Jazz, Startups, and the Sound of Legacy
Improvised or Institutional
By Rafi Mercer
I’ve just had a thought: jazz and everyday music can be read like the difference between being part of a startup and being part of a hundred-year-old corporation.
Jazz is the startup. It thrives on improvisation, on risk, on the moment. The players step in without certainty of where the tune will land, but they trust instinct, chemistry, and nerve. There’s chaos in it, but also possibility. The same is true of starting something from scratch. One day it flows, the next it collapses, but each turn is alive. It forces you to listen closely, to react, to keep pace with shifting rhythm.
Everyday music — pop, routine playlists, songs designed to fit into the background — that’s the corporation. Predictable, structured, endlessly repeated. It has its place, just as institutions do. They keep things stable, familiar, reassuring. The payroll runs, the meetings occur, the chords resolve. But you rarely get surprise. The groove may be efficient, but it’s not built to change direction mid-solo.
What strikes me is how both are needed. Jazz without discipline can spiral into noise. Corporations without spark stagnate. But to be inside either is to feel the difference in your bones. In a hundred-year-old structure, you inherit weight, hierarchy, processes that take time to shift. In a startup, you inherit nothing but energy — you have to build every process, every bar of music, from the ground up.
Tracks & Tales sits closer to jazz. Improvised, risky, a little rough at the edges but alive with possibility. Each day feels like a new take, another solo, a chance to move the idea forward. The corporation will come later, perhaps, when the charts are written and the form fixed. For now it’s the start-up sound: unpredictable, sometimes exhausting, but urgent and true.
And maybe that’s why I’ve always loved jazz. It teaches you how to live inside uncertainty, how to trust that even when you don’t know the end of the phrase, the music will carry you. Building something new is the same. You don’t wait for the full score; you play the next note and trust the rest will arrive.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.
