I am not a jazzer. No way. Expose me to pure jazz, and I will run a mile. It just doesn’t work for me, and I have tried (as have friends). It really came home to me when I went to see Bill Bruford some years ago. There I was looking forward to this alumnus of three of my favourite bands but, No! This wasn’t right at all. It was all clarinets and marimbas.

Yet, when the music in my comfort zone gets exposed to jazz, that’s when it really gets exciting. Joni when she gets Jaco. Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. My favourite folk dance thrives when Andy Cutting’s melodeon, the hurdy gurdy and the bagpipes, get cut with multiple saxes and it swings. Above all, at the recent live reincarnations of King Crimson, what has got me on the edge of my seat with delight, what has enthralled me and kept me guessing, has been the syncopations, the flights of fancy, the vaulting instrumentals setting off at tangents. I have to concede; it’s the jazz which makes it.

Given the recent expose from the Daily Mail that a love of jazz renders suspect the credibility of Scottish » Continue Reading.