Illustration by Austin Hughes
IN THE EAST VILLAGE of Manhattan there was a jazz dive called Slugs' Saloon or, officially, Slugs' in the Far East. This was an infamous place where from 1964 to 1972 seminal free-jazz music was created; a stage where the original masters Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and others frequently performed; a crime scene where the trumpet prodigy Lee Morgan was shot dead by his girlfriend; a club where Miles Davis used to come as a patron to see what's new on the downtown music scene; a hangout where Salvador Dalí visited holding a lit candle on a holder, inspecting the paintings of local artists on the wall.
People were jammed into this smoky musicians' joint where conceptual talks and loud confrontations met the frantic overdrive or naive lyricism coming from the stage in the back of the room. The piano was slightly out of tune, the drum set sometimes demolished during improvisations. A zaftig young waitress was often walking with a boa constrictor around her neck while serving people, according to the ex-bartender there. On the outside, Lower East Side pushers, strung out locals, and Uptowners trying to avoid being mugged on the way from the cab to the club's entrance. Milk cartons full of water were often thrown by upstairs tenants and sometimes landed on people congregating in front of the building. Many albums of the music played live at Slugs' have been released over the years by prestigious labels, and articles have been written about its history and legacy.
“Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an art of listening. In therapy as in music, we are working through silences, syncopations, and melodies behind the narratives.”
DURING THE PANDEMIC lockdown, in search of an extra space—a quiet, confidential room where I could do my telepsychiatry work close to my apartment—I ended up subletting a studio-loft where the back section of Slugs used to be.
So, there I was — inside Slugs. I set up my telemedicine station, and in the corner I transferred my turntable and part of my vinyl collection, a few feet from where the actual stage used to be.
A unique setting had presented itself: I was listening to patients' narratives during the day, and by night to records created and recorded live in the very same room more than half a century before. Before I knew it, I started implementing a similar clinical approach to listening to the music, as if it were a patient, with an application of the same level of concentration and technique as in a psychotherapy session.
Let me explain what I mean. In insight-oriented psychotherapy there are three modes of communication:
Verbal, which is the how, why, or what of the person's language such as choice of words, sentence structure, cadence, presence or lack of agency in the narrative, omissions, etc.
Nonverbal, which is communication via body position, gestures, silence, punctuality, missing a payment, etc.
Countertransference, a therapist's reaction to the patient's unconscious direction of emotions or desires toward him/her.
The countertransference can be concordant, where the therapist feels or identifies with the patient's position or emotions (i.e., empathy); or it can be complementary, where the therapist identifies not with the patient but with what the patient unconsciously wants the therapist to feel or be in that moment—a parent, an old enemy, a friend, a spouse, etc.
While taking process-notes, psychoanalytic therapists usually write down their own feelings during particular moments of the session, because the emotion of the patient might not match his/her story or the emotion of the therapist who is listening. For example, sometimes the therapist experiences sadness as the patient smiles while telling a sad story. A shift from complementary to concordant countertransference—from experiencing what the patient wants the therapist to feel or be to experiencing what the patient actually is and feels — is usually a marker of a good therapeutic outcome. It can be a sign that
the patient has become less defensive, projects less, and can now own his/her material, so the therapist is no longer working with the projections and isn't pushed to be a spokesperson for the patient's internal conflict.
Over more than a year, I deeply listened to a few hundred, randomly selected, free jazz records — old records from the Slugs' era and new records made in the past three decades, going back and forth randomly. While listening to the old records, in the vast majority of cases, I heard and felt a raw, deeply personal music about life and survival, infused with humor and playfulness, destructive rage and soulful joy, an in-between-the-lines longing, and love with its naivete and unprotected innocence. Somebody had astutely described Ayler's sound as a cry of a ghetto child while being beaten. This was not a dry sound but a nuanced emotion woven into a holistic storytelling. It was as if the primary psychological drives, needs, emotions, and impulses somehow got filtered and showed up in the very sound. It was a giving sound, it just existed, with no need for transaction or need to be responded to. It was a concordant experience where I could meet and feel the emotional context of the music without the push to become or feel something for the other—neither the players nor the sound needed that.
On the other hand, the sound of the records from the past few decades — e.g., Tim Berne, Matt Mitchell, Jonathan Finlayson, etc.—most of the time, induced a feeling of witnessing a sense of urgency, something a little forced and over-inclusive, solipsistic but still grasping for attention. As if the music was asking for some sort of transaction where you have to protect it, hug it, or reject it. My experience was that it couldn't just be there independently. I had a complementary countertransference where the music wanted me to identify with or become the person/role in the enactment, someone who would validate it, rescue it, or deny it. At times it was almost manipulative, I felt, secretly grandiose or presenting itself with a false sense of suffering.
Let's be clear, the new records had astonishing compositions and performances, as good if not better than the old ones in some cases, I thought. They were impeccably played, almost with a classical level of precision; they were uniquely crafted, often with an amalgamation of genres and mind-bending deconstructions, at times dismantling the melody structure and building it up again with an immaculate skill and genius; they also had outstanding production.
I asked myself what happened, where was this coming from? Was this maybe an idealization of the past that never was, romanticizing poverty and trauma, or just fetishizing a raw and poorly produced sound? I could only speculate that old-school musician's life defined by loft squatting, addiction, family fracture, racism, war recruitments, and postwar army band experiences was directly connected to the creation of the unique sound by the way of fearlessness, a defined sense of self, and psychological resilience of working around the trauma and not becoming it. It is likely that the capacities for storytelling and access to emotions without splitting them into good and bad, or love and hatred, but integrating them and putting them under one roof within the same composition, come from that foundation.
Many of the musicians from the new generation have also had similar barriers, traumatic experiences and nontraumatic failures, financial and mental health struggles, and exposure to racism and sexism. At the same time, maybe the academic involvement in free jazz these days makes the sound more programmed, constricted, and dry. Maybe the presence of a safety net where you can still count on being caught when falling makes the music take off but not fly. Maybe the play-date quality of interaction and performances makes it more needy. Or maybe the spices of privilege, opportunism, and conformism are playing a role. Maybe. Not sure. I've discussed this topic with many downtown musicians, critics, and fans over the past few decades.
In the end, although highly subjective and overly generalized, this pseudoclinical approach to listening to music compositions in a unique place under special circumstances has helped me experience sound in different ways. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an art of listening. In therapy as in music, we are working through silences, syncopations, and melodies behind the narratives. We are interpreting the defenses behind inauthenticity and striving to arrive at an authentic emotion; and through the coda of integration in the narrator's concepts of self and others, to get to the sound of resilience.
Krste Rodzevski, MD, FAPA, is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York, subspecializing in character organization and personality disorders. He trained at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is also an accomplished musician with six studio albums.
First published online July 2024.