[Dixielandjazz] Here's To The Musicians

[Robert S. Ringwald]

Here's to the Musicians!
Imagine this.
You go to the office one morning after having worked on a project until well 
past
midnight the night before. You'll be laboring in
a relatively high-pressure situation where each and every task you perform 
will be
monitored by a highly-paid technician who has connected you to a complex 
maze of
very expensive electronic equipment. Moreover, your work product for the 
morning
will be recorded and analyzed down to its most minute detail by the people 
who hired
you. They may spend days at it.
If that's not enough to make you nervous about the entire experience, those 
people
will eventually take your work product from that morning and make it 
available for
public scrutiny as well.
And get this --- some people will actually get paid to write about the work 
you completed
that one morning, so that other people
can better decide whether they want to expose themselves to it.
But there's more.
When you arrived for work that fateful morning, tired from having worked so 
late
the night before, the boss gives you only a general idea of what she wants 
you to
do, then tells you to just make up the specifics as you go along, depending 
on how
the other workers do their jobs!
Could you do your work under such conditions? Could you do it so well that 
other
people would want to buy a recording of your efforts and listen to it over 
and over
again? That's what the best of the jazz musicians do.
Perform by night; record by day. And we're not talkin' a five-day week here, 
either.
I've never heard a jazz musician tell a promoter or agent,
"Sorry, I take Tuesdays off."
Then there's the struggle it takes a good, working jazz musician to achieve 
the required
level of proficiency. Years and years of practice. A
load of talent. And significantly, a willingness to forego the security most 
people
take for granted in our society.
Nightclub gigs and record deals don't come with paid vacations, pension 
plans and
medical insurance.
Yet despite all of these circumstances, great jazz is still being played and 
recorded.
An objective economist or workplace scholar would conclude that it just 
doesn't make
sense.
What manner of person would take such risks and endure such pressure for 
such small
rewards?
The answer is deceptively simple.
Jazz musicians are true artists. They do what they do for love of the music 
and the
creative process. Watch them work and you can see it.
Listen to a good jazz record and you can hear it.
So next time you put on some jazz, whether it's one of those evenings where 
you hang
on every note or one of those afternoons when the music is just contextual,
give a mental nod to the folks who made it all possible ---
the musicians.
They really deserve it.