1. Religiosity as Expressed in
Bebop Jazz Improvisation
Travis Bille
Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan
Department of Religious Studies
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
In cooperation with:
Dr. Todd Borgerding
Department of Music
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
May 11, 2007

2. Travis Bille
Independent Study
Religious Studies 446
May 11, 2007
Religiosity as Expressed in Bebop Jazz Improvisation
For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors.
The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them,
without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves....
I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one,
there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound.
I must accept their death; I must even want that death:
I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.
-Jean-Paul Sartre
Jazz music, or more specifically jazz improvisation, has spent the last century
evolving into an art form that many love, few understand, and even fewer have tried to
understand. In this writing from Sartre, he is trying to pinpoint the deep emotion that he
is feeling, but his final resolution falls on giving up. He can grasp what is going on, and
he can describe it in this flow of detail, but he is missing something, and it would seem
that even he knows it. It is an internal struggle; he knows what he wants, he knows how
to achieve that first level of grasping it, but he also knows that, unfortunately, when he
gets there and can take hold of it, it will know longer be what he wanted. So what he
wants now, oddly enough, is to want something else, because only by doing this will he
actually get what he wants. This entire rollercoaster ride has taken us back to the fact that
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3. we still do not know what it is that he, in the end, is trying to achieve, and neither does
he. He does not understand what the experience is that he is having, nor where it comes
from, but he knows that he wants to have it again. The phenomenon in this aspect of
human experience is that, regardless of how much effort is put forth, the experience can
never be the same. Sartre, like the rest of us, wants to capture this experience, he wants
to “hole them back” so that he can experience the notes whenever he pleases, and thus, in
theory, creating the same experience he had originally. But while he can accomplish the
small feat of capturing them, the experience is unfortunately gone, and the notes are out
of context, leaving a “corrupt and languishing sound.”
This experience is not an unfamiliar one; it is something that most of humanity
experiences daily. It is seen as chaos coming together and suddenly making sense, only
to eventually fall back into chaos. John Carvalho, upon analyzing Frederich Neitzsche’s
Zarathustra, drives this point by stating that, “In modern jazz improvisation, musicians
explore the chaos in themselves and give birth to dancing music (Carvalho 204).” The
result of the experience and the revelation that an identical experience cannot be had
again is often left unexamined. What seems to be occurring is an involuntary acceptance
of the infinite. Essentially, as in the case of Sartre listening to jazz, he has accepted the
fact that this experience will come again, that he will not know when or how, and that it
will not happen or feel the same as before. Because of this acceptance, there is a dual
acceptance that often goes unrealized, which is the acceptance that because the
experience cannot happen the same way, there must be an infinite number of the
experiences that one can have. Chaos appears untamed, and because of this it will not
use the same means of finding its way back to enlightenment.
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4. Evidence will be examined empirically as an explanation of both why these
events occur in the manner of their occurrence, as well as possible clarifications to their
mysterious origins. It is entirely possible that no tangible solution will find itself entirely
fitting, yet experiential insight alone may provide enough discussion for one to form
one’s own opinion. This proposed insight will come directly from this world of jazz that
Sartre found himself surrendering to. It should well be understood that jazz musicians
often cannot explain the reasons behind what they play, and it would be quite the stretch
to assume that someone else could clarify it for them, but regardless of the fact that they
cannot explain it, they often will try to explain it. Seldom will this explanation be
streams of boastfulness where the musician claims the ability and talent to put on display
everything that he or she just performed, but instead will involve something outside of
the human experience, i.e. a Higher Power, a leaving of one’s body to watch the
performance from the outside, and an extremely relaxed and serene composure in the
midst of an unstable task such as improvisation. Musicians may often speak of finding
themselves improvising lines that they little knew they had in their repertoire, and some
would claim that they do not have it in their repertoire at all, but it is from the repertoire
of “someone” or “something” outside of them, playing through them. They are only a
vessel, but more often than not, they are delighted to be that vessel.
In order to properly assess this subject, there must be an understanding of
experiences related to this in its mystical nature. In a religious sense, it may be
understood in two different lights, the first relating to the idea of forces of good and evil,
as real but mystical entities, working within each individual. The other, a possibly more
plausible account, is a direct relation of this experience with those experiences practiced
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5. in a church setting or within a religious faith, i.e. prayer, communion, worship/praise. If
considered in the latter context, an immediate direct relation occurs with music written
specifically for the Christian church. Many composers of the broad range of music often
lumped into the giant category of classical music composed liturgical music to
accompany a church service, and with some frequency they would use verses of the
Christian Bible as a means of inspiration. Even in pieces that were not based on church
activities, some composers would continue to attribute their muse to God. When
questioned on the difficulty of a passage in his violin concerto, Beethoven gazed at
Schuppanzigh, his violinist, and scolded, “Do you believe I was thinking of your
wretched fiddle when the Spirit spoke to me? (Hamilton, 174).” While the particular
concerto Beethoven was speaking of was not necessarily written for the church, his words
imply an outside force that spoke to him, giving him his ideas and inspiration for the
piece.
Beethoven’s claim carries a philosophical nature, so the next step is to examine
what the philosophical world has to say on the matter, and in this undertaking, there must
be an understanding that the idea of God can go by many names, some of them taking on
various direct names of God, and others simply relating a concept that is associated with
or attributed to a Higher Power, or the “Spirit.” As is the case with the words of jazz
musicians, the words of a philosopher can take on new meaning when it is understood
that terms they use or experiences they describe may be attributed to God or a Higher
Power.
As a small sample, one particular emotion that is frequently used to describe the
feeling of God’s presence is “sublime”, and the late philosopher Thomas Weiskel picks
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6. apart this term in many areas of human life, but before he develops this he gives us this
warning: “All versions of the sublime require a credible god-term, a meaningful jargon of
ultimacy, if the discourse is not to collapse into ‘mere’ rhetoric (Weiskel 36).”
