Want to hear what jazz sounds like right now? Turn on this record. Jeff Parker’s Suite for Max Brown is a little bit gospel, a little bit funk, and 360-degree sparkly, wrapping warmth and community around Parker’s virtuosic guitar. He’s from Chicago, which is home to the thoughtful and uplifting sounds of Chance the Rapper, Jamila Woods, Noname et al, which you’ll hear coming through on Max Brown; you’ll also hear Parker’s family. The album is dedicated to his mother, Maxine, and his daughter Ruby appears on the track, “Build a Nest,” singing, “Everyone moves like they’ve someplace to go/Build a nest and watch the world go by slow.” This one’s about embracing the process of creation, rather than framing that building time as a means to an end. And isn’t that what jazz is all about?
Between oval-office news, kombucha, and the Woodstock redux, the past few years have felt a whole lot like the 1960s. Now, as if you needed a reminder that we’re living a re-do, T Magazine is here to tell us that communes are having a moment. The number of known “intentional communities” almost doubled from 2010 to 2016, thanks to Snake People* moving to rural areas to focus on living rather than racing ahead. Most groups come with the trappings of communes of old, including farms, shared labor, and community rules. The thing that differentiates this round is that, in some cases, residents can generate their own income independently of the collective, which makes for a healthy sense of self, and one less thing to fight over with the group. And according to recent data, that’s working out pretty nicely: some Norwegian researchers found that North Americans living in intentional communities are some of the most fulfilled people around, thanks to three things that come with communal life: social connections, a sense of meaning, and closeness to nature. Sounds pretty ok, doesn’t it?
*Millennials
You don’t have to move to South Dakota to reap the benefits of a collective. In a world where lots of people aren’t partnered and the cost of living is insane, some platonic friends are banding together to raise children. This Marie Claire story profiles a bunch of them: sisters who adopt a bunch of kids together; single mothers who join forces; and besties who establish a platonic couple to raise a kid. TL;DR: no need to be romantically partnered to live your life.
The real takeaway of all this is that one of the commune residents pictured in the T Mag piece has a sweet alembic still that presumably furnishes all the community’s liquor needs. You, too, could experiment with moonshine as you dip your toe into the idea of rural life. Just peace out as soon as you get good enough to meaningfully contribute to the collective.
