Free Birds

I lie in the park at the end of the penultimate day of Jazz Summer School, almost in tears. All day, almost all week, my noise-making has been tightly controlled by a central person – a composer, a conductor, a tutor.

Where is the space in our world to sing like a free bird?

Who puts the birds in a circle and dictates what they must sing?

Who rounds up the Whales?

Simply left to make noise together, humans create such beauty and magic. I've felt it time and time again. With central control, quality, pleasure and presence get diminished.

Walking slowly away from the Guildhall building I feel such a terrible weight. I feel it in my body and I've seen it grow on everyone's faces as the day progresses.

I feel angry with the rigidity of the structures that try to control us so tightly and kill our pleasure.

For our beautiful innate music is not allowed to find itself.

Last night in the studio theatre I did my first ever entirely improvised performance. Actually it wasn't entirely improvised. I knew the five or six chords on the piano I'd be using, but I didn't know in which order. I knew the rhythm and tempo of the piano playing that I'd use as a base. And I knew the first note I'd sing.

It went down really well. “You make being in the room feel like being inside honey.” said one. “I felt as if I was walking by a river, calm and free,” said another. Many questions about my training.

I am extremely untrained, formally. I am simply incredibly honest, and I listen for what the small singer in my tummy is singing, and I copy. And when it is silent, I let myself be silent too. And I trust it. Most of the time...

I have never got on well with formal music education because it seems to ignore that small singer inside me. It tries to paste over it with its knowledge and rules and theories and scientification of music which it assumes to be superior. For many years I simply thought that I wasn't a proper musician, I was inferior. But now I think actually, I am a real musician, and I just disagree. 

I disagree.

And here, even where the course director is a singer, singing is somehow inferior. The instrumentalists in their small bands pass the improvised solos round like sweeties, while in choir we sing exactly what the choir master tells us. Finally solos time comes! With the exception of me, everyone gets their solo at the same time – unlike the instrumentalists - with no guidance at all about how to approach simultaneous improvisation, and the result is uncomfortably chaotic.

I find myself feeling offended that the voice is not considered an instrument in the same way other instruments are. Maybe the whole issue is just the course but these people run the jazz master's course at the London Guildhall and as far as I know that's pretty high up in The Establishment. This perspective feels systemic.

I feel sad and a little angry.

Where is the space to sing like a free bird?

Birds, come along. We can create it! :)