would trade their jobs for anything in the world. We accept that while we might purvey the simulacra of ataraxia, we don't necessarily live in it. Such is our commitment to making music, and our love of the commitment, that we happily soldier on through the slings and the toil.

If anything, by adjusting to the ribble rabble of the jazz life, and focussing on our love of the music, we become inured to its pains and disturbances. We detach from them. As a result, we end up on the road to ataraxia. The real kind.

There is a happy ending to the tale of ataraxia & the jazzer.

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