Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?
Yogi: I can't, but I
will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's wrong.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you
can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Interviewer: Do you understand it?
Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't know anything about it.
Interviewer: Are there any great jazz player alive today?
Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for
the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead.
Interviewer: What is
syncopation?
Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other
types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds.
Interviewer: Now I really don't understand.
Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.
Blue Truffle Analysis:
By saying that one cannot “understand jazz”, perhaps Yogi is suggesting that jazz artists often express thoughts and feelings that may not be easily translated into words.
Further to Yogi's thoughts on jazz improvisation, most jazz arrangements (possibly “90%”, as Yogi suggests) contain some portion (although not necessarily “half”) of written and improvised parts. For example, most jazz arrangements contain all or at least some of the following written parts (as explained in the
table below).
ve jazz?
