You've seen the insurance commercial: Patrick Mahomes, now Super Bowl quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, hungers to enroll in the "personal price plan," so he cops to the intimate detail that he drops big pink "bath bombs" into his galvanized soak tub. But importantly, he draws the line: He refuses to confess -- not even to obtain tailored coverage -- that he's ordered a "jazz bath" from a sleazy-looking saxophonist.
Because jazz, now, that's something to be ashamed of. Note that Mahomes identifies as African-American, and the mullet-coiffed saxist is sorta white; the advertiser would never have dared to flip those racial signifiers. A black man is denying black-rooted music, while tamping down a whiff of disco-era homosexuality. It feels like part of a trend where, when the topic of jazz has surfaced in recent mainstream media, the music has often been presented with a backlash comic tinge of contempt. (Grammys? Just lifetime merit badges.) Jazz is no longer America's classical music, or the original American art form, or an evolving expression. It's more like: What kind of self-important fogey indulges in that?
Billy Higgins, the great drummer who always smiled while he played, called jazz "serious, as serious as a heart attack." He was referring not only to the many years required to gain proficiency, and to the role jazz has played in advancing African-American identity, but to the effect the music has on its listeners. Jazz is a magical deprogrammer. By stretching notions of time, harmony and melody, it leaves the brain open to new ways of thinking.
New ways of thinking are exactly what advertising, among other tools of dominion, strives to discourage. Jazz has been around for a long time, but it has always been suppressed, overtly or subtly.
Sure, though, the jazz-bath commercial packs yoks, especially since no one suspects that Patrick Mahomes, a young man, actually listens to jazz.
And no one really thinks Mahomes would be ashamed of listening to it. If he considered being ashamed of something, the penitence might relate to playing American football, for a team called the Chiefs.
Watch the jazz-bath commercial here.