The psychological opinion on jazz improvisation must also be entertained, as it
will always be human nature to give a human explanation, rather than jumping to a
conclusion that requires faith in something outside humanity. Finally, the very words of
jazz musicians themselves, those that find themselves in the sublime state of being a
“vessel,” give the most lucid explanation and the most evidence to submit such a claim as
to be taken over by the Divine, or God, and spontaneously compose music that was
previously unknown to them. In order to further understand the nature of the
improvisation that will be examined, though, the history that brought this improvisation
to the level of Bebop must be used as a foundation for every opinion that followed its
inception.
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7. Bebop-era Jazz
“When he played, you didn’t compare him to other trumpet players. You didn’t even
think of Miles as just a trumpet player. You speak of Miles when you’re talking about
spirits, about mystical experience (Werner 83).”
-Kenny Werner
While the music that is called jazz has undergone many changes over the century
that it is accepted to have been around, the most prominent of these is the continuous
development of spontaneous improvisation. In early call-and-response forms, the music
that is known as the sounds of American slave fields, one would state a line, and another
would simply repeat it. The first to state the line was practicing a form of improvisation,
but these lines were heavily influenced. When Dixieland jazz developed shortly
thereafter, a melody, as well as a key for that melody, was determined ahead of time, and
performers would play off of each other within the confines of this melody, but specified
roles for each instrument were established and followed, giving very little freedom for
experimentation.
In the 1920s, the Big Band Swing era produced a more free approach to
improvisation by giving musicians a run-through of the melody, also known as the
“head,” in which to create their own ideas based on the chordal structure of the melody,
or the “chorus.” Because of the size of the band, however, solo sections were usually
limited to only one or two choruses, and soloists were given little room to develop their
ideas. They also rarely went outside of the limits of each specific chord that they were
soloing over, and if they did it was more than likely by mistake. Musicians were not yet
aware at that time what lied beyond the chords they knew and read.
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8. Possibly by design or possibly by mistake, the great trumpet player Louis
Armstrong, in a 1928 recording of an old tune called “West End Blues,” disrupted the
barrier of these chordal limits by using extensions of the known chords in his
introductory cadenza. This recording was later seen as prophetic of the next generation
of jazz, a generation that would test the limits of everything known to the jazz world and
stretch the imagination to staggering heights. This next era was known simply as Bebop.
It may be that Armstrong knew the future of jazz, or it may be that he was pushing it in
this direction, but the jazz world heard, and the jazz world followed.
When the 1940s rolled around innovators like Charlie “Bird” Parker and Dizzy
Gillespie pioneered an era that made arguably the most dramatic entrance since the very
beginning of jazz. There was no more dancing and swinging, but in its place there was
sitting and listening. There was contemplation. This style was not meant to get people
out of their chairs; it was meant to keep them in their chairs, silently pondering the
remarkable complexity of the improvised solo they were experiencing. John Coltrane
and Miles Davis entered soon after. Coltrane gave improvisation an edge that was both
astonishing and confusing at the same time. People did not “get” it, and when they did,
they failed quite often to explain it. Miles grew much and explored often in these first
years of Bebop, and eventually carried the style through several subgenres known as hard
bop, fusion, and the ever-popular modal jazz, which spurred the legendary recording
session for the album Kind of Blue.
The final components were Thelonious Monk, the passionate and sometimes
comical pianist who drove the complexity of the music up several notches, and J.J.
Johnson, who is regarded as the first trombone player to manipulate the stubborn slide
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9. instrument in order to meet the demands of the fast-paced bebop style. These men gave
jazz a mysterious nature, one that sometimes they could not even describe themselves.
For the first time, religious musicians and listeners were not seeing something that was
played strictly for God; they were seeing something that some of them believed was
coming directly from God. But this experience, the experience of the Divine using
humanity as a vessel, while relatively new to the jazz world, was not uncommon in other
aspects of human life.
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10. Religious Experience
“Music’s peculiar sociality is not dependent on conceptual thought. Composers,
performers, and audience all bring to music a socially generated stock of knowledge,
which forms the ground of their experiences. But musical experience is not reducible to
that ground, what Schutz calls a ‘musical tuning-in relationship (Poloma, 174).”
-James Spickard
While the church seems to be the standing law on what may be considered a
religious “experience,” each individual is perfectly capable of determining for oneself if
the experience is truly from the Divine. William James wrote of this over a century ago,
as he gave a controversial depiction of religion and the religious experience, defining
religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far
as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the
divine.” He points first to the feelings, acts, and experiences, but says nothing quite yet
specifically involving a church or law. To cover this ground, he goes on to say that “out
of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical
organizations may secondarily grow (James, xxi, emphasis mine).” The introduction
from which this quote is taken was contributed by Dr. Martin Marty, who immediately
comments on the fact that James very bluntly points to these “growths” as secondary.
Marty actually adds to it by stating that James feels they are highly secondary (James,
xxi). In other words, the theology, the philosophy, and the church all come second to the
feelings, acts, and experiences that build them. The experience must come first; a
theology may only grow from it.
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11. These feelings and experiences are of extreme importance, if we are to take the
word of James and Marty on this matter, and those that have the experience may truly
feel that they are real. Whether it is actually happening or if it is a process of the mind,
the perception is that it is coming from somewhere outside of the “self”, depending on the
beliefs of the individual, with the only obvious exception being those intentionally
producing the pattern of a religious experience for marketability or other reasons. If it is
accepted that the person having the experience does not have any deceptive intentions,
then it would be difficult to argue against the experience happening in some sense or
another. The “Attribution Theory and Religious Experience” states that, “A pertinent
element in this is that research indicates that experiences, as occurrences that happen to
people, elicit attributions to external forces. They are not perceived as being produced by
oneself (Wood 423).”
The religious experience of the specific area of jazz improvisation most likely fits
into one of two research categories. The first kind of religious experience, according to
the Handbook of Religious Experience, an experience that is also the most common in
other fields, is called “confirming.” It carries two subtypes, the first of which is a sense
of sacredness, and the second is “a specific awareness of the presence of divinity (Wood
424-425).” The first does not appear to fit well within this context. The second, while it
conforms to a certain extent, does not quite satisfy what is being described. A musician
can be aware of the presence of a divinity, and indeed this divinity may be present, but
that does not necessarily imply that the divinity is doing anything, which goes against the
nature of the experience as it is normally described.
