T5 Soul

Inspired by 4 consecutive saxophone solos: Stan Getz (tenor), Al Cohn (tenor), Zoot Sims (tenor), Jimmy Giuffre (alto), 1976

Tell us your thoughts - What do you think about the philosophical issues raised in this song?

All my life I have been digging jazz
And as everyone knows the most important thing is you gotta have lots of soul
But then in philosophy
Nobody digs soul everyone prefers to say the mind despite the fact that mind is just a word for soul
Soul is all your thoughts and your conscious feelings
Soul holds ‘em tight
Everything you do starting in the depth of feeling from your mortal soul
Listen up what I’m saying
Soul certainly ain’t a mystery only what you feeling inside

And then there’s those guys trying to say
Trying say it’s illusion
You don’t exist
Give me a break brother
That’s the maddest thing I heard
I’m no imaginary character who’s sitting in your favourite comic book
The only reason you think that is you won’t take a look at what’s inside

If you only think materialist thoughts then you will find
That the world does not contain you within its boundaries
Because we are souls
Hey, girls and guys have got a soul inside

Now let me tell you
Back in the 17th century
Everybody started to imagine that a body-swapping thing could occur
So when you wake up, brother, you got my body now
And because I wanted one too my soul’s looking out of your eyes
Now d’you think
That we’ve all just changed bodies now
If you do then you must think that there’s a soul that’s swapping round
If you don’t think that
Then maybe you prefer to think your body’s just behaving like me
But then if that’s all there is to it
Then we’re all pretending, never ending

That’s what a lot of people think that we’re machines
If we are then you can manufacture us
To make a happy robot that is always in agreement and will never question anything you say
Genetic engineering makes us fitter, stronger, but
If human beings lose their soul
Then there was never any point to all of this

Cryogenic freezing so that people never die
Showing all the lack of understanding you can buy
Then they’re trying to find the programming to put you on the internet and keep all of your gigabytes alive
But since they don’t know
How to make a human soul
Then they’re just kidding, forbidding
What makes a human as a whole