“When all those records came out, I didn’t know they would be thought of as classics or ABCs of modern jazz. Most of those tunes came out just like that – real quick… and if anything was behind them it was like a wish that was manifested musically: maybe a wish for eternity or a beautiful girl.”
Wayne Shorter.
Such was the genius of the man, that intellectually, intentionally, he didn’t comprehend how he was constructing such sublime impressionistic harmony, and nor did he need to. Rather, it came from his soul, or perhaps from above. Such was the instantaneous authenticity of his talent. And that is what made him an improvisational jazz master. Musicologists in the future will try to unravel it, and maybe they will succeed, but it will take people outside of the reference frame in which this music was created to interpret what amounts to a Venutian language.
The fact that Wayne Shorter was a Nichiren Buddhist was no accident in my opinion. His mastery expressed itself spiritually in the music of jazz, and in the rhythm of chanting. The beauteous simplicity of Nichiren chanting demands a sort of manifesting, faith-in-action. And in his troubled life, Wayne Shorter perhaps needed it more than most.
The beautiful woman on the front of the Speak No Evil album, recorded in 1964, was of his wife, Teruko (Irene) Nakagami, described by Shorter as “like a pretty Japanese Audrey Hepburn.” Shorter dedicated the pieces "Miyako" and "Infant Eyes" to their daughter, and the album was copyrighted as "Miyako Music." Through this filter the whole album takes on the magnificence of a man in love with his family and playfully exploring his universal creativity. Sadly the relationship did not last and they separated in 1966, the year of release of the album. It always strikes me as ironic that such a brief testimony of love as Speak No Evil, was brought to the world when it was over.
Shorter remarried Ana Maria Patricio in 1970. Their daughter Iska died of a grand mal seizure at the age of 14, and both Ana Maria and the couple's niece, Dalila, were both tragically killed in a plane crash while travelling to visit Shorter in Italy in 1996. Shorter eventually remarried Carolina Dos Santos, a close friend of Ana Maria, and I hope found happiness. Nichiren Daishonin said “Do not go about complaining how hard it is to live in this world. such behavior is entirely unworthy of a real man.” And I think Shorter lived by that principle, joyously. I wish that he is transported to Sagga on winds of eternal Jazz music in gratitude for his Buddhahood and gifts to us all.
The Gohonzon is a Chinese-Sanskrit scroll containing characters that aids practitioners of Nichiren Buddhism to develop Buddhahood from within their lives.