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12. The other possible kind of experience is called “revelational.” In this experience
“the person is selected usually via a vision to carry a divine message to others… (Wood
425).” While this definition follows the experience closer, there is no evidence to suggest
that there is a vision inherently involved here, or that the music played is carrying a
divine message. If there is a message being sent through the music, the musicians must
not be aware of it, neither the listeners, unless the message is a simple gift of music.
Religion sociologist Rodney Stark carries a broad experiential view that states
“the term religious experience covers an exceedingly disparate array of events: from the
vaguest glimmerings of something sacred to rapturous mystical unions with the divine, or
even to revelations (Wood 424).” This idea covers much ground, and seems to carry
more experiences with it than are covered with the previous terms. Others, including
noted religious philosopher Rudolf Otto, restricted the idea of a “mystical experience” to
“an experience of unification of one’s self and the divine (Wood 423).” While this at
first would sound very limiting, it actually leaves much open for further elaboration. It
mostly just simplifies the earlier statement from Stark.
These definitions, though their intentions seem to be an attempt to further
simplify a difficult subject, have their possibility of success in the area that they are
addressing, but to attempt a universal definition of a religious experience is a daunting
task that unfortunately but inevitably finds success only in some places and failure
elsewhere. The complexities of the human mind bear technologies that humanity has yet
to understand, so an all-encompassing, solid concept of something as broad as a religious
experience can well be an elusive and frustrating undertaking.
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13. Psychology of Jazz Improvisation
“Within this outer web we live. It soaks up, transmutes and is charged with human
experience, exuded from the world within like steam or an aroma from cooking food.
The story-teller is he who reaches up, grasps that part of the web which happens to be
above his head at the moment and draws it down…to touch the earth. When he has told
his story—its story—he releases it and it springs back and continues in rotation. The web
moves continually above us, so that in time every point on its interior surface passes
directly above every point on the surface of the world. This is why the same stories are
found all over the world, among different people who can have had little or no
communication with each other (Pressing 148).” -Richard Adams
To build a proper definition for the experience that these Bebop-era jazz
musicians have amidst their improvisations, we must first look to the world of
psychology. Jeff Pressing from La Trobe University has done several studies into the
cognitive processes in improvisation as a whole, with several areas focusing specifically
on jazz improvisation. Pressing’s view is that we improvise to the extent that we are
unpredictable. All that is left is simply repeating ourselves or following orders (Pressing
345). His views throughout his research carry what can only be described as an open
end, which means that, though he discusses primarily the concrete cognitive processes
involved with improvisation, he leaves an area open that he knows cannot be proven
either way in this form of research. The possibility that he leaves open is that of an
impact from the unexplainable, though only once does he actually refer to God as an
option for this unexplainable force:
“The generation of seeds is an associative process. That is, each new seed generated will
almost always be the result of combining previously learned gestures, movement patterns
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14. or concepts in a novel relationship or context. The conservatism of this process derives
largely from the limited resources of cognitive processing available for real-time
composition. But all or nearly all improvisation traditions also proclaim the notion that
completely new and unprecedented seed ideas sometimes spontaneously occur. The
origin of such material is often ascribed to God, mysterious higher forces, or undefined
transpersonal powers (Pressing 351).”
What is admittedly happening in the experience of improvisation is a gathering of
“seeds” into an organized, comprehensive performance or composition. But he does not
rule out the concept that there may be seeds generated spontaneously, and humbly admits
the limited cognitive resources that would be available to an improviser for real-time
composition, or improvisation. In other words, there is the possibility that an improviser,
or more appropriately, an improviser’s brain, though most likely using influenced and
trained material, cannot process so much of this previously learned material at a rapid
enough pace to correspond with the time in the music, therefore some of it must be
“new”.
It must also be kept in mind that the processing of this material not only takes into
account the notes and passages played, but also the mechanical act associated with
playing a musical instrument, and this does not exclude the voice as an instrument. The
improvising musician is required to take into account both the passage and the body
motions or manipulations of the voice simultaneously in order to produce the desired
effect. To break down these cognitive processes, the origins of all actions, according to
Pressing, are generated from “long-term memory, short-term memory, and the ever
mysterious ‘new ideas’ (Pressing 353).” Though long-term and short-term memory is
unmistakably present, the mind-boggling rate at which information is put forth in an
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15. improvisation is not likely to be the result of these processes alone, which is why there
must be room left open for spontaneous actions. These actions are certainly ever
mysterious, but little denied and unfortunately even less understood.
In all of his research, there are two concepts that present themselves often enough
to be considered themes, and the first of those themes is the continuous presence of terms
and ideas that a religious person may and often will attribute to God, and this carries
through to the second theme, which is called automatization, defined as the “uncanny
feeling of being a spectator to one’s own actions, since increasing amounts of cognitive
processing…are no longer consciously monitored (Pressing 359, term and definition from
A.T. Welford).”
The first theme is quite obvious when looked at from this perspective that there
are many ideas that can possibly be attributed or directly considered to be God. Pressing
discusses a study that involved three historical approaches to philosophies of intuition.
The first of these is Classical Intuition, which is a “special kind of contact with a prime
reality, a glimpse of ultimate truth unclouded by the machinations of reason or the
compulsions of instinct (Pressing 147, emphasis mine).” And again, to leave the
discussion open, he adds: “Knowledge gained through this kind of intuition is unique,
immediate, personal, and unverifiable (Pressing 147, emphasis mine).” Not only do the
ideas of a prime reality and ultimate truth hint towards what must be unknown or
incomprehensible to the human mind, it is admitted by clearly stating that it is, in fact,
unverifiable. Pressing then makes the connection with improvisation by acknowledging
that the “notion of tapping a prime reality is very similar to the improviser’s aesthetic of
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16. tapping the flow of music (Pressing 148).” The concept of the prime reality is later
described in more detail, making the argument ever more convincing:
“The prime reality is referred to as ‘the perpetual happening’ or ‘duration.’ The mind of
man…is shielded from the perpetual happening by the intellect…In the perpetual
happening itself, all events, objects, and processes are unified (Pressing 148, emphasis
mine).”
