What good is melody...

What good is music?
If it ain’t possessing something sweet
Now it ain’t the melody
And it ain’t the music
There’s something else that makes this tune complete.....

It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing. That's what the Sligo Jazz Project week had, and then some. A week of music, of love, of laughter, of such incredible energy and vibes that I'm still not quite over it yet. Meeting new friends, reconnecting with old (and not so old!) friends and just generally living in the moment, it was a week I badly needed, a week to take myself out of this strange new world I've found myself in over the last two and half a months.

Music is one thing that helps. It helps distract, it helps soothe, it helps heal. The right notes, the right melody can hit at times when you least it expect it to, and that's what happened to me a lot last week. There were times when a memory would come to mind, something small and would leave me on the verge of tears. Then a groove would begin to emerge from a classroom, voices or notes would echo down the corridors and life suddenly seemed ok.

Watching returning students who've improved so much over the years, watching new students get their groove on, the kids group so fantastically led by Cathal and watching the reaction of the crowds as they fell into a music induced trance was fantastic. Catching up with returning tutors, chilling out with new ones, and some amazingly sweet moments mid-conversation, mid-drive, mid-gig, mid-jam....just fantastic.

There's so many happy moments that bring a smile to my face when I think of them, hearing & watching Jeanfrancois & Judy jamming together on the first night in 5th, driving a rather lovely gentleman round Sligo as he stuck his hands out of the sunroof was fun, as were the many mad moments during dinners, where Lieve and I would hit the wall of tired insanity and starting laughing at something completely nonsensical. The first sup of a glass of Guinness after a long day, Johnny's constant cheeriness and loveliness around the school, and a rather long and funny conversation about the correct way to pronounce indefatigable (in-de-fatigue-able or in-defat-ig-able) with 3 funny gents will always make me smile, as will the quietness of last evening just chilling in the Sligo Park with a glass of vino and some wonderful company before moving onto 5th to begin the goodbyes.

There were so many beautiful musical moments, not least Alan Broadbent's calm and moving sincerity as he talked about his arrangement of "Wayfaring Stranger"  that Charlie Haden sang so hesitantly and yet so beautifully-he spoke of the subtle mood changes in the music, how during the line "I know dark clouds will gather round", the strings surround him like the dark clouds... and then those very same strings soothe us with the hope in the line "Golden fields lie out before me...." . Varying moments in gigs throughout the week, Steve's solo tribute which finished with the tutors all singing along at the end, or seeing all the tutors performing & enjoying themselves during the last show....all just such beautiful moments...

One wonderful personal moment for me was chatting with Alan over lunch one of the days and talking with him about the first time I heard and saw that piece. I felt utterly transfixed, that for those few minutes, all there was in the world, in the universe was Charlie Haden's voice, those strings and me. It's still hard to put into words just how beautiful, how heartbreaking and yet soul soothing a piece it was, and how hard it hit me that first time, but I tried to explain that reaction I'd had to him. And Alan said, "well, that's the whole purpose of music really, to take yourself outta life sometimes.."

Life is nothing without music, and music is nothing without life.