Tag: Jazz

Van’s Cafe pt II

Last Sunday morning was my first time at the jam session here.

Today, my second. It is getting better, sweeter and with more substance.

Thanksgiving weekend with friends and music lovers. It’s game weekend in the US. Or shop til you drop.

Here jazz music permeates the air we breathe.

Unrehearsed of course.

But it flows. The energy, the passion and just a good passage of time together.

I feel jazz. It’s warm, sweet and penetrating.

It makes us human. Playful and painful at the same time. The headache and heartache.

Share it brother!

Hi five.

We take a rest to be real audience.

Forget the bills, the business of life.

Just celebrate it while living it.

Being In love.

Being confused.

And being here.

Join me. I probably be here next Sunday. My friend won’t be. He is doing his numbers now, but will fly back to San Francisco, where he plays in the SF Jazz band.

I am glad he is here this weekend. So I don’t have to be all the way back across the pond to hear him.

Of course Hung brought his amplifier, and guitar. Dat (blind) on the piano and the KC band on drum and base guitar.

They play well together. Jam session.

The audience too. Very selective. Very very much in love with every note, every expression of seeing open soul on display.

“Sometime when we touch, the honesty too much”.

I don’t feel alone here, even at an empty table. They are after all up there jamming.

Beer half-opened and I sip mine slowly, for fear that their number will end too soon.

The Heineken you can reorder, but friendship and the mutual love for music will never die.

I wish you can be here. Not the kind of canned “I wish you a Merry Christmas” you hear all the time.

But I truly wish you an experience as valuable and unique as this one.

Pop, Jazz, French mix.

Like the city itself. Old Saigon, always adapting and thriving on chaos.

I love this city, it’s people and its multiple expressions however unrehearsed and unprepared.

It’s our best and it’s best in my eyes.

 

Secret sauce

I met a pianist last Sunday. When he told me he was 65, I almost flipped. He happened to be a Judo trainer as well. Wow! He looked 45.

Another friend of mine, Jazz musician and software expert, also looks young for his age. What’s the secret sauce? Shirley MacLaine doesn’t look 78.

You might say, oh well, actors and actresses take care of themselves.

How about us? Don’t we want to take care of ourselves?

We are actors of our life scripts. That’s the secret sauce.

Stand in front of the mirror, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Breathe in , breathe out. Sing out loud, in and out of the showers.

Most New Year resolutions are health-related e.g. losing 10 lbs….

But the goal must be rooted in the subconscious and lived out habitually.

I am sure the pianist had logged in 10,000 hours of Judo practice (he broke many of his bones, just like Jackie Chan).

Still, he wore cross-training shoes, jeans and stretched short sleeves. I am sure he could hang out with his son (who was trying out for the US Olympic Judo team) and be mistaken as “one of the boys”.

Our life expectancy has increased to around 77 years. Like companies , we are “Built to Last”.

Take aways from most admired companies: agility, flexibility and discipline to follow through. Front-line employees are empowered and educated to make judgment calls.  But most importantly, leaders must be able to take a step back and do a pre-morterm analysis (the O ring in Challenger, the release valves in TMI nuclear reactor).

Problems are systemic, built up over time like dental plaque .  Meanwhile, people are creatures of habits i.e. taking the path of least resistance. Voila! Recipe for disaster. Everyone is just doing his or her job logging in 10,000 hours of minimum wages.

I noticed the pianist fingers on the key boards after he had told me who he was (Judo trainer).  I tried to see if he could still manage those graceful spreads. He did play a bit harder than most. Strength and swiftness, controlled yet flexible.

Our time is now. Use the opposite force to our advantage. We have tried to use our own one too many. Try it the other way. Be agile. Be flexible. Be open-minded. It might work. It’s the secret sauce I have seen in musicians and martial-arts experts. When you are multi-talented, it triggered something else, some place else in the brain. Use it.

Saigon Jazz

It reminded me of the scene from Woodstock: long-hair kids, guitar, tatoo and scooters. All converged in an alley. Parking was a problem. I asked neighbors to pitch in: it’s a wake for a musician friend who had recently passed away.

His students came from My Tho, those with eye-sights and those without. They jammed, they celebrated, they sang.

Come Together….right now.

My friend, the host, wore red shoes and brown hat. He jammed too. A lot.

After all, he has done so with the SF Jazz band.

Someone got to get those blind musicians some food. There you go, buddies. Want some beer?

So we went on: band after band.

A mini-Woodstock, minus the mud.

I learned about my deceased friend by experiencing his music legacy.

My friend had reflected on his life before he passed away in a hospice: his friends (who were present last night) and his students (who were playing then) were nearest to his heart.

I have never been prouder.

We played together when we were in 7th grade.

The passage of time tore us apart but meeting him before his death helped fill that gap.

He was alert and caring.

I blogged about him in Long’s Last Christmas.

But last night, at Jazz night in Saigon, he “reincarnated” through younger versions of himself.

You want to be rejuvenated, then that’s the place to be.

I am a believer in the healing power of music.

Last night, I learned one more thing: it helped the blind express themselves much better than those of us with sights.

I wish you were there. I wish to hear those blind musicians again, soon. I miss them already.