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Second Prize: Lina A. ColucciLexington High SchoolLexington, Massachusetts Just Music Some people discover jazz in a glamorous way – a particular chord played at the Blue Note, a jam session on the backstreets of New York, a Duke recording that put them to tears. For me that came later. I discovered jazz at a cafeteria in suburbia. The cafeteria was a plain room with folding tables. I was there in the corner; a shy freshman pretending her parents weren't sitting two seats down. From the stage, the musicians played coded messages to the audience. Sheepishly, I began tapping my foot while stealing furtive glances to make sure I was not the only one. As the music intensified my glances grew less frequent. By the last song, my heart discovered a straight path to my toes. I got it. When you are in the groove there is neither past nor future, only the here and now. After the music fades the foot still taps and the heart still throbs in remembrance of things not quite past. From that day on I would plop down outside the music room and listen through the walls to the school jazz band rehearsing Duke Ellington's Cottontail. Behind those walls jazz music was brewing. Would I ever get close enough for a sip? The invitation came none too soon. They needed a clarinetist and there I was, right behind the wall. I started simply: C Jam Blues. In the last two choruses I stood up and sight-read Barney Bigard's solo like an etude. What I felt was not emotion but the sheer panic of a soloist wishing to prove herself. I was a beat off. I played the wrong notes. I failed Bigard and I failed jazz. I left the room as if I had tripped twenty feet from an Olympic race finish line. A friend found me sulking in the cafeteria. "Cheer up," she said, "It's just music." Desperate to wash the disappointment of the first jazz rehearsal, I immersed myself in blues scales, pentatonics, dominant chords, and sharp elevens. I became absorbed in Duke Ellington's music. Duke showed me that I was the clarinet – more than a thin, black stick among the shiny metal instruments of a jazz band. I was the train whistle, the piercing shrieks, the casual middle voice, the whispering velvet nothings. My love for jazz would not go unrequited. At the annual jazz concert my band performed C Jam Blues again. This time, I stood up when chords appeared above my measures and poured my heart to the shadows in the audience. With music, I told them about the cafeteria, the coded messages, the toe tapping, the Duke recordings until, with a final chord, the band put a period on my tale. Like the night I fell in love with jazz, my heart still thumped, my toes still tapped, but this time I was the musician. I looked across the sea of cheering shadows that had decoded my messages. It's not "just music." It's anything but "just music." |
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