One of the amazing qualities of all great art is its ability to transcend its own time. When listening to Ben Webster and Harry Carney solo on Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail” from May 4, 1940 with its complex structure and its blistering yet elegant swing you are encountering music that is intensely a part of the era it was created in yet simultaneously existing like ether, beyond time and space (by the way, feel free to substitute your own favorite film, song, book, poetry, play, theatre, dance, architecture, performance, visual art or music in this passage). The highest artistic creations run deep into the veins of human existence and emotion, allowing it to literally transcend the superficial attributes, noise and concerns of modern life and strike us deep where we live. It embodies and expresses the most profound and primal human emotions in ways that can’t be understood, only felt; joy, sadness, fear, love, etc.
I guess because I knew the bluesmen Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf fairly well I often think of this seeming paradox by visualizing a kid somewhere hundreds of years from now listening to the Wolf singing “Smokestack Lighting” or Muddy singing “Feel Like Going Home” and being totally blown away. He (or she) will not need to know anything about these great men, or understand the tumulus life they lead or the virulently racist American they grew up in. They will not need to know anything about their hard life in the Mississippi Delta or the violent south side of Chicago they performed in and lived with their families or the musicians that played on these recordings. The powerful voices and sounds will come out of the darkness and pierce their heart right where they live and (perhaps) change their life. That is the indefinable magic of the arts, and it is important to be touched by this every day.
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