A final dispatch

Hi, it’s me, Jonah, the baritone saxophonist. Remember? There’s a good chance you do. I’ve been sending out more emails than usual. Because of that increased frequency, and out of respect for your time & attention, this will be my 13th and last dispatch for 2024.

I offer you a series of expanding temporal cycles:

today

It Was Always Time, my new album with Berke Can Özcan, is out! You can listen on any platform or grab vinyl on bandcamp. It looks like vinyl stock is running low on Bandcamp, so if you want it, grab it! We Jazz Records is doing 15% off all purchases now through Sunday with code “HELLO11224”. 

It takes so much time to prepare and roll out an album that sometimes it can feel like release day is the end. But it’s not. It’s the beginning. Berke and I are just getting started, and we are SO proud of this album. Your support means the world to us!

this week

During my late 20s and early 30s I split my time between music and working as a staffer at a leftist political action committee recruiting working class candidates to run for Congress. There are certain temporal periods that get hammered into you when you work on campaigns, and the most intense of them is GOTV (get out the vote) weekend. There’s a big election coming up on Tuesday. I feel it’s proximity.

I voted for Kamala Harris. Harris’s decision to define herself as a “proud gun owner” and lifelong prosecutor who accepts endorsements from people like Dick Cheney, ardently supports racist border policies, wants to expand drilling on American lands, and willfully commits to offering unlimited military aid to an Israeli government that is using that very aid to recklessly murder tens of thousands of civilians, has disturbed me. I believe Donald Trump is much worse in countless acutely important ways, so I chose. For me, that’s how it works.

I don’t believe in Kamala Harris, but I believe that a Democratic Party that welcomes Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, Ayanna Presley, Rashida Tlaib, Delia Ramirez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, will at least attempt to hold her accountable. Nobody in the Republican Party wants to hold Donald Trump accountable. If Harris wins, I hope that she governs more responsibly and compassionately than she has campaigned, and if she loses, I hope her party learns a lesson about which voters hold the power to decide our future.

this month

Regardless of what happens on election day, at midnight on November 6, I am getting on a plane and flying to Istanbul to begin rehearsals for a show with Berke Can Özcan, Arve Henriksen, Ozan Tekin, & Ozan Kisaparmak at Borusan Müzik Evi on November 9. Following that, I will head to Finland for shows in Turku & Helsinki, and then to Italy for concerts in Rome, Perugia & Faenza. You can find details on my website or at the bottom. I’m really excited to play live around Europe with Berke and a bunch of other collaborators including Lau Nau! 

When I get home, it will be mid-December, and 2024, a most difficult and painful year, will be at its close. I’m proud of the things I made, and haunted by everything else.

this life

In December 2022, I left my job as a political organizer in order to return to playing music full time. It was a hard decision. I am a decisive and engaged person, and the opportunity to take direct action to move the world in the direction I believed in was very meaningful for me. Having said that, at the close of my second year outside of the world of politics, one thing has become clear: we are trapped at a dead end caused by a false binary.

At first gasp, this may feel like a deeply pessimistic take, but I feel the opposite. There are those who define the fight for progress as a battle with two sides: good vs evil, forward vs backward, left vs right, Democrat vs Republican, democracy vs autocracy. At best they are wrong, at worst they are lying. Human civilization is in a constant state of transformative change, and with the help of radical art and experimental culture we are constantly being reminded that new ideas are exploding into existence at every moment. There is never a good reason to continue down the same path if that path is failing, and never a compelling reason to be forced to choose the opposite. Something else is always coming, not because it is ordained, rather because in a sea of spontaneous creation, something better is bound to emerge.

Exactly one year ago, I sent you an email entitled What’s The Point of Being A Musician where I wrote this:

We live in a world in which equality and justice do not exist. Although we use these words all the time, it is easy to forget that they describe things that we have, as of yet, refused to physically manifest for those who need them the most. Right now, equality & justice are purely hypothetical, and no matter how desperately we call out for them, they are not here for us to draw from in our moments of pain. In these moments, art is a reminder: we have everything we need to make something that has never existed before.

I’m not trying to say that art or music can change the world. I believe change comes when brave and courageous people form alignments that move powerful people to shift the trajectory of civilization. But in moments when injustice feels inevitable, music and art are essential because they reminds us that any one of us can make real change, true rebirth, and spontaneous creation using just the tools we already have in front of us.

We don’t have to settle for what we have. No matter who is President of the United States, we can create something better than anything that has ever existed.

tour dates

9 November • Borusan Müzik Evi • Istanbul TR • w/ Twin Rocks Band
27 November • Bar Kuka • Turku FI • Solo
29 November • We Jazz Festival • Helsinki FI • w/ Lau Nau
30 November • We Jazz Festival • Helsinki FI • w/ Berke Can Özcan
3 December • 30 Formiche • Rome IT • w/ Berke Can Özcan
4 December • Sacred Noise • Perugia IT • w/ Berke Can Özcan
5 December • Clan Destino • Faenza IT • w/ Berke Can Özcan

See you soon!
Jonah