I have seen Wynton Marsalis perform live twice, once more than 30 years ago with his septet at one of their famous Village Vanguard sessions, and again a few years ago here in Chicago with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. On both occasions, he was the consummate host, pitch-perfect in each of his roles as world-class trumpeter, bandleader, and educator.
Marsalis leaned into this last role during the more recent performance, maybe because he was accompanied by his young charges at Lincoln Center, or perhaps because it took place at a local high school. Whatever the reason, he was dropping prodigious knowledge born of a life in jazz. During one of the soliloquies he delivered between numbers, he distilled the essence of jazz to three lessons: playing together, playing alone, and what he calls "the blues ethos."
Playing together | Marsalis says that jazz musicians spend most of their careers playing music they'd rather not be playing with people they'd rather not be playing with. He counsels young artists to accept it and learn to do it early on.
Playing alone | Improvising is something everyone acquainted with jazz understands. Marsalis tells young musicians that when their turn in the spotlight comes, they had better have something to say and something to play.
The blues ethos | But it was the third element, the blues ethos, that left the most lasting impression on me. He defines it as an optimism that is not naive.
The blues ethos: an optimism that is not naive.
I can't get it out of my head.
For more than 20 years, I have worked at the intersection of coffee and international development, coordinates at which I found it hard to remain naive for long.
Early on in my career, I came to embrace coffee quality because everything in my experience suggested that the most reliable way for producers to hedge risk and seize opportunity is to adopt a quality-first strategy. I am at CQI because it was founded on a commitment to quality and its work is rooted in efforts to leverage quality improvements to change lives.
That worthy work is hard enough to do in a vacuum. But it doesn't happen in a vacuum, of course, it happens against the backdrop of life in tropical countries often marked by chronic economic, ecological, social, and political disruption.
Over the years, my own field work in coffee has situated the pursuit and promotion of coffee quality variously amid coca production and trafficking, armed violence, political upheaval, natural disaster, climate shocks, production shocks, and market shocks, and often several of these at once. It was impossible to remain Pollyannish in these circumstances: I lost my naivete, but I never lost my optimism. I am seeing something similar playing out around me today.
A sampling of the headlines over the past few days gives a sense of the precariousness of the present moment.
Last Sunday, The New York Times published this feature whose title aptly synthesizes the story told by its excellent reporting:
Coffee Prices Are at a 50-Year High. Producers Aren’t Celebrating. Climate change is behind the windfall gains, and growers are worried about whether they can adapt.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Secretary of State announced the permanent cancellation of more than 80 percent of USAID programming, effectively eliminating an agency that has delivered the better part of a half-billion dollars of high-impact assistance to coffee projects in the past quarter-century, and calling into question the future of overseas development assistance.
Washington's threats of tariffs and fears of a trade war cast a long shadow over the trade, creating uncertainty that has had a paralytic effect on some operations.
And the futures market continues its historic rally, creating a credit crisis that has sent traders and roasters to the bank over and over again to double and even triple their credit lines. At a certain point, there won't be enough liquidity in the system and we will risk the kinds of consolidation that sends aftershocks through the entire supply stream.
Today, everyone working in coffee sees the threats to lives and livelihoods in the cancellation of USAID and the clear and present danger posed by climate change. Every day across the industry, companies and cooperatives navigate turbulence in trade policy and the market, trying to keep themselves afloat until the perfect storm clears.
We are not naive. We understand the magnitude of the threats we are facing.
And yet, we choose optimism. Whether in spite of these circumstances or because of them, we soldier on in our work to make coffee better.
I can't think of a better way to describe this spirit of clear-eyed persistence than what Wynton Marsalis calls the blues ethos.
-- Michael Sheridan
