I recently read with alarm about the pending opening of the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Center in Decatur.
This so-called music is dangerous and antithetical to our values.
That’s not just my opinion. Jazz and its aficionados are unabashed in their contempt for the things Decatur holds dear. Our most beloved civic space, the square, is a term of snide contempt among jazzers. Public health leaders from our CDC have spent decades trying to save our kids from cigarettes, but these jazzers venerate soloists who smoke.
You wouldn’t poison the lungs of children by putting a soot-belching factory next to a kindergarten, so why would you poison the ears of our young people by exposing them to 9th chords and odd time signatures? Adolescence is physically and emotionally complex enough already. Is it fair to make it harmonically complex as well?
The bottom line is this: Swinging is for playgrounds. The pocket is for pants. I want my kids to be sharp. I certainly don’t want them to B♭. Jazz is for 52nd Street, not E. Trinity Place. You might think it’s “cool” to “blow” A minor, but I sure don’t. Sicko.
Remember: when you diminish a chord, you diminish a child.
I urge Decatur to say no to jazz.