Turtle Island String Quartet by Coutney

I have never listened to jazz except for once when a friend tried to convert me from a rocker to a jazzerciser. I am still a rocker and I wonder as I remember that time, why did I resist the pull of jazz music so much? After listening to the Turtle Island Quartet I wonder if it is the directness of jazz. With rock, yes, singers are singing their questioning lyrics to you, challenging you to change or think one way or another on an issue, but that is the comfort in rock, if you don’t like the question in that particular song or album you just don’t listen to it and you don’t have to be questioned. But with jazz, well, that’s a different story there is no singer feeding you words only an instrument that evokes emotion, an instrument that must be interpreted. The Moscow State symphony was amazing, but it had a completely different effect on me than the Turtle Island Quartet. The Symphony was more of a story being told with all its parts fitting together to form a mood, but with this jazz quartet each instrument is heard singly, of course in harmony with the others, but the significance of the singleness of each is what sets jazz apart. Each instrument is contributing to the conversation between all of them and they all have their own ideas. I feel like a crazy person thinking in this abstract and immaterial way, but jazz music is the most direct music I have ever heard. It creates mood like the symphony or a rock band, but then it spotlights one instrument giving the impression that that one is saying something important, but it’s not like a singer telling us what the song means. Depending on the mood created the instruments’ directly challenge us to be the rock singers, questioning and challenging ourselves. This is why I believe I once fought jazz, because it is hard to dive in and analyze oneself as jazz music seems to cause me to do. I thank the Turtle Island Quartet for creating and sharing their music that caused my very needed introspection.