The Economics Of Jazz

The tradition of jazz is one of struggle and ascent.

You can’t find success in business, or anything rather, without struggling through failure followed by the most basic levels of achievement. In business you start from the bottom and work your way up. Every executive was once a barely above minimum wage intern just as every jazz musician was once an unmotivated grade schooler, struggling to learn the fundamentals of their instrument. It takes practice to get to the top or to reach a certain level of achievement that results in success.

Musicians have a constant pressure to practice, learn, and improve. If you don’t, technical skills will be lost and you will end worse off than when you started. 

There is a constant competition to be the best and reach the top in the business world. The minute you stop innovating or achieving, someone perhaps with better technique, will come in from behind and attract buyers attention. It takes perseverance to keep a steady ascent. It takes constant practice to keep improving as a musician.

The tradition of jazz respects the elders and the standards. No one joins the jazz family without studying their musical forefathers.

While the world we live in provides a constant pressure to be the change, make a name for yourself, and constantly put forth new ideas, all inspiration is rooted in the past. New ideas and business proposals build off of those already established.

As a jazz musician, all solos and style of todays playing was at one point influenced by the very first jazz musicians and the early instrumentalists after them. They listen excessively to old recordings to pick up style and specific lines that they then repeat measure for measure. The jazz of today would be nothing without the influence of the jazz of yesterday.

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It is impossible to create a successful business without first studying the successes (and failures) of those before you. They provide the foundation for how to accomplish what they did and then it is possible to find the tools to go beyond that and do something that’s never been done before.

Jazz also demands and respects collaboration. While jazz musicians usually take solos, they cannot exist as islands unto themselves.

Just as jazz musicians can’t accompany themselves, keep time, and solo all at once, business owners don’t have the ability to start a business, run that business, work for the business, and keep control of the finances for that business all at once. Collaboration is required to make it all happen.

Whether its hiring employees, getting second opinions, or working with business partners, it doesn’t all happen without significant help from others. With collaboration comes trust. Every jazz musician has to trust their rhythm section. If you don’t jump off the metaphorical cliff and trust that they will catch you, you won’t have effective solos and there is no sense in playing with them. An effective rhythm section doesn’t just play behind you, they play with you and change based on your inflections and rhythmic and melodic ideas.

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It is much the same from a business standpoint. Whether they are coworkers or employees, the head executive must place trust in them that they will help make it all happen. No official can micromanage a whole business and come out successful.

In performance, it is a high wire act with no net in sight. Yes, the players have rehearsed before the gigs (most of the time), but true jazz is never performed in a rote or perfunctory manner.

No matter how much you rehearse nothing goes exactly as planned when you get up to perform. Jazz musicians have to be daring. They don’t always know the outcome- how their playing will sound that day, how their solo will turn out. They work without a net. If they aren’t willing to take risks, it will show in their playing that they only ever took the safe way out.

Just as jazz is about constantly challenging yourself and pushing the boundaries to your comfort zone, so is economics. When making an investment or starting a business there is no way to know the exact outcome. Sure, you can predict and hope it turns out as you expect it will but in the end, it’s all up to chance. It requires a blind leap of faith without having any idea if it will come back to haunt you later. The biggest risks make the biggest pay offs just as the most risky playing makes for the most interesting solos.

Bolded portions taken from the article below:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-virtues-of-jazz-john-coltrane-by-douglas-groothuis.php#.VC1UC_ldVu4