A journey through the Penguin Jazz Guide

The building blocks
of any good story

The building blocks of any good story are the questions of who, what, when, how, and why. The basic narrative structure is provided by who, what, and (if needed) when. Who did what (when). The hows and whys add colour to your story.

Let’s take for example this man walks into a bar joke I picked from here. 

A guy walks into a bar and orders 12 shots. Before the bartender even returns with the cheque, the man has slammed back half of them and shows no signs of slowing down. As the guy finishes his final shot, the bartender asks, "Why are you drinking so fast?"

The guy wipes his mouth and replies, "You would be drinking fast, too, if you had what I had." The bartender asks, "What do you have?"

The guy says, "75 cents,” and runs out the door.

Now let’s break down its basic narrative structure.

Who: a man.

Did what: ordered 12 shots, downed them, dashed.

Now let’s try and add some colour.

How: quickly, deceptively, unashamedly.

Why: he was broke but really wanted to get drunk.

Now if we wanted to detail the story further, really get invested in the story of this man, we’d ask more whys. Why is he broke? Why does he want to get drunk so bad despite being broke? Is it because he’s broke? So on and so forth. 

On the face of it, I know this seems completely irrelevant to the story of jazz, but let me try and connect the two.

The story of Jazz

I have a fixation with Jazz. I don't know why. I comprehend some of its theory, but not enough to explain why I find its sounds more appealing than the sound of say classic rock. After watching explainer videos by musicians on YouTube, I start to understand some of the hows and whys of it. Like how Coltrane arranged Giant Steps to sound like it does, how Miles Davis slowed bebop down and stretched out the sound to create modal jazz and why that sounds so good to me. But the whole story? From start to finish? It’s a series of who did what when. 

I’ve always wanted to chart the story of jazz from the standpoint of an aficionado: a non-American, Indian aficionado, who while in love with the music, is also cognisant of some of its history, particularly its roots in West African music and slavery. I’m going to attempt to tell this  story using the core collection of the Penguin Guide to Jazz (eds. 7, 8, and 9) as the story’s skeleton, starting this week with this introduction.