In a religious setting, or more specifically a Christian religious setting, to say that
the mind of man is shielded from something by the intellect sounds an awful lot like the
moral of the“Fall of Man” in the creation story from Genesis, and by that definition, the
something would be God. As the story goes, when humanity ate of the forbidden fruit
from the tree, they were given knowledge, or the intellect, of both good and evil. In
Christian tradition, the result, because the knowledge left them in a state where they were
no longer rightly related with God, is that they were thus shielded from Him. The
perpetual happening once again seems to be referring to the idea of order out of chaos,
with the result being unification.
The notion of automatization, from his second theme, is in a sense related to an
out-of-body experience. The difference is that in an out-of-body experience, the entity
that exists outside the body is performing the actions, while the body remains stagnant or
may be performing nothing out of the ordinary. In the case of this experience through
improvisation, though, the entity is observing the body performing extraordinary actions
that the body was formerly incapable of performing. Pressing describes it as an attention
strategy which “leave(s) all detail under control of unconscious processing (Pressing
359).” Though not quite known where this strategy originates, Pressing suggests as an
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17. explanation that this is a process located at lower levels of the central nervous system.
He then describes it in further detail:
“At its limit this approaches a meditation-like state, where the player’s consciousness
mainly ‘stays out of the way’ of the developing music. This attention strategy is
normally considered to produce better music… (Pressing 359).”
In its entirety, Pressing’s analysis provides a deeper understanding of the
mechanical processes associated with the simultaneous act of realizing and interpreting
the desired effect along with engaging the body to produce said effect. What is left as an
open forum is how the human mind in the nature that it is understood is capable of
generating this flurry of multiple actions at such a rapid rate. The choices here appear to
narrow it down to something in the lower levels of the central nervous system, or a
religious experience. It is a transpersonal approach, as he states that “Musical
improvisation has…been considered as a vehicle for consciousness expansion and the
tapping of deep intuitions (Pressing 142).” Exactly where this expansion of
consciousness and deep intuition is located and pulled from is a question that takes what
has previously been discussed from psychology and expands the philosophical mind to
examine this mysterious spontaneity that is regarded as beyond human capacity.
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18. Philosophy and Imagination in Religion and Improvisation
“For the imagination is very mighty when it creates, as it were, another nature out of the
material that actual nature gives it….In this process we feel our freedom from the law of
association; for although it is under that law that nature lends us material, yet we can
process that material into something quite different, namely, into something that
surpasses nature.” (Stevenson, 253)
-Immanuel Kant
Kant and other philosophers in their time were able to contribute something to the
mystery of spontaneity and imagination that surpasses the limits of what can be accepted
by concrete disciplines such as psychology. Thomas Weiskel illustrates this difference
when discussing a disorder he calls the “reader’s sublime.” He quotes a clinical
description from Roman Jakobson, who says that patients of this type “grasped the words
in their literal meaning but could not be brought to understand the metaphorical character
of the same words.” (Weiskel 30).
Weiskel develops this further by relating it to a reader who is “confronted by
theological mystery, the dark conceits of allegory, or any text whose ultimate meaning
lies in just the fact that it cannot be grasped (Weiskel 30).” The distinction provided is
roughly a similar one to those that can see and understand how improvisation can
coalesce as a religious experience and those that cannot see past the notes played and the
form they follow, in other words, the black-and-white. It is the difference between seeing
what is on the surface and seeing what is a level or more below the surface. Many
philosophers have long been a friend of this form of deeper experience, as many writings
suggest a deeper and possibly ultimate meaning in the fact that a concept simply cannot
be grasped, or as Kant says “surpasses nature.” Their writings do not mean to arrogantly
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19. grasp it, but rather to force the readers to accept what cannot be accepted, and possibly to
see the irony. No one is forced to accept the experience as truth, but because it cannot be
proven to be an untruth, the reader is forced to accept that they cannot know. Only those
that have had the experience can provide a glimpse into its nature, but even still they have
not fully grasped it.
The insights provided here may only serve to confuse the issue of this gray area
involving the mysterious “new ideas” and spontaneous, unlearned improvisation, but it is
possible to detail circumstances where the gray area can have some kind of explanation,
even if the result is still gray.
An intimidating obstacle in this explanation is solving the riddle of the
imagination. It is clear that, while the imagination is, in essence, perceiving that which is
not real in the direct sense that it is perceived, it is also acknowledged that what is
perceived in the imagination is possible to exist spatio-temporally. Kant shows this when
he divides the power of intuitive ideas into the senses and imagination, sense being the
power of intuition when the object is present, and imagination as the power of intuition
when the object is not, though it is still possible to exist (Stevenson 239, from Kant’s
Anthropology). Weiskel further elaborates with an example:
“Looking at the boundless ocean or infinity of stars, we feel that it’s all simultaneously
there, coexisting with us; we think (denken), a realm of existence that we’re unable to
cognize (erkennen). Comprehension is thus the imagination’s application of the timeless
idea of reason, but its putative collapse does not render apparent the role reason has been
playing. Instead the imagination feels a defeat, and reason appears, freshly and finally, as
its savior (Weiskel 40).”
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20. While he states comprehension to be the imagination simply applying reason, there still
seems to be confusion as to why this process still is not working to explain it away,
leading to its “putative collapse.” Reason then appears and explains everything in a
manner that the mind can grab hold of; some minds will find reason rather quickly and
easily to avoid the frightening realization of the relative smallness of humanity, while
others will linger in the moment for as long as it is given and search through it until it is
surely out of reach.
Kant, who at this point seems to be invoked in a rather lengthy, somewhat
agreeable conversation started by Weiskel, plays off this fear:
“The man that is actually in a state of fear, finding himself good reason to be so…is far
from being in a frame of mind for admiring divine greatness, for which a temper of calm
reflection and a quite free judgment are required. Only when he becomes conscious of
having a disposition that is upright and acceptable to God, do those operations of might
serve to stir within him the idea of the sublimity of this Being, so far as he recognizes the
existence in himself of a sublimity of disposition consonant with His will, and is thus
raised above the dread of such operations of nature, in which he no longer sees God
pouring forth the vials of wrath (Weiskel 94, from Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime, pp.
