a brief thought on genius

genius: noun: consummate intellectual, creative or other power, more exalted than talent

(Chambers Dictionary) - a prosaic definition, hardly doing justice to the inherent nature of the word itself. 

"He died soon after celebrating his thirty-first birthday; he did not live long enough to achieve his full potential. But Chu's reputation has been short changed; the record by which he is remembered, Ghost of a Chance, is a fine ballad performance whereas Berry was nearly always at his very best in faster moving music. The comparative under-estimation of his talent is most unjust for he was a very fine musician who lacked only the ultimate spark of genius possessed by those two famous near-contemporaries, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young."

These words were written by Tony Watts in 1995 and are extracted from liner notes to "Blowing Up a Breeze," a Topaz collection of Chu Berry tracks (1933-1941). Nobody could deny that the three tenors, Hawkins, Young and Berry, all have prodigious talent, yet I can't quite put my finger on the crucible of that "ultimate spark of genius." At what point will gifted, or talented, or proficient, or even damned fine, find ignition to become genius? A jazz musician (any musician) can have complete mastery of his or her instrument, equal to the best of musicians, and yet still not quite earn the accolade "genius." My music teacher once told me: you can polish your saxophone as much as you like but you'll still not be able to play the bugger. Perhaps by the same token, a musician can be as technically perfect as possible, but still not be able to play jazz. Take Yehudi Menuhin for example.

And this is where I like the word "spark" in Tony Watts' annotation. It's a lovely word, making me think of two flints being struck together - but then I wonder if spark is enough. What's the point in having a spark if there's no tinder to set alight? The result needs to be flame; sparks just scintillate for a moment and then instantly vanish. So I venture to suggest that the difference between ‘talented’ and ‘genius’ rests less with the musician per se (the spark) and more with the listener (tinder). A variation on the tree-in-a-forest philosophical mind game: is a musical genius still a genius if nobody is there to appreciate such genius? It’s me (and the receptive you, of course) that makes the genius. We decide, as subjective as such a process may be. And I decided that Hawkins and Young were undoubtedly geniuses, but so was Chu. It’s a good album, by the way.