Pat Metheny on Jazz ^1  [2]

"For this reason, I always encourage musicians (who are of course citizens of the world first, and Jazz musicians second) to address ALL of the music that they love and that they are attracted to as people, regardless of it's style, regardless of it's content, as a unified set of materials when they consider their full options -- and potentials-- as modern day Jazz musicians."

"Of course, for a lot of you who are students out there, you may be thinking, "What the hell is this guy talking about, I just want to sound good and not make too many clams at the next jam session when I take my solo on "Autumn Leaves!" And yes, I agree absolutely that that may well be the first item on your "to do" list. But I feel this too, and this is something that I've noticed over the years and throughout the music's evolution: that when you are around a certain age -- I would say that that age generally falls sometime between 12 and 22 -- you actually have access to something, a certain kind of energy, that is really valuable, something really rare, and something most people never have again to quite the same degree of intensity at any other point in their lives."

"It seems like somewhere about that time in a musician's life, you can hear the emerging sound of your OWN generation of musicians. It lives inside of you, and it often rings loud and clear. And it often sounds nothing like anything that has ever been heard before. Listen to THAT as closely as you can. Listen to it with the same attention and curiosity that you reserve for your heroes on records."

"My contention has always been that Jazz is, and I hope will always be, a form of folk music, but a very, very serious and sophisticated folk music. Almost a kind of scientific folk music. When I say folk music, I am talking about the tradition of musicians using every aspect, all the materials, all the sounds and moves and vibes and spirits of their time in a musical way. The attempts to make Jazz something more like classical music, like baroque music for instance, with a defined set of rules and regulations and boundaries and qualities that MUST be present and observed and respected at all times, have always made me uncomfortable. That's not because I am not all for Jazz being given that kind of respect, but because I feel that the basic desire for self-expression -- in whichever of its manifestations that its participants care to address at a given time -- is such a primary presence in the fabric of what makes "Jazz" Jazz, that it is CRAZY to NOT take advantage of that fact by relegating it to some predetermined model of supposed authenticity."

"And, please, let's never forget that this is a genre built to harbor irreverence, or even dissent, in addition to earnest devotion. The diversity of Jazz is a big part of what makes the street-level variety of the form so vital."

"What I mean by that is that right now, there are probably kids in this room that have their finger on a certain pulse that none of us over 25 could likely ever even imagine. And in that pulse possibly lie the ideas that could very well alter the future course of Jazz, keeping it current and alive. And if this music WILL survive as a primary point of departure for a young kid's dreams, it will be because he or she feels that their investment in it as individuals will result in something that they can really call their own, not something they are borrowing or simply emulating, but rather something that they can show to the world that is uniquely theirs and SOUNDS like it is theirs."

"To the educators out there that are saying, "Yeah, that's all great and everything, but it is hard enough for me to get the kids to all play in tune and stop and start together at the same time on their way through a basic chart...", I understand, and I agree completely that the teaching of the fundamentals of the music is central and essential."

"But, just as one example, let's say one day next semester you might look up, and there may be a kid that is hanging off to the side who would love to participate somehow. And say in this case he may even have a beat-box or a microphone or a turntable or a computer, or who knows what else under his arm. And he is curious. Maybe ... go ahead and invite him in. Jam with him. Have one of the kids write or make up some kind of a piece to do with him. To some, this may seem like the worst kind of anti-Jazz, even, god forbid, "fusion"!! Or they might see it as an encounter that, while maybe being fun, could never result in "REAL" Jazz at all."

"But to me, it would be EXACTLY that kind of gesture -- a gesture of inclusion and curiosity and communication and HOPE -- that IS the spiritual engine of Jazz. It is THAT spirit that has kept Jazz's momentum going forward so successfully for all these years, in spite of whatever cultural blockades have been erected along the way"

"I guess what my message here is today, as we all launch off into our various extremely individualized little niches within the larger community of Jazz and music, is that the openness to experiment, to really be in the moment, not only the specific musical moment, but the larger view of time and culture, is not really an option for Jazz musicians at any level -- it is a necessity if the music is going to go on."

"I know that in my own work, I love playing standards, I love playing the blues and working on trying to make sense of the infinite details that all of my favorite musicians throughout history have laid out so generously for our examination and enrichment. But I also know that for every hour I spend working on those essential, fundamental materials, I need to spend 3 more hours working on how I can reconcile those materials with the vital information that has to do with the things that I see and feel and hear around me each day, things that are real to me right now, right this second. And I also humbly acknowledge and accept that my reality is, for better or for worse, DIFFERENT and incomparable to any one else's -- not the least, probably, my biggest heroes in Jazz history."

"Each band director or educator here has his or her own reality, with its own limitations, and its own potentials. Each student here has their own reality, their own cache of materials learned, and I am certain, a far larger cache of things that they need to know"

"The challenge that I make for myself each time out, whether it is a single note, a single gig, a new record, whatever, is first of all to try to sound good and deal with the material and the situation at hand in hopefully an effective and musical way, but also to try to find some aspect of what I can offer to that moment in time that honors and respects the less quantifiable qualities of the tradition that I am talking about. A tradition that includes -- and demands --pushing it, pulling it, questioning it, and even changing it."

"As musicians, educators, journalists, industry executives, students, all of us, we all have an exciting opportunity to take Jazz to places it has never gone, to turn it into a music that millions of people everywhere (people that don't even know how much they love it yet) will find out what WE all already know: that the nature of this music has the ability to transform people, to enlighten them and enrich them in ways that ONLY this music can."

"But in order for that to happen, we all have to rise to this challenge, and it's a big one: the challenge to recreate and reinvent the music to a new paradigm resonant to THIS era, a new time. It's simply not gonna cut it to just keep looking back, emulating what has already been done with just a slightly different spin on it. We have to get to work to a degree that we haven't seen for a while now on a broad level within the Jazz community; we have to get our collective imagination working hard on a vision that is more concerned with what this music can BECOME than what it has already BEEN."

"We need to put on more interesting and better concerts! We need to make more interesting records that really connect with people! We need to play better! We need to practice more! -- WE NEED TO MOVE THE MUSIC FORWARD! You know what excites me? The thought of a kind of Jazz that sounds NOTHING like the Jazz of the 20th century, that is an entirely different thing, a new kind of animal; but one that is still unmistakably connected to the larger Jazz tradition. The 20th century is over. The challenge for us is to discover what that new thing might be through our own individual research, by rising to the occasion of the upcoming centennial of this music's birth with ideas that honor the premise of resonant, organic innovation that has been the hallmark of the form from day one, the kind of innovation that springs naturally from the curiosity that is imbedded in everyone who gets hooked on Jazz. It's there, collectively, between us. All we have to do is listen hard to find it, identify it, and it will grow into something special and unique."

"Along the way, mistakes WILL be made. Not all things tried will work out. But that impulse, the impulse to TRY THINGS, is perhaps the most attractive -- and sometimes the most underutilized -- intrinsic quality that the promise of Jazz education offers to its students. If young people can really view their time spent learning about Jazz as something that will offer them an outlet to dream about things that are resonant and applicable to their day to day lives, man, we would see an explosion of interest in participating in Jazz education that would dwarf even the amazing growth that has happened over the past 30 years."

"I can't wait to hear what everyone is going to do here over the next few days, and over the next few years! Thanks so much for listening."