Bird's Ecstasy Part Two

And so it was then, the man and the message that rewired America and thus the world. The joy and the ferocious wonder of it all that surrounds. I could hear this now. Ah, Bird was an ecstatic! This really being the key revelation that opened up the musics many worlds. And quickly I began to understand that his improvisation was a much a response to the architecture of a given composition as it was, and perhaps more especially, the total environment. The man and his times, our times, times changing, those changes, too. And with this "serious fun," this humor that laughs to keep from lies, hews cries and sighs, always the buoyant and propulsive swing. And of course among the many musical personae projected from the bell of his horn came the masks retained of African ancestors. Indeed, the complex poly-rhythms which served as vehicles of his imaginative export were inherited directly through Africans in the New World. So Bird's joy was also one of memory and as it must be with us, "a memory that will not sleep." Once I began to hear this, just as suddenly, it was everywhere. Thousands of other musics, not all jazz, became enlivened with these insights. What it is, what it ain't, what it ought to be. Looking forward looking back, Now Is The Time.