I love jazz. Maybe it’s because of its endless variety in expression, color, and mood. It’s the perfect soundtrack for everyday life. You might listen to free form, big-band style jazz, where every beat is filled to the brim with power and movement. Or you may prefer a more elegant, smooth jazz, where the silence speaks the loudest in the melody.

Jazz is something that never truly ends. It simply remains there, swirling in the blue, waiting to be appreciated once again by the eager ears of dancers, lovers, and melancholy souls. I believe Donald Miller describes it best when he tells the story of when he first loved jazz. He has this to say:

“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”

In my own experience, I refused to listen to jazz until I was taught how to by someone who was raised in it. I couldn’t appreciate it because I didn’t know how to; in the same way that you can’t wholly love someone until you know how he or she need to be loved. The day I realized that jazz is simply life as told in music was the day I was able to appreciate it for what it was. Jazz became more than chords with a seventh attached at the end; they became tales of youth told by experienced men.

Jazz was born out of the first generation of blacks freed from the oppression of slavery. They told timeless stories in the beautiful genre they forged out of hellfire. Their pain was released in their passion. This in itself is worthy of awe.

Take some time to learn to love jazz. I promise you won’t regret it.

Because jazz is such a vast genre of music, here are some of my personal favorites:

• “When Sunny Gets Blue” by McCoy Tyner
• “Blue in Green” by Miles Davis
• “In a Sentimental Mood” by John Coltrane and Duke Ellington
• “Emily” by Paul Desmond
• “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller (also sung by Frank Sinatra)
• “Smile” by Nat King Cole
• “Moonlight in Vermont” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
• “Take It Slow” by Monroe
• “Lisa Sawyer” by Leon Bridges
• “Wonderful! Wonderful!” by Johnny Mathis