by Imani Evans

As I write this, I am listening to an Art Tatum CD. Listening to this underscores something about culture in our time that I've been trying to convey for the longest, to the interested, the indifferent, and the downright hostile. Indeed, it can be said that the story of Imani Evans since 1995 has been the story of his search for a captive audience to hear him testify on matters of this kind. Imani Evans listening to Art Tatum in this place, and at this precise moment, is nothing short of a miracle. I know only the smallest amount about Tatum, but that is still more than would be predicted by any examination of my life at any given point.

A pianist of freakish talents, Tatum had achieved that rare distinction of having his virtuosity arouse an ironic sort of suspicion in some: he was accused of having a showy technique, of using more notes than necessary‹the sort of nattering which harkens back to those who charged Van Gogh's canvasses with being "too full of paint." Much of the thrill of hearing an Art Tatum comes from the provocative truth that it shouldn't be happening, that at any point, the odds are ever against an Imani Evans finding his way through the morass of the postmodern everyday and making contact with an Art Tatum and the artistic and cultural heritage he represents. This is the one thing, above all others, that I would be almost too ecstatic in getting across to my captive audience: that jazz is in some ways for me, but in so many others way not.

What this means is that for me to have been a "jazz aficionado" since 1994 has demanded on my part a willingness to reach, even with some pugnacity, across myself at inconceivable angles in order to pluck whatever can be apprehended of this special art form. The few times that I have tried to write or speak about jazz bear this out: it is one of the few things in my life that I can count on to agitate me into being my most profound, as opposed to the rather clichéd thing that I am normally. That must be it: an Art Tatum provides me with a delectable opportunity to joyously struggle against my own personal cliches3Ž4that of young person, that of young black person, that of young black person in 21st century "postmodern" America.

It might have been the first time I heard "Giant Steps" that I first experienced the agitative properties of jazz. The song was on a "Best of John Coltrane" cassette tape that I purchased at a local music store. At this point I didn't know that much about Coltrane, and had almost no context for this particular tune. What I heard was just so much sonic hieroglyphics‹mysterious, yet Coltrane's sublimated fury as he tore through those chord changes came across without any need for translation. The aesthetic sensibility was remote, yet somehow not completely unreachable from the place I was at. I apprehended just enough, and by some miracle managed to revisit the strange world of Coltrane as many times as it took to create a comfortable abode there.

What this proves: that if I know anything at all, it is only by way of struggle, and an exhausting swimming upstream against my easier nature.

Listening to jazz provides me with an opportunity to exercise those subtle parts of my being that lay dormant most of the time. It is really hard to give a sense of the wonderful raptures and auguries that become possible only when my attention is brought to a fine focus, as when I'm listening to jazz, or writing poetry, or doing some serious thinking. Jazz will always be special to me because it is a ready source of that ineffable anti-experience which allows even a diffuse knucklehead like myself to penetrate to the marrow of things.