Kind of Blue Having been very much involved in the performance of Mary Lou Williams’s Mass in Rome in January 1969, I write to express my thanks to Ian Marcus Corbin for his excellent article “A Jazz Mass?” (December 7), and to add a few points from my memory of the occasion. Not long after Mary Lou came to Rome and began pulling together singers and musicians from the st (...)
Letters
Jazz & the liturgy
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The anti Jazz folk consider this kind of music "irreverent." Thus they will oppose it absolutely as our bishop did in his cathedral after years of inclusion within the community's Jazz Weekend. So we lost our black brothers and sisters, most of our instrumentalists, got a severe bruising in the press, drove away many who were interested, and were typecast as radically conservative and unwelcoming. Just the sort of reputation that is all too common in today's church. We are in serious danger of becoming just another antique in a post modern religious cultural museum.
Reading Art Fleming's letter in response to Ian Marcus Corbin's jazz Mass article, I recalled a Mass I attended this May -- in San Jose Church, Los Ojos, New Mexico. The most moving Mass ever for this Northern Prairie anglo. I couldn't sing along with the opening hymn; I was too choked up with emotion. I hadn't noticed the choir loft up in back. What a joyous surprise: singers, acoustic and electric guitars and one old guy (maybe even older than I) on trumpet. All that strumming, all four parts clearly sung and blended -- and the jazzy mariachi trumpet with its wonderful low register, stretching the beat.
I did eventually recover my composure enough to sing along and be swept along. The music, the liturgy and the sermon were of one Glory to God piece.