Jazz on the Russian River - Podcast
Posted on September 13, 2005
I wonder what the world would be like if its musica franca was jazz rather than marches and war whoops. I lollygagged Sunday, 9-11 away with my wife and friends at Jazz on the River, in Guerneville, on Northern California’s Russian River. Jazz buffs have gathered here every fall since the 1970s.
Martial music prompts one to march straight ahead, no questions asked, allowing nimble guerillas to snipe from the bushes, one reason the Americans beat the Brits in the Revolutionary War and the Vietnamese defeated the Americans. War whoops come from those whipped into a frenzy by chieftains and charlatans stoned on power. Jazz, on the other hand, requires creativity, innovation, quick responses and a level of
cooperation that we desperately need right now. Jazz musicians play exquisitely in harmony but defer to one another for solos. Usually they find their way back together in the end. I thought a bit about 9-11 — but just a little bit on this beautiful day — about how police, firefighters, ordinary New Yorkers came together as a giant selfless help group, doing their individual jobs then reaching beyond them like a sax players on a riff. Not so in New Orleans, ironically one of the birthplaces of jazz, where cops deserted and bureaucrats marched with blinders, like horses in a funeral cortege.
But enough of that. Fall is probably the most beautiful time to experience Northern California, especially here in Sonoma county. The sun is lower in the sky and casts a glowing orange light over the vineyards to the east, it outlines the towering redwoods along the Russian River and makes the cliffs at the coast glow orange, a striking color contrast to the blue, pollution-free skies. This is Northern California’s real summer, when the fog and the tourists have drifted away.
Although during the summer and fall, canoeists and bathers flock to Guerneville, a rather unusual mix of people call this place home. Guerneville is still Hicksville, with more honky tonk bars in a one block stretch than anyplace I have seen. You drive along the river and you see American flags posted on houses and fences. At one end of town is Fyfe’s Resort, a summer camp for gays, including some of the old Hollywood elite, for years. It now appears to be going mainstream. It has quite a good restaurant, I am told by friends who live there. Nearby is Bohemian Grove, the exclusive, mostly white men’s retreat where every summer leaders of industry and of the free and not-so-free world, along with chosen artists and musicians, cavort (naked some say), play theater games and, according to conspiracy buffs, plot the future of the world.
I’ve been there as a guest (Kissinger was nowhere to be seen) and it was pretty benign but a bit socially awkward. The Bohemians do their retreats in fairly primitive cabins, remindful of those of the Ewoks of Star Wars. This does, by the way, look like Ewok-land, with its redwood forests and burbling streams.
Except today, for a few hours, when jazz takes over: Pat Metheny, Carla Bley, Kim Nalley and the New Nelson Riddle Orchestra conducted by Riddle’s son Christopher. Not terribly Ewok-like, but a splendid combination of solo virtuosity and cooperation. What we need is another sax player in the White House.
We flew over Sonoma County a couple of years ago and shot this video:
Flying Dreams: Sonoma County (WMV)
» Filed Under Audio, California, Entertainment, Places
