When I was a junior in college, I took a class from a visiting writer and thinker named Albert Murray. The class was titled 'The History of Jazz.' You would think by the title that it would be something of a history class. Not so. Yes, there was some listening to various artists and some facts thrown in here and there, but Murray had a different agenda, which was to teach us the underlying 'meaning' of jazz. In doing this, Albert Murray taught me one of the most important concepts I think I will ever learn, because it's the foundation to begin thinking about any art form, whether it be jazz or painting. It's this: 'Jazz is the ultimate extension, elaboration, and refinement of the blues ritual.'

I don't want to write a dissertation here, so I'm not going to bore you with the entire content of the class, but that one sentence sums it up quite well. It speaks to game theory and how new art comes out of improvising on rituals, or conventions, that have been handed down. You have to know the rituals, speak the language, before you can begin to improvise. Every ritual or language is made up of certain rules. In the end, it's not how you follow the rules that make your art interesting; it's how you bend and break the rules that take the artform to new heights. Competition comes into the equation here, too, because musicians or artists will wind up 'playing' or 'riffing' off of what others have done to make something all their own.

So why am I ranting on this? I've been interested in how this all relates to blogging. I've noticed among various blogs that there are definite conventions that people follow. But then somebody will start extending one of those conventions to something new. And pretty soon that will become a convention, too. It's fascinating stuff.

If you want to read a book of Murray's that goes into some of his thoughts on ritual and play and how it relates to blues and jazz, read Stomping the Blues.

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