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Variations from the Barrio Exodus 1:15-22; Exodus 15:20-21; 1 Corinthians 1:24-29 It required considerable anguish for this aging white guy to dare to speak in the midst of the magic worked by Dwight Andrews. Anguish, because I only know three things aboutjazz: l.Jazz arises among the disadvantaged who cannot afford to have things settled because they will always settle against them. And so they practice a beat that keeps moving, keeps upsetting, keeps subverting , keeps making impossible angles of reality possible and available . The disadvantaged patrons ofjazz always come from and live in some barrio or another, far from settled power, if not a barrio, a slum, ifnot a slum, some other arena of marginality where one dare not even hope for comfortable settlement. 2.Jazz consists in a theme that keeps recurring. 3. That theme is played out with endless variations, enormous freedom, but under discipline to the core theme to which reference is endlessly made, return to which always matters decisively. That is the sum of what this lead-footed white man knows about jazz. I will see if that is enough to last for these twenty minutes or so. I So consider the natural habitat ofjazz in the barrio. Jazz does not arise among tenured whites, not even among privileged blacks, but among those who go for broke every time because there is so little to lose, so much to hear and say, so much to hope. Behind Dwight and his company are the long history ofNew Orleans and perhaps also my hometowns of St. Louis and Kansas City. But we go back further than those old, weary cities. We go back to the Easter dances of those who saw up close the Dead One raised to power. But behind Easter we go way back to Daniel and we watch the three Jewish boys kept safe while they danced on hot coals in the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, dancing safe and not burning (Dan 3:27-28). But we go behind the 165 furnace to the exile where our folks sang songs of remembered Zion, which the Babylonians and many other managers mocked and teased, but the songs would not cease (Ps 137:1-6). But we can go back behind exile far enough back to David the eighth son, the little runt of a king moved to power, unafraid in his innocence to dance before the invisible God who sat on the ark, and we watch the runt take office (1 Sam 16:12-13; 2 Sam 6:16). But we go behind David and behind and behind. If you keep pushing back you will come to the very bottom of the story ofjazz. It is told in Exodus 1, told in the midst of a Pharaoh whose name we cannot remember, because if you have seen one Pharaoh, you have seen them all. This nameless "Lord of Egypt" who tries to stop the music, decrees a big killing of all of the dangerous sons of freedom (Exod 1:16). Then with Pharaoh's name erased, we learn of two mothers in the barrio who feared God and defied Pharaoh and birthed futures (Exod 1:17). They were shrewdly deferential toward pernicious Pharaoh, but if a slave you can appear deferential and, at the same time, bring the babies and futures out to life. Wonder of wonders we know their names: Shiphrah and Puah (Exod 1:15)! They are Hebrew midwives, down in the slave huts, birthing sons and daughters. We forgot the name of Pharaoh; we passionately remember the mothers of our future! Pharaoh was utterly surprised by their nerve and their success; he noticed the slave huts teeming with life. He watched the slave camp grow big and dangerous in freedom . Shiphrah and Puah took the new babies and, like a scene from Toni Morrison, they danced the children of freedom around the bricks and around the clay and by the straw; they danced all night even until sun-up. Because of their singing the Hebrew barrio became a future-infested place from which has arisen all the later daring dances of freedom, a dance of defiance and gratitude and hope. The babies watched the women that day. They looked to the edge of the campsite and they saw the new land of freedom and peace and justice and well-beingjust coming into view. They were able to see, because their lens of observation was peopled by the...

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