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The Jazz Theologian

Race is inherent to the American experience.  The next season of Survivor is going to divide the teams up according to race.  Most people attend churches and live in neihborhoods that resemble their ace.  The price of a private adoption is based upon skin tone.  There is a pastor in Seattle who has drawn attention…

To talk about jazz is to talk about race.  To choose a jazz based faith is to face race head on and to let it’s questions and tensions fuel one’s faith.  A jazz based faith is not a race dominated approach to life, rather, it is to recognize the uniqueness of the American experience as…

It’s that time of year again.  The 2006 Black Weblog Awards are in the final stage of voting.  There are finalist in a number of categories.  I am familiar with two of them and, in my opinion, they are worthy of your vote.  Maurice Broaddus is in the running for Best Topical Blog and Rod…

"Call and Response" are hallmarks of jazz because it was incubated in the black church. Preacher calls and congregation responds…horn calls and piano responds…Langston Hughes calls and Ralph Ellison responded. Langston Hughes wrote his famous poem, "Harlem:  A Dream Deferred" What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the…

In the prologue of Invisible Man, the narrator seeks light in his darkness by iluminating his hole with 1369 light bulbs.  The number is a tribute the the year 1936.  That was when he moved to New York City and met a number of influential people during this time of the Harlem Renaissance.  Most notably,…

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post…I’ve been doing a little traveling and speaking, but now I’m back to my normal life. A final quote (for now) from "Invisible Man" and a question that I’d like your help with. The unnamed narrator of Ellison’s masterpiece describes Louis Armstrong in the following way……

Ralph Ellison shows us that jazz is more than music.  His novel, "Invisible Man," is a jazz text.  As a jazz musician, he decided to see if jazz could exist in another medium–Eureka!  Most jazz compositions begin with an opening set of notes that set the theme for the song.  This, Bass Line, serves as…

Red, White and Blues On Independence Day I bought some slow gin and celebrated with Ralph Ellison. In Ralph Ellison’s, "The Invisible Man," the narrator was fond of eating a special desert while listening to Louis Armstrong sing, "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue."  Ellison writes… "Sometimes now I listen to…

Ralph Ellison was a jazz trumpeter and lover of jazz in general.  It was Ellison who said that "American life is jazz-shaped."  He then went on to demonstrate this when he wrote, "The Invisible Man."  Ellison wrote a lot about jazz and included references to jazz in many of his works, but in "The Invisible…

Now playing at my other site, Improvisus (aka–JT’s Jazz Joint):  MAINLINE DECLINE Join me over at my other site…just look to the top of the left hand column and click on Improvisus. See you there!
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