Today is April 20th, or 4/20, a date now widely associated with marijuana culture.
For some, the number carries an aura of rebellion. But the origin story is more ordinary than mystical.
The most widely accepted account traces it to a group of California high school students in the early 1970s, who used “4:20” as a code for the time they would meet after school to look for an abandoned cannabis crop. Like so much important information, it took the intervention of musicians to carry 4/20 — which began as a local phenomenon — outward and onto the global stage.
Only after Grateful Dead fans and the band’s wider orbit began using the number did it become shorthand around the world.
Still, for true aficionados, every day is the right day for getting high.
And if there is one art form where cannabis has long held a place in the mythology, it’s jazz.
To get some clarity through the haze, I turned to an expert in the field, someone with both a handle on the history and a lifetime of personal experience: my father, musician Ben Sidran.