113-14)).”
As a relation to improvisation, it can reasonably be assumed through this writing that
Kant would see an improviser unable to experience the Divine through the improvisation
as being fearful of how big the world is around him, or in this case, how big the music is
around him.
The difference here between imagination and reason was one of the topics in the
Sixth Meditation from Rene Descartes, where he distinguishes imagination from pure
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21. understanding. Descartes says that when imagining a triangle, “I can see the three lines
with my mind’s eye as if they were present before me.” But in the case of a chiliagon (a
thousand-sided figure), he can understand the definition and its use in mathematical
functions, but cannot imagine or perceive all of the sides in the same manner. The
parallel exists in the idea of imagining something so big that the mind cannot possibly
comprehend, but upon backing down one shows their fear of the size of the idea. If
reflected upon calmly and freely, while success is surely improbable in this particular
case, one is showing an unsurpassed confidence that will lead them not to the pinnacle of
success, but much closer than a person that gives up based on the reasonable idea that
failure is almost certainly inevitable.
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22. Philosophical Understanding in Bebop Improvisation
“You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the world is constantly
saying within you.” (Werner 77).
-Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch
The great musicians of the Bebop era were known, if for nothing else, to have a
calm reflection, and definitely free judgment. Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk was
completely uninhibited by his mind, sometimes to the discomfort of his audience, to the
point where “it was said of Monk that he could make a concert grand sound like an out-
of-tune upright (Werner 89).” What was significant was that Monk played with
absolutely no fear. While he may have acknowledged the process around him as bigger
than him, he embraced it in a way that those around him felt very deeply. There was no
reason in his mind to try to play all of the “right notes”, because that was not what he was
feeling inside; that was not what wanted to pour out of him.
The vast number of musicians that Miles Davis played with in his earlier years
often recalled the staggering amount of freedom that they were given in his band. Pianist
Herbie Hancock spoke of the long solo sections they were allowed, where Miles would
walk off stage to allow the improvisers to do play as they saw fit, which essentially meant
to just play the first thing that came to mind, even if it did not come to mind. Hancock
described saxophonist Wayne Shorter taking a long solo in which he would be telling a
story. When Hancock came in to solo after, he would also tell a story, but it had to be a
different story, providing an unmatched versatility to the music. When they were
finished, Miles would come back on stage and summarize the experience that had just
taken place through his own improvisation. It was not a summary in a sense where he
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23. played the same things as previously played, but in Hancock’s words, he would “put a lid
over the whole thing.” (The Miles Davis Story, 2001).
In a New York Times article, pianist Keith Jarrett, who played with Miles in his
later years, gave a dramatic description of his experience playing in his band:
“Whatever clothes Miles wore, it was always Miles in those clothes. Whatever noise was
around him, Miles still played from that need, his sound coming from that silence, the
vast liquid, edgeless silence that existed before the first musician played the first note.
We need this silence, because that’s where the music is (Werner 83, quote from Keith
Jarrett).”
This is the point in the music where reason has not yet spelled its collapse. When the
musician suddenly reasons his music to be merely human and cannot see it has being
consonant with the will of God, the music will reflect the musician’s merely human
capabilities. There are an inordinate amount of terms to describe this unity with the
Divine, one of them coming from Jarrett’s words when he speaks of the edgeless silence.
He is not speaking of silence in literal terms, but in the figurative sense of silencing the
mind, the human mind. This silence is also related to the sublime experience, where the
improviser is able to surrender his own human thoughts in order to allow for a higher
inspiration, one that is not concerned with making mistakes; mistakes are human, and in
the mind of this improvising musician, the music is not.
Weiskel wrote at length of the sublime experience in the final work of his life, a
book called The Romantic Sublime, before his unfortunate and untimely death. He never
implied a specific divine force at work in this concept, but always referred to something
that is beyond what we know that must be at work in the sublime moment, or else it is
deception. This is a key distinction, as only the mind of the performer can truly know if
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24. the experience is sincere. It must be understood here that the concern is not whether the
experience is real, only that it is not concocted for deceitful reasons, such as self-
promotion or identification as a religious figure. Weiskel warns of being wary of the
motive for the experience before attributing meaning:
“The notion of ideology is rather portentous, not to be loosely invoked. However broadly
construed, ideology is not relevant unless we find that the movement of the mind in the
sublime moment is not necessary or autonomous, but instead masks the project of an
ulterior motive. We could then be led to substitute the usual efficient causality of the
sublime moment (in the theories, for example, of Burke or Kant) an emanational or
teleological causality. Until the ulteriority of the sublime moment has been
demonstrated, as opposed to merely asserted, it makes no real sense to interpret its
‘meanings’ (Weiskel 37).”
If the experience is only asserted, it can be flushed away by a dozen psychological or
sociological ideas, but if somehow demonstrated, it leaves an open question mark in the
mind of the audience.
The reason for this question mark comes from two places, the first of which is the
ulterior motive, which, in effect, can lead the audience to believe the improviser’s
assertion of a spiritual experience, or to doubt it based on other various actions of the
improviser. If the assertion is deemed insincere, or the demonstration lacking, then the
perception, no matter the reality of the experience, will lead to question or outright
omission.
The second reason for this perceived question mark is, quite clearly, if the
audience does not believe in any form of higher power, and through reason does not see it
as feasible for such an experience to occur. There is a strange phenomenon that
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25. transpires here, because there are noted instances when the performers themselves do not
believe in the presence of a higher power, but as they find themselves in the music, there
is an eerie sense within them that something bigger is at work. This does not, in turn,
necessarily urge them to suddenly believe in some higher power, which is why the
feeling is a difficult one to describe.
Jazz musician Paul Wertico, commenting self-reflectively on this matter, states
that he is “not necessarily a religious person, by and large, but there are many times
where I’ll play music and just kind of look up and say, ‘Thank you.’ And it’s a strange
feeling. It’s like I’m in touch with something so big and the joy is so incredible. And I
don’t even know why. It’s not like I’m looking up and I know there’s a heaven and a
hell, but it’s like I’m thanking the big picture for just the opportunity as a human being to
feel this way—which is incredible (Berliner 393).”
