JAZZ Hip Hop's Ancestor.

Let's be clear, I am in no way shape or form a hip-hop head and no I do not know everything about music but I do know what is relevant to me.... I'm guessing that's the point of blogging huh?

I went on to Launch to do my HW but I have firefox and it denied me access. So I ended up at AOL radio listening to Jazz. Honestly, I truly feel, it doesn't get its due credit. It has been out lived and is now the grandfather of the adult who is now hip-hop. Still respected, still loved and still given its rights on the strength that it's been around and seen a few things. Listening to it now is just like listening to that Grandma or Granddad who knows exactly what to say with out saying a word, it was all in a look; with jazz it's all in the sound. Sometimes it puts you back in your place as a youngster and makes you take the time to appreciate to listen and to hear something sage, something that knows more. YES- there was something before 8 tracks and vinyl. Plain instruments that were responsible for being the soundtrack of oppressed people who had issues that many of us can never even fathom. Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, no legal liquor (can u imagine such a horrendous fate?) Feelings that we have open mic nights, iPods, cassettes, CDs and headphones to cater to.

I absolutely love jazz, and miss CD 101.9 (New Yorkers know wassup)
Jazz does have a way of taking over the senses once it is introduced properly with a melody that the listener can follow. Jazz in my opinion is just like a painting or a sculpture, completely open to interpretation. I love listening to it until it crosses over my other senses into me seeing it. Listening to jazz can begin as jus hearing some notes arranged beautifully (which is all music is) and then feeling sad or happy?? Thats wild. Listening to just a few notes and wishing that, that someone special was sitting right there next to you journeying off to the same places that you can only venture together, in your thoughts with out even speaking a word. What other medium can do that? I know I live in an era where hip-hop and pop are the soundtrack to so many of my peers lives and that is all well and good. They are relative and personal to them. Jazz roots are in the present and were the soundtrack for books such as Sula and the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Or movies such as Love Jones. Sex, trust, love, passion, anger, revenge....all derived from sound, minus the clutter of words. To me jazz is the most boisterous element in a room that never even has to utter a word. Its just like that Grandparent that we know is there. We know without whom we wouldn't exist. We can never understand truly where she is comin from but we know its right. I dunno thats how I feel when I listen to her. - Jazz that is. I feel right, like I... a product of the hip hop realm am being takin in for a while by Grandma simply to remember and regroup right before being thrown right back in to reality. The presence and the force that is hip-hop. Everyone needs to regroup sometimes. You appreciate the present and feel it more when you do.