Why does it still touch the soul today

Good morning, dear reader,

As a journalist you can write about crises and conflicts. You can get angry about unpleasant politics and lack of reform, as we often do here at the dawn of time. Not today.

Today we wear patent leather shoes and travel back 100 years in our minds: Whoosh! We’re in the golden age of jazz arrive. While we are still dusting off the passage of time from our double, the first sounds of a magical melody ring in our ears: “After You’re Gone” The bass sings, di-di-di-diii, then cheerful trumpets and clarinets, plus banjo, schunk-schunk, and we sway to the beat. Is there any music more beautiful than this song? Possible. However, there may also be people who think time travel is impossible. They don’t have enough imagination. Luckily that didn’t happen to us.

So just keep going. We wanted to hear more about the era when America experienced an economic boom, finally wanted to dance after the war and delighted half the world with their new music: Between 1918 And 1929 the world forgot how to line up and find syncopation. From the backyard of New Orleans – from spirituals, blues, ragtime, brass band parades, and multilingual Creole – emerged music that shifted the balance of gravity. African Americans took them down the Mississippi to Chicago, then to Harlem; Forbidden dungeons become schools of freedom of listening.

Then came 1925, the year of the critical moment: Microphones replaced mouthpiece record players, electric records suddenly made nuances audible, and radio spread them across the Atlantic to Europe. Dancing in Paris Josephine Baker, while in Chicago, a cheerful man in his mid-twenties blasts heavenly notes from his trumpet: Louis Armstrong elevating solo playing from collective improvisation, pouring blues grammar into shooting star musical grooves, creating chants with trumpets – and trumpets with voices. little Parham, Chicago’s underrated bandleader, taming wildness with discipline: clear arrangements, dance music with a soulful beat – that’s how the sound of the late twenties conquered the world. The talented one Fat Waller worked on the piano – left hand like clockwork, right hand like a magic wand – and between twelve beers wrote catchy songs that can still be heard today in bars from New York to Berlin.

But jazz is not a monument, but a river. The voice of the gods Ella Fitzgerald turning the rhythm of the beat into a feather-light sound architecture. Billie Vacation creating a delayed chant that seems to bemoan the harmony. Django Reinhardt let his fingers, crippled by the trailer fire, fly over the guitar strings. Josephine Baker gave jazz a global face – dancer, cosmopolitan, icon. Made later Paul Desmond song of the century “Take Five” and then “Take Ten”. John Coltrane ultimately opening up harmony to infinity: born in 1926, he was a child of the golden jazz era and carried his legacy into the 1960s.

The source of the freest musical styles was opened a hundred years ago. He still writhes to this day. Twenties jazz wasn’t just entertaining; it is musical democracy. The collective and the individual speak at the same time, contradict each other, but remain united in one whole. Improvisation here is not just for fun, but rather training attention – and listening is a form of civilization.

This explains why jazz is good for the soul. Anyone who listens to it trains concentration and calm simultaneously. You learn to modulate one sound without drowning out the other sound. One maintains that a note is not “wrong,” but rather a suggestion. You feel the beauty is not smooth, but breathing – with the sound of the record and the smile that lingers long after the final chords fade.

So call me a romantic for my own sake, but I still maintain: People who listen to jazz are better people. They have mastered the art of listening, patience in syncopation, and respect for each other’s efforts. They know that freedom follows only the rhythm of deliberation. And anyone who listens to the sounds of the Roaring Twenties will hear not just an era, but an attitude: We are many, we are different, we are still vibrant. What could be better?

Which jazz song do I recommend to you now? I’m spoiled for choice. And I still believe it.

Name changes, resignation of party founders, violent conflicts in various state associations: BSW, so far Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance That is, it appears to be on the decline. In Brandenburg, where the only SPD/BSW coalition is in power, four people left the party last week because their “radical positions” and “authoritarian tendencies” caused a stir.

There are currently prominent controversial topics on the agenda in the Potsdam state parliament: voting on State Reform Agreement, which is intended to determine how ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio will work in the future. Even though he is the deputy prime minister himself Robert Crumbach The job had been approved, the majority of the BSW parliamentary group wanted to vote against it, so there would be no coalition majority – an embarrassment for the SPD Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke.

After Lower Saxony became the penultimate federal state to give the green light yesterday, the vote in Brandenburg is the final hurdle for the state’s reform agreement, which will come into force on December 1. It’s hard to imagine how long the new effort by 16 federal states will take. However, a scenario could also occur in which the opposition CDU ensures a slim majority. What impact this will have on the Red-Purple coalition remains to be seen. Despite this, it is time for the federal states to own it General reform expensive public channels.