It is no matter if Wertico specifically designates the God of Christianity or any
other higher power as the “big picture,” because if the earlier definition of religion
provided by William James is applied, Wertico is essentially describing a religious
experience. It is based on the experiences, feelings, and acts, all of which are displayed
in Wertico’s statement. All that would appear to be lacking is an understanding of how
this places him to stand in relation to the divine, which could be contested if his
description of the “big picture” is acceptable as a divine or higher power. An institution
and theology are not necessary, as these are seen as a result of the experience, not the
foundation that allows for it. Wertico’s experience, if it can be considered in some form
to be religious, may offer sincerity in its purest form. Being “not necessarily a religious
person,” if it is true, he would be left with no reason to deceive for any religious purpose,
25

26. which in effect closes the book on one of the main reasons for a deceptive ulterior
motive.
26

27. John Coltrane (1926-1967)
“John Coltrane stretched the form of life… He is a shining example of working on
oneself, of changing and growing. He searched through heroin and psychedelics and
finally found God. Trane’s path was a classic struggle to discover Self… (Werner 184).”
If there is ever a conversation concerning spirituality and music, the most likely
musician to be discussed would be the legendary saxophonist John Coltrane. Coltrane
first burst onto the jazz scene when he started playing with Miles Davis. He was a
member of the group alongside Miles and fellow saxophonist Julian “Cannonball”
Adderley, and he continued with this group for an extended period of time because of the
freedom that Miles allowed him and their close relationship. Eventually he found it time
to create his own band, to the devastation of Miles and the rest of his band, to pursue
some new ideas. This path led him through a time of turmoil that involved several drugs,
but eventually he came back and started delving into Eastern spirituality, which had a
major influence on his hypnotic approach and solos in his later years on tunes such as
“My Favorite Things.” Originally written for The Sound of Music, Coltrane gained the
rights to the piece and turned it into an instant jazz standard, as it became his most
requested tune (The Coltrane Legacy, 1985).
Coltrane’s pattern through life seemed to follow in a consistent manner. He found
ways in which to invoke something into his music that he consciously would not have
applied. In the early years his playing this did not consist of spirituality, but rather a drug
of choice.
27

28. This was essentially the beginning of a search for Coltrane, one that unfortunately
some musicians find necessary when the notes become stale. Kenny Werner describes
the trying times that Coltrane experienced with more detail:
“Early in his life, John Coltrane found heroin. A bit later, he used LSD. The psychedelic
drugs of the sixties and seventies gave the user a different kind of experience. You got
the buzz, but a window would also open that allowed you to go beyond physical reality
and explore other realms of consciousness. In this state, the musician could see and hear
on other levels. With heightened senses, it was possible to milk the ecstasy of each note.
But after the effects of the drug wore off, the window always closed, making the natural
state feel dry and intolerable. Eventually, for John Coltrane, the search led to no drugs.
Toward the end of his life, his path had evolved into meditation, diet, and spirituality
(Werner 84).”
What he seemed to realize towards his later playing years was that there must be
something out there that keeps the window open; something that does not always fall
back into that stale state. When a jazz musician is just beginning, the music itself and the
attitude crack the window open allowing them to see and hear things more clearly. But at
some point, something needs to be added, because the musician will eventually hit a
plateau. There is no more moving up and growing in this manner, only stagnancy with
no direction. In this state, some musicians will turn to drugs, for exactly the experience
that Werner describes, but if they make it out alive, they often will leave it when they
realize that it is only temporary, and especially if they find something to be more
permanent.
John Coltrane found this permanent state. What is unique about Coltrane is that
his experience when he became more spiritual was rarely questioned. This may be
28

29. because he is often described as a very quiet person, but along those same lines he is also
pointed out to be an extremely calm, relaxed, and confident person, not carrying an
attitude that would mistake his spirituality for a gimmick. Drummer Elvin Jones, who
played with Coltrane both in his days with Miles Davis and later with Coltrane’s own
quartet, talks about how he would walk on stage without saying a word, pull out his horn,
and just start playing. Sometimes it would be a new piece, something neither Coltrane
nor the band had ever played before, and the band would simply have to follow (The
Coltrane Legacy, 1985).
Coltrane’s wife, Alice Coltrane, herself a pianist and harpist, witnessed his
progression through the spiritual life, and was able to link his spirituality with his music,
because as Coltrane was developing himself spiritually, “we were seeing the results of it
musically.” She goes on to say that since his spiritual quest began, all the way through
his album A Love Supreme, “We were seeing a progression toward higher spiritual
realization, higher spiritual development.” (The World According to John Coltrane,
2002).
It seems rather evident that Coltrane’s spiritual experience was something that he
not only portrayed, but it also carried through to the audience, and even to his band.
Roscoe Mitchell, another saxophonist at the time that played with Coltrane, asserts that
he “definitely think[s] that Coltrane’s music was spiritual. It represented something that
was more lasting, if you think of it in musical terms, than I was used to hearing. His
music was more meditative, it pulled you in…and once it pulled you in, you sort of
soared with him (The World According to John Coltrane, 2002).” Elvin Jones reiterates
the effect that Coltrane’s spirituality had on him, stating that it was something “that he
29

30. put into everything he did,” and adding to it the fact that “it was something that
everybody could recognize.” He continues:
“He was just a spiritual man. In my reflection, in my association with him, he was like
an angel on earth. It struck me that deeply. This is not an ordinary person. And I’m
enough of a believer to think very seriously about that…I’ve been touched in some way
by something greater than life (The Coltrane Legacy, 1985).”
