Politics and All That Jazz

Voloshyn Roman/Adobestock

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“A man is known by the company he keeps”— originally derived from one of the Aesop Fables

Besides being known by the company that one keeps, perhaps one can be known by the music one loves. Some know me as “Dr Jazz” from my review of jazz records many years ago.

So, maybe we could include an evaluation question for patients: What’s your favorite kind of music?

If you are familiar with my writings or videos, you already know that I love jazz. And, guess what? One of our presidential nominees does too, as I just found out from the article “US Election 2024: Kamala Harris Knows Her Jazz - Why This Should Count With Voters” in the August 9, 2024, edition of The Conversation.

Now, sometimes someone will say they like jazz, but it is only the most superficial crossover sort of jazz, just designed for some pleasant diversion. But not here. When you go to a record store and buy yourself copies of records such as “Let My Children Hear Music” by Charlie Mingus as well as the jazz version of “Porgy and Bess” by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, you are a hardcore lover of jazz.

So what, you might be asking, in regards to politics. Maybe this is just a personal like that has little to do with politics. In this case and in our current political situation, I think it does. As I’ve written in the past for Psychiatric Times, jazz is basically antiracist. It is an original music developed by African-Americans and has spread around the world. It, via the music of Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), was inspiration for the South African fight against apartheid, while it gets banned by dictatorships. Much of it is improvised, just like we do in everyday conversation. That being said, it is not necessarily an easy music to embrace, as it often has less structure. It takes time, deep listening, and innovation along the way. Isn’t this what we want and need for a country and world being infected with divisiveness?

As it turns out, when jazz and American Presidents are considered together, several recent Presidents espoused and embraced jazz. Jimmy Carter invited jazz musicians of various stylistic persuasions to play at the White House, while Bill Clinton personally played a mean jazz saxophone.

President Obama conveyed the powerful process of listening to jazz to his speech writer, as Cody Keenan conveyed in the September 30, 2022, article for Esquire, “How Barack Obama’s Love of Jazz Changed My Life”. Early on, when he was trying to write a draft for Obama’s 50th anniversary speech about Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech”, Obama suggested that he listen to John Coltrane while writing the draft. Coltrane was renowned as a jazz saxophonist and, in particular, for his spiritual album “A Love Supreme.”

Later on, when he was writing a State of the Union Speech and thought he got everything important in it, Obama suggested he listen to Miles Davis. Why? Miles was renowned for the importance of what he left out and what his brief silences within his music meant to convey. In other words, Keenan should consider what now needed to be left out! Miles was a renowned jazz trumpeter. Probably his most famous piece was “Kind of Blue,” a title that had mental health implications. Another famous piece was titled “So What.”

Wynton Marsalis, another jazz trumpeter, alive and well, has talked about how jazz explains and represents democracy. Aren’t we now trying to save our democracy? That calls for some jazz, doesn’t it?

Dr Moffic (he/him/his) is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry, and is now in retirement and refirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.