. “You are in constant dialogue with the voice of shame, the brutal self-critic.“
Jazz pianist Frank J. Barrett received the Jazz Legacy Award from the Tri-C Jazz Festival in Cleveland last week, after a long lifetime in jazz. He certainly deserves it. (I wrote about him a few years ago here.)
He is a former pianist with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, author of Say Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz. He is also a professor in Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western University. I found his talk inspirational, and I’m not even a jazz aficionado. (Although he’s gone some way to making me one.)
What he said:
“I think jazz offers lessons for all of us – musicians and non-musicians. Playing jazz is a spiritual experience. It’s a spiritual journey. Why? Because the goal of jazz is to pay attention in the moment, to let everything else fade away, which means that you are in constant dialogue with the voice of shame, the brutal self-critic, the one that says that what you know is not enough, that you’re not good enough, that someone else can play better than you. We are constantly working to keep that voice silent, as much as possible, and try to say “yes” to what emerges. It is life on the edge of the unknown. We take action with no guarantee that what we do is going to be successful, is going to lead somewhere positive. But we do it anyway. We are constantly throwing ourselves in over our heads. If you read autobiographies and writings of mystics, like Teresa of Avila, and accounts of jazz musicians, you can’t tell the difference.
“It’s important to know that this is not just individual experience. In our country there’s so much emphasis on individuality. Maybe it’s one of the offshoots of the libertarian spirit that has taken over our country, the belief that the individual is autonomous and supreme. Jazz says that’s not true.”
“In this country we valorize leadership. There are so many books on leadership. Whoever talks about followership? Is it possible that followership can be a noble calling? We don’t have a vocabulary for it, so we don’t notice it and can’t even talk about it. But in jazz we do. We call it comping, short for accompanying. It means staying with the soloist, being committed to help that person be their very best. It means seeing their gift sometimes better than they see it themselves, with the belief that something good is going to come. You can’t do it too well or too pronounced because then you would become another soloist and no one is going to call you for gigs. This is a vocabulary, and a theory, and a model that this country needs. What does noble followership look like? That’s what this country needs. Because if we had good high-quality followership, a commitment to help the other think out loud, learn as they go, then we would have great leadership. We would bring the best out in each other.
“Bill Moyers passed away last month. Some of you may recall the series he did on Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell’s phrase was “follow your bliss.” I thought about that and I don’t think it’s quite right. I think what is better is to say “follow your gift.” Find your gift and follow that. That’s what jazz is devoted to, an invitation to continually discover your gift, to find the edge of your competence and pursue where your gift lies. And it’s about trying to find the gift in each other. The only way to find your gift is by experimenting and discovering. You are creating and discovering at the same time. Jazz musician’s life is devoted to experimentation. A life of experimentation is a spiritual life.”
”The work that Dominick Farinacci and others are doing at Tri C, developing young jazz musicians, is so inspirational. They are changing these students’ lives, teaching them much more than jazz – the joy of discovery, the experience of collaboration in the midst of the unknown, and more. Thank you to Tri C for this recognition. I treasure the memory of the whole weekend. I also had a chance to play with the all stars, especially Anthony Taddeo.
In closing: “This is such a pleasure and a surprise. It’s been sheer positive energy and so inspiring. I’m so heartened by the work you are doing here in this college. You have a fan for life in me.”
Tags: Bill Moyers, Frank J. Barrett, Joseph Campbell, Tommy Dorsey