do you know what it means to miss new orleans?

Suppertime is never really good for philosophical debate. This could be because antacids and digestive juices react chemically with abstractions. Or maybe it’s the fact that our suppers tend to be excuses for quaffing copious volumes of red wine, port and single malt. Either way, as evenings process into late nights, supper conversation tends to become a little more intense, pensive and irrational in nature.

Here is the question from a recent bibulous encounter over plates of stilton, brie “Rustica” and Jacob’s cream crackers: if jazz were a language, which would it be?

One diner thought Spanish, reasoning that Spain’s fiery national traits were a strong parallel for the evolution of our favourite music. It’s a large country of diverse landscapes and enough land to allow very different forms of culture to co-exist happily, without unduly restricting parochial and regional aspirations. It can be at once introspective, romantic and exciting – this is all reflected in the language. My Spanish vocabulary is limited to calling “Hola!” across a road so I nodded sagely without attempting to contradict. Somebody did start to relate the Basque separatist cause to the history of Jazz, but by then the stopper was out of the whisky. “Mingus is to jazz what the Basques are to Spain,” explained my friend, as if I had a chance of understanding what he meant. Was Mingus a Basque separatist? “It’s an analogy,” he despaired as I poured myself a large tumbler of malt.

The Maestro thought that he could detect a clear Teutonic influence. “We like to pretend jazz is one original phrase after another, but in reality proponents tend to adhere to quite strictly established formats. Pass the whisky.” I obeyed. “The Germans are like that,” he continued. “Hitler tried to ban jazz, but that’s only because he didn’t understand the music.”

“It’s Italian,” proclaimed a visiting marine biologist. “Totally mad, chaotic and undisciplined,” he argued, but then the man is a self-confessed devotee of Ornette Coleman.

“Probably Latin,” I ventured.” Laughter rippled around the table. “A dead language,” said the cello player. But Latin is not a dead language; it’s an immutable language. That’s the great strength of Latin. No interfering scholar attempts to tinker with it and send it careering towards that oblivion where pedants while away idle hours writing letters to ‘The Times’ about the inexorable dilution of the English language, totally ignoring 2000 years of linguistic history. “You know where you stand with Latin,” I explained. “It’s cast iron.” The port came round again, closely followed by whisky “You see, there’s only one true jazz – New Orleans. All the others are scions, off-shoots, hybrids, but they are never true original jazz. New Orleans is THE jazz – it can’t move or change. Time and idioms marched on, leaving New Orleans unchanged. Like Latin.”

“It’s all double-Dutch to me,” chipped-in Mrs Pooter Dodman. “The X-Factor is just about to start. Shall we go through to the lounge?”

The Maestro and I stayed at the table, gently swirling whisky. “Bad year for mushrooms,” he slurred.
“Is that an analogy?” I asked.
He peered at me through the bottom of his glass.
“No. It’s a Bunnahabhain,” he said.