[Dixielandjazz] Dadaism and early jazz

[Burt Wilson]

Dear listmates--

Art and music are muses. From a metaphysical standpoint, they have a great influence on the psyche. We all remember the familier "music sooths the savage beast."

However music and art do more than that. They have a profound effect on the way we think. Certain art styles and musical styles appeal to the comfortable ruts in our minds, while others compel us to stretch our minds and others, in the tradition of true connoisseurship, demand that we completely re-think what we have solidly referenced in our brain cells.

The last thing people want to do is think differently. That is the main reason people accept or reject art or music. It is the reason people say, "Well, I don't know much about art, but I know what I like."

To think differenty, one must shake up all the lovely ruts in the mind and chart new roads in, around and above the comfortable ones. We have to re-tune our ear for music, and we have to re-tune our eye for art. Various expressions of art and music do that to us and to the extent we WANT to learn something different, to that degree do we MAKE AN EFFORT to understand something new. Curiously enough, whether we make that effort or not, the youth of the world will accept it as theirs and bring it into life. We are then left to comment, "Well...The younger generation is going to hell in a handbasket."

When we find ourselves using such knee-jerk responses, we can be assured that we have now become our parents.

Burt Wilson
Silver Dollar Jazz Band