John Coltrane, in the jazz world to this day, is a legend. Some would classify him
a genius in his field because he was the musician that played like no one had before him,
and when he was done, everyone wanted to play like him. Unfortunately, no one ever
could, and that continues to be part of his legacy. His sound was alarmingly original and
not easily imitated. If it was imitated, the feeling was not nearly the same, as Coltrane’s
music seemingly came from a deeper place, and an imitation would only be coming from
Coltrane. His genius was derived from the distance between him and the next closest
musician, along with the fact that no one was trying the things that he was trying. He
expanded chord progressions to places no one had ever seen, and in one of his more
popular pieces, called “Giant Steps,” a tune that has long been a test piece for jazz
musicians because of its unorthodox chord leaps, he even created a new progression.
Because of his spirituality, his music came from a place that, while others could
recognize it, few or none could understand. His imagination was unmatched, which is a
creative feature that Kant associates with genius:
“Genius is the talent for producing something genuinely original, something for which no
determinate rule can be given, so that not even the artist or author can say how he or she
came by his or her ideas. For the imagination (in its role as a productive cognitive
30

31. power) is very mighty when it creates, as it were, another nature out of the material that
actual nature gives it.” (Stevenson 253, from Kant).
Coltrane’s calm, reflective manner in his music showed his deep appreciation and respect
for not only the music, but for the spirituality of it and the experience that some higher
power was giving him.
Improvisation, in this manner, is very much a form of meditation, because it
involves tuning everything out to focus solely on the music and the spiritual guidance that
may be leading the music. Werner says that, “A quiet mind allows the artist to tap into a
wellspring of Divine Music within. Having experienced that state, all other goals seem
insignificant (Werner 80).” In effect, he is stating that this music from the Divine is
already within us, but players like John Coltrane were able to focus clearly on their inner
self in order to find it and project it. At this point, there is no need for any other goals, as
this is the highest point one can musically reach.
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32. The Genius, God
“A meditation rose in me that night
Upon the lonely Mountain when the scene
Had passed away, and it appeared to me
The perfect image of a mighty Mind,
Of one that feeds upon infinity,
That is exalted by an underpresence,
The sense of God, or whatso’er is dim…” (Stevenson 255).
-Wordsworth, from The Prelude
Biblically, the idea of God using a human musically as a vehicle or vessel is
spoken of in several instances. In many cases, when jazz musicians feel a religious
experience in their improvisation, the words they use to describe this experience are an
echo of verses in the Christian Bible or of other interpretations in religious circles.
Singer Carmen Lundy, when reflecting on her jazz experience, relates it to her
church experience and draws an analogy between them, “What I hear in jazz is also
spiritual. It involves that same kind of interaction, that ability of people to have this
musical experience at the same time that they are actually participating in it….You hear
someone clapping this way, and someone else clapping another way….You are all
beginning to clap more, and the spirit is getting more involved. There is some feeling
coming through the music (Berliner 391).” The parallel that she is suggesting is the idea
of church worship, but done in an improvisational way. Worship has become more and
more an integral part of a church service, to the point where worship is becoming its own
church service, much the same way as prayer. This is quite important, as prayer and
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33. worship are seen in the Christian church as deeply-felt interactions with God, and
possibly even more so when done on a more personal level.
The distinction that is made here is that Lundy is not describing a Latin Mass or
the singing of a traditional church hymn. She is not even necessarily describing a form of
accepted modern Christian worship music, i.e. Christian rock, Christian hip-hop. Rather,
what she is talking about is a collective improvisation, where each member is feeding off
one another as well as feeding off of God, or the Spirit. This is collective improvisation
not so much in the form of Dixieland jazz where there are defined roles, but in a form
closer to free or avant-garde jazz, where there are few or no limits and nothing is wrong
as long as it comes from God. Everyone essentially wants the same thing, but each is
given different means to get there.
The idea is that if there is a multitude coming together for one purpose, to invoke
the Spirit or God, then there is greater power in the music and more freedom in the
improvisation. In the Christian Bible, the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12:4-5, “For as in
one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so
we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one
another (HarperCollins Study Bible, 1993).” Of course, this does not mean that only as a
group can improvisation truly invoke the Spirit, but the idea of an individual entering a
group allows individual more freedom, almost as if God is welcoming the new guy.
Lundy’s personal experience is a bit different, even though she draws it from this
earlier one, as she later describes how this is related specifically to her jazz singing
experience:
“Sometimes, I really feel that I am just the vehicle, the body, and that something is really
singing through me, like I am not controlling everything that I am singing. The last time
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34. I sang, I thought to myself, ‘Gosh, I feel like something is just singing through me.’
That’s what I meant by the spiritual thing (Berliner 391-392).”
This personal experience can come in a variety of ways, but Lundy captures one
of the more prominent ways, developing the idea of God using the improviser as a vessel,
and thus allowing both the performer and those listening to feel, whether they realize it is
happening or not, a closeness to God. Even from a somewhat depressing book in the
Bible, we hear the words from Job 35:10, “But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker,
who gives songs in the night... (Holy Bible, NIV, 1984, emphasis mine).” If God is
giving the songs, then surely He is allowing for the reception of them; it is the musician’s
responsibility to accept and receive the song. As Christians are taught to live like Jesus,
the Christian Messiah, this brings new meaning to John 14:10 when Jesus says, “The
words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does
his works (HarperCollins Study Bible, 1993).” Because Jesus is considered in
Christianity to be God in one form or another, he is essentially saying that the closer one
is to God, the more God is able to speak through him. In a jazz improvisation, if an
improviser is surrendering to this level, then God’s message in the music need only pass
through the musician and out their mouth, or in the case of an instrumentalist, it has to go
through one more extension.
An interesting hermeneutical approach appears when biblical verses are seen in
this form. These are essentially life lessons that Christians are taught from a very early
stage after becoming a Christian, but somehow the parallel was never made to other
aspects of life. Kenny Werner takes the spiritual teaching, an idea carried by many
religions, of it is better to give than to receive, and he creates something refreshingly
original out of it by interpreting it to mean “by giving as much as you can to something,
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35. you become a channel to receive (Werner 189).” The teaching is not simply stated as one
being better than the other in the obvious sense that sharing is better than selfishness, but
he adds a level that applies to many facets of life when he relates it to musical
improvisation. When one gives as much as they can strictly to God and to the music,
God’s channel to that person is opened up, and they are prepared to receive the ideas that
are a perfection and genius that they cannot fathom.
