Lately I’ve been exploring the blues, which is not an entirely unexpected move for a jazz person to make. After all, blues music is one of the real taproots of jazz, which continues to shape and inform the jazz genrein so many ways.

Specifically my explorations have to do with the ways in which the blues tradition might help us to hear the biblical psalms in new and fresh ways. Though there are clear distinctions between the two, I am increasingly convinced that there are real ways in which t...