TRUMPET and its kin are one funny family of instruments, perhaps because trumpet rhymes with strumpet or worse because it reminds one of a horny elephant. Among the various jokes mocking the wind instruments and its aficionados, this one, although funny, is in poor taste: What do you call a person who can play a trumpet but does not? Answer: a gentleman.

Maybe because it is our lack of familiarity with the instruments that we fail to genuinely appreciate them. At best, we associate these instruments with a marching band or a motley group of wedding musicians. None of them inspire imagination, just a formality.

However, for a lover of jazz, the family of trumpets is held in high esteem. In fact, when they think jazz, they think brass. Trumpet is to jazz what guitar is to rock 'n' roll and violin to western classical. It is impossible to have jazz without blowing one's trumpet, no pun intended.

Recently, Enrico Rava, a well-known Italian jazz trumpet soloist, performed in the capital. He is a big name in the global jazz scene, so I had to be there to watch him blow his trumpet.

The Teen Murti Auditorium was jam packed, the heads bobbing to the music. I clapped for two things; one, obviously, for the music which was incredibly soulful for jazz; and another for Enrico's lung capacity. Mr Rava is a 70-year-old musician but he blew the instrument with pleasure for two hours as if he was celebrating his 18th birthday.

And then there was Gianluca Petrella, a young jazz trombonist who blew everyone's mind. I never knew a trombone could scare you and tickle you at the same time. Jazz is a pleasure we so much dream about in bed.

Jazz appreciation is not everyone's cup of tea or rather a glass of wine, and I don't consider myself to be much of a jazz person. The taste for jazz has to be developed over time. Like your first glass of wine, you can't make much of it. And you can't completely call yourself a critic until you have the ability to identify the base note.

Jazz is hard to define. Like religion, it means different things to different people. Unlike other genre of music, Jazz is not restricted to rhythms. It plays on it. One can play jazz to the drum solo of Jailhouse Rock or bass line of Billy Jean.

The key to jazz is improvisation. A soloist pays his mood to a beat, which is mostly complex combo of various rhythms. An acid jazz rhythm, on a manuscript, would look like a mathematician's scribble calculating the size of a distant planet's crater. It is madness, yet there is music in the madness.

What makes music jazz is its unpredictability.

This form of music throws a lot of surprises, but unlike life, they are only pleasant ones, and all that jazz.