The Jazz Master book trailer
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What happens when Jazz, Zen and the Beat Generation collide?
description
In this evocative and entertaining fictional memoir, nineteen-year-old Dan Hennessey takes us on a journey to the epicenter of the beat movement — San Francisco 1956, the year of Howl and The Dharma Bums. As he gets swept up in the fervor of the San Francisco Renaissance, he meets cultural icons such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and spiritual figures like Alan Watts and Jiddu Krishnamurti, each of whom serves as a catalyst for his awakening. But the man who becomes his spiritual and musical mentor, the man the poet Gary Snyder called the jazz master, is a tenor saxophonist, ex-Zen monk who teaches him Zen through the art of jazz. Filled with reflections on art, society, and spiritual life, The Jazz Master is both a tale of spiritual awakening and a portrait of a unique and colorful era that paved the way for the revolutionary changes of the sixties and seventies.
Transcript of The Jazz Master book trailer
What happens when Jazz, Zen and the Beat Generation collide?
The year is 1956 and the place is San Francisco, where the beat generation is busy laying siege to the straightjacket culture of the 1950s
© Robert Huffstutter
Fresh from the San Fernando va l l ey, a nineteen-year-old music student gets caught up in the fervor, as he falls for Diana, beat poet and self-proclaimed queen of bohemia
© Matt Callow
Through Diana he becomes friends with beat icons such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder
© Pamla J. Eisenberg
© Daniel Iván
But his real mentor is a tenor saxophonist, ex-Zen monk, who t e a c h e s h i m Z e n through the art of jazz
© Luis de Bethencourt
© Hartwig HKD
Along the way he discovers that Zen is all around him. It’s in the air and in the water, but above all, in the music and the poetry
© Jesse Lynn McMains
And thus he begins a spiritual odyssey that takes him into the furthest realms of the human spirit
© Elliott Brown
If you love spiritual fiction, as I do, then you won’t want to miss The Jazz Master. It is beautifully crafted, engaging and, above all, profound — a real spiritual shot in the arm.
!Dada Nabhaniilananda, author of
Close Your Eyes and Open Your Mind
Devashish is a former musician and a full-time writer who lived for a number of years in India and Japan. He has also been a dedicated meditator for the past four decades. Stop by his website at http://www.devashishdonaldacosta.com to drop him a line or to check out his books.
You can find The Jazz Master by clicking on this link:
Click here to read the first few chapters
© Manuel Toledo
