Just like the slaves’ labor shaped
the economy of America’s mid-
Atlantic states and the Southeast,
just like their struggle for freedom
and civil rights shaped the continent’s
culture, so their music
shaped the spirit of the land.
This I can understand.

But just exactly how and why
it happens that some white girls
come to jazz is quite another
story. I listen to Candy
Dulfer, Mindi Abair with
saxophones at their lips,

and though they may lack
that smoldering memory
of slave ships . . . crack
of whips about thighs,* still 
there is something in their eyes.
They, too, are tapping into
America’s sole original art form.

As for me, I came to it early—
by myself, my friends not taken with it—
to listen not play, a way
to relate to the other half of America.

But as for Lion and Wolff—
how on earth did two Jewish German
young men from Berlin become so taken
with it that they could start in ’39
a record label, and for thirty years have ears
keen enough to bring to the world
the most amazing artists?

But back to how and why, by and by,
a white girl comes to it: because it’s all there
in jazz—the muddy waters, strange
fruit hanging from trees, fluidity
of the blue notes like the play of light
in and out of memories, streaming
of consciousness like tobacco smoke
in softly-lit night clubs, through valve
casings and pistons of the trumpet,
the four strings of the bass.

Take the Horace Silver Quintet.
Breath of life and death
and lingering sorrow. I follow
their rhythms as if walking a labyrinth.
I keep the beat in my ears
on a distant walk. Listening,
I’m at a loss for words.

Those jazz masters ‘50s
and ‘60s as pivotal, critical
to our cultural identity as those
spiritual seekers of the time—
Beat Generation, American Zen.
Music to mend a torn piece
of our national tapestry.
Art Blakey. Herbie Hancock.

Twisting tobacco, picking cotton—
none of it ever forgotten.
Melancholy strains, total immersion,
a baptism, confession. Go and sin
no more. The deep dark blue notes
like a flame. John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk.

If you cup your ears just so, your heart
will break at last, the indifference
you have felt will melt away—
the music a transmutation of fire.

Let jazz lift you higher,
carry you out of your own body
into the flamed walnut and maple frame
of the bass. Feel the jazz player’s fingers
as s/he strums her pain and reaches beyond
the divisive terrain toward the light
glimmering soft as the white
moth in spring when everything
is possible, toward what was meant
to be (and will be). Holy holy holy.