Jack’s Blues

By Jack Mawhinney

The musician put the clarinet to his lips, eyes focused in the distance,  as the music begins unobtrusively, then glides down the scale softly in slow motion like riffles in a stream, deliberate and voluptuous, creating a mood for the other musicians. Leaning into the jazz club crowd with a growl in the lowest register he invites them to listen; to experience the real thing; to know the blues; to momentarily   re-experience memories of the good and the bad, the sadness, the hurt of loss and the nostalgia for the romanticized past. The music reveals the truth to the careful listener, as it converses in the down and dirty low notes of seduction, the rubenesque tones of the middle keys that trigger memories of a passionate long ago love, the smeared sad B-flat sound of the lost past, or the high-pitched woodwind screams of anger and frustration.

The chatter of the crowd is gradually subdued by the subtle insistence of the music. One by one, the attention of each person in the room is lured to the blues. The musicians carefully select each note, develop each chord, compose each phrase with an unspoken, inarticulate, but understood message; a developed improvisation which slowly reveals a growing intensity, providing each listener his own understanding. Now the blues build and build some more, crying out, preaching the gospel of the sacred and the profane, the beautiful and the ugly, the virginal and the orgiastic. The music moves like a tide over the range of the instruments, exploring the topography of grief, slurring the half tones of sadness, moaning in the lust of the lower register, smirking, then flirting, then growing serious in the dance of love, ending in a sigh of ecstasy.

The audience is excited, intense and receptive. Intimacy and understanding of a language more eloquent than articulate speech engulf them. They share the musician’s pain, grief and ecstasy in a way more intense, more real than any expression communicated by mouth or pen. They listen with a musician’s ear and experience the truth.

Out of the acrid veil of cigarette smoke two young women come to the dance floor, rising to the challenge of the music, to prove that dance is an even more fervent communicator of the truth than music. Tall and slim, one woman has a masculine assurance about her, an intense focus, and a way of moving that is cat-like and sensuous. Her partner’s seductive saunter and manner suggests an aggressive sexuality.

Their eyes are fixed on each other. Their hip-rolling and weaving with a sensuous carefree don’t-give-a-damn attitude invites the musicians to back them up. The clarinet man smiles knowingly, takes up the instrument to tell the story, beginning with a lower register growl that grows in volume, followed by a smeared crescendo to the top, and then plunges to the bottom of the range in a lascivious salute to the pair on the floor. And so, the dance of love begins once more..

The women face each other, hands on each other’s hips, seductively dancing from side to side, eyelids half closed in sensual recognition, locked in the embrace of the music. The clarinetist slides his fingers over the keys with a feather touch, the instrument responds in luxurious tones, rich in feeling, zaftig to the ear, then moves on to the voluptuous feel of the lower register, instinctive, stalking, provocative and inviting. The attention of the audience is riveted on the two women; excited by the music; intoxicated by a combination of alcohol and anticipation; they come to the dance floor encircling  the women to get closer to the heat. The women respond in kind, generating greater and greater passion as their improvised dance becomes more and more sensual, then wanton, and finally both musicians and dancers collapse in the climax of their mutual dance of love.

The audience melts back into the shadows while the dancers, hand in hand, quietly slip out the front door of the bar with expressions on their faces that suggest a firmness of purpose for the balance of this night; and the clarinet player turns away with a smile of satisfaction and begins the intro to the next selection of the blues.