Jazz and Freedom - How a Concert Date Became a Concept
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It began with a simple question:What do you actually play on German Unity Day?
I had been given a concert date for October 3, 2026 — and quickly realized that this particular date occupied my thoughts more than expected. A commemorative concert? A musical speech? I found myself reflecting. On music. On politics. And on the relationship between the two.
Music and Politics — an Old Story
In the process, I became aware of something I had always known, yet rarely considered central to my own work: music has often been deeply political. The blues emerged from oppression, poverty, and the struggle for dignity — it was never merely entertainment, but a cry. Reggae was resistance. Rap still is. Soul, funk, folk of the 1960s — hardly any of these movements existed without a broader social struggle behind them.
And jazz? In its early days, jazz was primarily dance music — energy, joy, community. But by the 1930s, and even more so during the Civil Rights Movement, it became something else. A statement. Proof that people who were denied almost everything still created something that changed the world.
What saddens me is this: much of that political dimension has faded from jazz and blues today. Both have — with exceptions — become stylistic traditions. Carefully preserved, often brilliantly executed. But the edge is gone. The urgency is missing.
A Sentence That Changed Everything
In the middle of these thoughts, I came across a sentence by Duke Ellington that I had heard before, but never fully grasped:
“Jazz is a barometer of freedom.”
Not meant as praise — but as a political thesis. Where an art form can flourish freely, it reveals something about the state of a society. Where it is suppressed, it reveals something as well.
Suddenly, I had a concept.
Not for a concert on German Unity Day. But for a concert that could be played any day. Because the subject — freedom, democracy, the ongoing struggle for both — does not belong to a single date. Because it feels more urgent today than it has in decades. Ellington’s sentence has never felt more relevant.
Jazz and freedom
“Barometer of Freedom” is an attempt to approach this idea.
An evening in which I move at the piano between the roots of blues and jazz, free improvisation, and my own compositions — interwoven with texts that continue to resonate with me. Words by Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King Jr., Arvo Pärt, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Wynton Marsalis. Voices from different times and continents, all circling the same idea: that freedom does not simply appear. That it must be expressed, fought for, and constantly reaffirmed.
It is not a political concert in the sense of agitation. It is an evening that asks questions — and tries to search for answers through sound. With music that dares to be more than background.
Wynton Marsalis once put it this way:We improvise — that stands for our freedom.We swing — that stands for our responsibility to one another.We play the blues — that means we remain optimistic, no matter how hard things get.
That sounds like jazz.It also sounds like democracy.
Ellington was right.
What words cannot fully express, music can play.
And sometimes, if you listen long enough, you begin to understand things that cannot be explained otherwise — about freedom, about responsibility, about what connects us when everything else threatens to divide us.
“Barometer of Freedom” — October 3, 2026, Johann Sebastian Bach House, Bad Hersfeld.And, I hope, many more evenings to come. Because the subject remains.
Interested in hosting a performance? info@luleymusic.de
