I have kind of a love/don’t love relationship with Jazz. On the one hand, structured jazz standards are absolutely my favorite thing. Though I was born in the sixties, I grew up on my father’s jazz albums, and the music of artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Keely Smith, and Jimmy Dorsey is still my favorite genre of all time. However, unstructured jazz just never really spoke to me. Though that has always been a source of some shame to me, still I just can’t get into it’s unpredictability. I realize that knocks my musicality rating down quite a few notches, but though I have great respect for the musicians, I’ve just never found a way to appreciate or enjoy the style.

Yesterday, however, that may have started to change. I came across a lecture-and-music series on YouTube called Wynton at Harvard: Hidden in Plain View: Meanings in American Music. Between 2011 and 2014, Wynton Marsalis delivered a series of lectures at Harvard University covering the forms, songs, and devices that bind all American music together. His lectures are essentially about how while the rest of our country may be divided, music has been bringing Americans together all along. His goal with the series is to illustrate and illuminate our commonalities. I couldn’t love this message more.

“Me vs. You and ‘Us vs. Y’all’—vs. ‘All of Us’—remains the struggle at the heart of humankind and the central debate of our Constitution. How do we achieve a common ground when individual victories are much more valued? This problem has been resolved harmoniously in our musical arts for over a century. Under the vibrant din of our democracy, on the lower frequencies, sonic metaphors speak to and for us all. What they tell us about what it means to be American could serve us well in these divisive and uncivil times.”

– Wynton Marsalis

The powerful combination of Marsalis’s charisma, knowledge, and use of music as illustration is drawing me into a lecture series I would otherwise likely have skipped. Like all talented educators, the artist is making me want to learn more about the subject using music (manly American jazz) and humor as his tools. The band is fantastic, and who knows? Maybe when I’m done with the series, I’ll be a fan of jazz!

You can learn more about the lecture series on the Lincoln Center’s Jazz Blog and you can watch the entire series on the Jazz at Lincoln Center YouTube channel.