Turns out, “it doesn’t mean anything unless you get that swing” applies to global politics as well as music.
In Luck’At the Global Forum conference on Monday in New York City, Wynton Marsalis, legendary trumpeter and director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, spoke about the state of post-election America, suggesting parallels between politics and music. Like Jazz, he added, American democracy is always “in motion.”
“Swing is a continuous reconciliation of opposites,” he said. “It is a constant effort to find balance between opposing forces.”
The recent presidential race has highlighted those oppositions, with differing policy proposals from both parties on everything from immigration, abortion rights and the economy. After Trump was announced as the next president of the United States last week, many people were divided between feelings of joy or disappointment. Marsalis says that the dynamics of politics, like jazz, are subjective to each individual.
“What I’m describing is momentum, and whether that momentum is going well or not depends on your perspective,” he said. “For some people, things are going well. Not for others.”
Marsalis uses jazz musicians as an example of how politicians or voters can be at risk when thinking, trapped in their own echo chambers of thinking. He said that a very loud drummer might believe that everything is going great, because all he can hear is the thump of the instrument. Basic players can crank up their amp to the max and think the sound is exactly what they want. But like government officials and citizens, they can get lost in their own views.
Music has no set leader, pattern, rhythm, or flow—so musicians constantly have to negotiate with each other to get the tone just right. According to Marsalis, politicians must do the same to best serve the needs of others.
“Democracy has no king. Because you don’t have a king and we have to find a way to negotiate in space,” he said. “Democracy has an element of choice. You can choose to devote as much energy as possible to the interests of others, or you can devote all of that energy to yourself.
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