325: “Ahmad’s Blues” by Ahmad Jamal
August 20, 2013 Leave a comment
Ahmad Jamal is standing in a white shirt and loose brown pants, looking into the distance. He is thinking about what might happen to him when he dies. You see, he’s decided he’s not swallowing just any old jazz someone throws him about what’s going to happen to sweet, sweet Ahmad when he kicks the bucket.
In truest fact, Ahmad is now cresting a jagged hillock, his linen clothing stirring in the tropical breeze, considering whether or not the afterlife might be a lot crazier, even, than the wildest tales of heaven or hell.
Ahmad sits down at a piano resting atop a geometrically unfathomable mountain peak on a violently verdant isle.
Maybe everyone gets their own version of an afterlife, based on their expectations and/or demeanor at point of exit.
Ahmad stretches his hands like they’re cats who just woke up.
Maybe the afterlife is a dream you never wake up from, but instead of a human brain sleeping, it’s the interrelations of the atoms and photons circulating around the earth (and beyond) that were at some point part of you, culminating in a hazy, planet-sized dreamstate.
Ahmad is exploring the keys, coloring his afterlife musings with a delicate, undulating subtext.
Maybe the afterlife is a poetry slam where you have to recite your life’s memories in clever verse. You go on to some other afterlife once you start rhyming about the afterlife poetry slam.
Ahmad Jamal is now shirtless, and his hands never left the piano.
Maybe the afterlife is not worth the consideration, if you’re not properly using the time you’ve got.
Ahmad plays “Ahmad’s Blues” with Israel Crosby on bass and Vernel Fournier on drums, on Ahmad’s Blues, released in September, 1958.
Ahmad is still going strong at 83, with upcoming performances. Here, there, and beyond.
Enjoy.
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