© Ella and Lil Botanical Perfume Inspired by Women in Jazz
Listening, not jargon, is the path into the heart of music. And if we listen at a deep enough level, we enter into the magic of the song - no degrees or formal credentials required. ...Careful listening can demystify virtually all of the intricacies and marvels of jazz. ...The people who first gave us jazz did so without much formal study - and, in some instances, with none at all. But they knew how to listen.
Ted Gioia, How to Listen to Jazz
Jazz has been a constant study for me, revealing its new facets with every new artist or its never ending interconnection with other music genres or even art forms such as poetry, it has shaped into a phenomenon of its own kind. But there has been one particular thing which interested me most of all, the place and role of women in it, those who played it, created it, wrote jazz inspired poetry and contributed to it in many different ways. Jazz is not just about music, it is a sentiment, a mood and, of course, a rhythm of life.
Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician" - Joachim E. Berendt. The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond.
While most conventional perfumes tend to be transparent due to synthetic ingredients or for certain marketing purposes, it is the colour of the blend that is important to reflect the mood of a scent for me. Ella&Lil is warm and dry perfume and the fact that jazz is often associated with an evening performance made me use darker raw materials, among them labdanum (warm, musky and vanilla like), cepes or porcini (dark earthy mushroom extract which brings a dry neutral touch), black tea (warm, slightly powdery and soft). The complexity of the scent and diversity of the ingredients are to reveal how dynamic and live jazz has been through the years. While some notes are only supporting ones and cannot be traced with your nose, they do still create an ambiance: smoke, cocoa and coffee (a combination of dark chocolate richness with the bitterness of coffee beans), black pepper and other spices lift the scent, while jasmine and ylang ylang create a feminine heart. The blend is rich, spicy, with dark chocolate, black coffee and sweet labdanum notes. Its warm scent from top to base is like a warm wool shawl enswathing you around in its almost saccharine bitterness.
I considered the perfume an experiment and a study, being not an expert on jazz but an ardent amateur of the art, when I realized how much connection there is between jazz and poetry which is in fact a separate school:
“Jazz poetry is a literary genre defined as poetry necessarily informed by jazz music—that is, poetry in which the poet responds to and writes about jazz. Jazz poetry, like the music itself, encompasses a variety of forms, rhythms, and sounds. Beginning with the birth of blues and jazz at the start of the twentieth century, jazz poetry is can be seen as a thread that runs through the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat movement, and the Black Arts Movement—and it is still vibrant today. From early blues to free jazz to experimental music, jazz poets use their appreciation for the music as poetic inspiration.” - Poets.org
The scent is about women in jazz and, of course, their voice. So whose voice inspired me mostly? Sarah Vaughan, Billy Holiday, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald are among those standing behind the eclectic fragrance character, its dry, rich, aromatic profile. But the scent embodies women in the genre, namely, poets, musicians, composers and many other who contributed not only to humble but epic beginning but also those preserving, blending and incorporating jazz into other categories.
While jazz poetry is often associated with Langston Hughes, there have been many jazz poems written by female poets. And very often when you read the lines, it is the music you need to accompany the rhythm of a verse. Didn’t poetry start like that? The first poets used to sing their poems while lyras were being played in the background.
I Like Jazz
I like treating life like jazz;
Mistakes that colour
Brighten up an old worn theme;
Augment esteem
And in some way,
Too mesmerising to portray
In chords or words,
Humbly proffer sweetest curds
Of love.
If you are interested in learning more about jazz poetry, check the below literature:
Jazz Poetry Anthology, edited by Sascha Feinstein and Komunyakaa, (Indiana University Press, 1991);
The Second Set: The Jazz Poetry Anthology, Volume 2, edited by Feinstein and Komunyakaa (Indiana University Press, 1996);
Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present, by Feinstein (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997).