Werner’s ideas on God’s role in improvisation seem to be quite clear. It is hard to
identify whether or not he believes that one can truly imitate or be God in a sense, but he
seems to have a philosophical idea that it is possible, even if the likelihood is close to, or
is, nothing. This is not something that one can see, and most likely would not even know
if it happened, as the word “improvisation” itself comes from the Latin improvisus,
meaning “unforeseen.” (Spencer 124). In order for this theoretical idea to happen, the
performer would have to be in a position of complete and utter surrender. Cynthia
Winton-Henry, an improvisational dancer and minister, provides a closer look at this
when she says, “Creation is the playground. Improvisation is the play. Creativity is what
happens when they come together….In this kin-dom, we play ‘follow the leader’ with the
Spirit and ‘tag’ with the Holy.” (Spencer 125). Werner elaborates further on this idea of
surrender leading to perfection:
“There is a place inside each of us where perfection exists. The genius, God, lives there.
All the creative possibilities of the universe are to be found there. It is the innate ability
of each of us to be God, to behave with extreme dignity, to conduct our business in a
righteous manner, and to channel an endless stream of life-enhancing ideas and
celebratory sounds for the upliftment of mankind. This joyful noise is the sound of the
Supreme Being manifesting through us (Werner 77).”
35

36. Surrender, at least at a certain level, opens up the imagination, and Werner seems
to be saying that somewhere in the imagination one can find this perfection. Leslie
Stevenson, in The Twelve Conceptions of Imagination, goes through various forms that
imagination may take on; several of them could apply here, but one in particular, number
twelve, seems to show the imagination as a direct result of something higher. It is, “The
ability to create works of art that express something deep about the meaning of life
(Stevenson 258).” The meaning of life is the age-old question that many would simply
shrug their shoulders, possibly because of the fear of something that big. To Werner, as
well as to many Christians, the meaning of life is to find God, in some way or another.
Werner’s path follows a road that John Coltrane seemingly followed, which is to find
God somewhere deep within oneself, and once found, to release it musically.
For the jazz improviser, the spiritual journey to find God, or something higher
than the music, can be an increasingly frustrating path. The words of Werner imply that
the experience is something that can be held onto and lived repeatedly and continuously,
but the reality of it, as Sartre realized in his earlier quote about listening to jazz, is that the
musician in this experience eventually accepts reason and allows their own humanness to
enter. The distinction that Werner realizes is that, while drugs can open a temporary
window, as time goes on that window opens a little less, until it is completely shut, and
either a new path or a new drug is needed. If the latter is chosen, the process repeats
itself, but if the former is chosen, and the path opened up eventually by musicians like
John Coltrane and Miles Davis is followed, the process grows and is allowed to happen
more frequently.
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37. What Sartre expresses in his understanding on jazz is that the window may only
be open for a brief time, and when the human mind, possibly by default, falls back into
the fallible state where reason is god and the human is the center of the universe, the
window closes. Sartre insists that the musician must allow it to close. It must be
accepted and understood that it will open again, but if this is not accepted and the
musician attempts to keep it there on his or her own, it will be corrupted with the faults of
humanity.
At this point, the musician is caught in a struggle of the human self versus God,
where God may be sensing that the musician is telling Him, along with Frank Sinatra,
“I did it my way.” Any effort to capture that moment again, in the same way, fails
because of the very fact that it is complete surrender to God that leads to the experience
in the first place. By attempting to force it to come back, the musician is either trying to
do it alone, or an even worse endeavor, trying to command God.
It is essentially a process of the mind and spirit, where the human spirit is trying
to connect with this Holy Spirit, and when that connection is broken by the human spirit,
the process can only be renewed, but never captured. As Sartre dramatically proclaims,
“I must accept their death; I must even want that death.” In jazz improvisation,
especially in the form of stimulating Bebop style, only when the death of a religious
experience is acknowledged can the process of a new one begin.
37

38. Works Cited
Berliner, Paul F. Thinking in Jazz: the infinite art of improvisation. The University of
Chicago Press. Chicago and London. 1994.
Carvalho, John. “Improvisations, on Nietzsche, on Jazz.” Nietzsche, Philosophy and the
Arts. Edited by Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell and Daniel W. Conway.
Cambridge University Press. United Kingdom. 1998.
Hamilton, Andy. “The Art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Perfection.” British
Journal of Aesthetics. Vol. 40, No. 1. January, 2000.
Handbook of Religious Experience. Edited by Ralph W. Wood, Jr. Religious Education
Press. Birmingham, Alabama. 1995.
HarperCollins Study Bible. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. New York, New York. 1993.
Holy Bible. New International Version. Zondervan Bible Publishers. Grand Rapids,
Michigan. 1984
James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience. Penguin Books. Middlesex,
England. 1982.
John Coltrane: The Coltrane Legacy. Jazz Images, Inc. USA. 1985.
Pressing, Jeff. “Cognitive Processes in Improvisation.” Cognitive Processes in the
Perception of Art. Edited by W. Ray Crozier and Antony J. Chapman. Elsevier
Science Publishers B.V. North Holland. 1984.
Pressing, Jeff. Generative Processes in Music: the psychology of performance,
improvisation, and composition. Edited by John A. Sloboda. Oxford University
Press, Inc. New York. 2000.
Spencer, William David and Spencer, Aida Besancon. God Through the Looking Glass:
glimpses from the arts. BridgePoint Books. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
1998.
The Miles Davis Story. Channel Four Television Limited. Sony Music Entertainment,
Inc. New York, New York. 2001.
The World According to John Coltrane. Masters of American Music Series. East
Stinson, Inc. USA. 2002.
Stevenson, Leslie. “Twelve Conceptions of Imagination.” British Journal of Aesthetics.
Vol. 43, No. 3. July, 2003.
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39. Weiskel, Thomas. Romantic Sublime: studies in the structure and psychology of
transcendence. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London.
1976.
Werner, Kenny. Effortless Mastery: liberating the master musician within. Jamey
Aebersold Jazz, Inc. Indiana. 1996.
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