I suspect that jazz fans are like opera fans – born, not made. If you don’t like jazz – or don’t like opera (and liking one doesn’t mean you’ll like the other) – then having to listen is an aural assault.

But if you love jazz (and maybe, to those so inclined, if you love opera), then listening to it can lift your soul. But loving jazz comes at a cost – jazz lovers too often become jaded. By not discerning the depth and emotional complexity of jazz in other styles of music, jazz snobs can wrongly dismiss the power other forms of music hold.

I fell in love with jazz in the sixth grade. Being a sixth grader isn’t much fun – as someone put it, it’s an ‘awkward age when you’re too old to cry but too young to cuss.’ As sixth graders we were little more than punching bags for eighth graders and irritations to teachers. When I came home from school, though, it was a different story. I would settle into a corner of our upstairs and listen to my father’s pastel-colored 45 rpm records made by jazz artists like Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan. And without realizing it at the time, I turned into a jazz snob myself.

I must digress here and tell of meeting Gerry Mulligan in Lincoln many years ago. Gerry, who was considered the best baritone saxophonist of his day and who was central to the development of “cool jazz” in the late 1940s, played one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever heard. Afterwards a small swarm of fans flocked to meet him (yes, even jazz musicians can have at least a little group of fans). My wife Lori and I waited until last. When everyone else was gone I told this myth of a man (Gerry stood almost 7 feet tall and was skinny as the proverbial rail) about listening to his old recordings on San Francisco’s pastel Fantasy label. He got a faraway look in his eye and said “those were the days…” Lori and I were soon walking with him through the back alleys of Lincoln while he rested his elbow on my shoulder and told us of jazz’s glory days.

Getting back to musical snobbery, a song I particularly disliked singing in the sixth grade was the old Irish ballad All Through the Night. It was written in a very different time and to me its excessive sentimentality seemed maudlin. That is, until my grandfather Russ hosted the last-ever Hosford family reunion. One evening his twin brother Raymond and their sisters Alice and Jenny started talking about “old times.” They remembered when their mother Lydia – who had grown up with author Laura Ingles Wilder in Minnesota – had sung them to sleep with All Through the Night. Raymond began singing it and his siblings joined in. I have never heard anything sung with more reverence; I quickly realized that music’s value lies in what it means to the performers and listeners. I had no business putting down any other style of music.

I can’t, though, practice what I just preached when it comes to Christmas music. Christmas music has been recycled so many times that I want to stick my fingers in my ears when they play it in stores. Still, there is a sentiment of hope and joy in many Christmas songs, and though I think it’s a crime – an aural assault — to have them blaring in stores and parking lots, I would like to extend their message of peace and goodwill to all those reading this.