Jazz and Mystery the Perfect Combination (SinC-up Blog Hop)#SinC-up

When I responded to a fellow Sisters in Crime member to partner with her for a “SinC-up blog hop", I didn’t realize we would have a writing trait in common other than we both write mysteries. It turns out we also like to listen to music when we write. You can read H.A. Somerled’s blog on writing with music here. And learn about her books here.

I’ve talked about how music has helped me get in character and dropped me into a deeper POV while writing. I listen to Native American drum and flute music as well as music by Karen Therese while writing the Spirit trilogy—three historical books set among the Nez Perce. 

While writing the Action Adventure books, I listened to first Guatemalan music while Isabella Mumphrey, the heroine, was in Guatemala, then Mexican music when she was in Mexico City, and Native American music when she found adventure in Arizona while tracking down a Hopi ceremonial kiva.

Now that I’m working on a mystery, I listen to jazz. My amateur sleuth is half Nez Perce, so why don’t I listen to Native American music, you might ask. Simply because Jazz lends itself to mysteries.

 

As a junior in high school I attended a Jazz music summer camp. At that camp we learned that you not only have to learn the song’s melody and rhythm, but you have to make up your own rendition of the melody when it’s your instruments turn to solo.

So, like a mystery story that starts out with the standard structure: someone is killed, sleuths-amateur or professional or both try to solve the murder, and there is a twist at the end, a jazz song also has the fundamentals of the song that everyone knows and adheres to. But then, like a jazz song has improvisation by several different instruments, the author gets to improvise by leading readers into what if’s and red herrings to take them on a ride of suspense, just like the instruments in a jazz song take the listener on a journey with their unique spins on the melody.

Jazz songs have emotion and melody. They have soft and hard. All the aspects that need to be hit in a mystery as it is being written and read.

And that’s why I listen to jazz while writing mystery.

Have you ever connected a song or artist with a book you read? 

Friday Facts- Appaloosa Horse

Since I'm coming down off a high from a wonderful 5 heart review for Spirit of the Mountain , I'm giving you some Nez Perce or Nimiipuu facts or conjecture from learned men and my own thoughts today.




In 1806, Captain Lewis, of the famous duo Lewis and Clark who made the trek to the Pacific Ocean and back, commented the Nez Perce had the largest horse herd on the continent. Anthropologists and historians believe the famed Appaloosa ponies the Nez Perce favored and raised came from the Asian continent. There have been pictographs found in Asian and Chinese Art of spotted horses.


It's been theorized the Nez Perce and other Pacific NW tribes could have crossed between the two continents at one time when there was a land bridge between Alaska and Russia.


The number of horse a family had was a sign of wealth to the Nez Perce. They prided themselves on good bloodlines and fast animals. When they traveled to the plains to hunt buffalo they also sold horses to the plains Indians. Some tribes even tried to steal the agile animals.


Common Characteristics of an Appaloosa horse are: coat pattern, mottled skin, white sclera(the area of the eye that surrounds the iris), and striped hooves.


The photos of  these horses, descendants from Ollokot, Chief Joseph's brother's, herd that was left behind with a rancher when the Nez Perce fled for freedom in 1877 were taken by Stan Haggatt. They are now at a ranch on the Nez Perce Reservation in Lapwai, Idaho.  


This theory that the appaloosas and Nez Perce could have crossed the Bering straight makes me wonder if the tall, blond Nez Perce Tribe of legends who lived in the cold north could have been descendants of a Slavic group of people who sought asylum from who knows what.  These are the people I  based the spirits in the Spirit trilogy from. The blonde, blue-eyed northern Nez Perce of myths and legends. 


What do you think? Is the crossing a possibility for both the horses and the people?