“I like the music [Referring to AACM]. I don’t have any problems with it. But it’s got to have a meaning. Everything can’t be it, if only because you can’t teach it to other people”
~Wynton Marsalis
I feel this quote could use some unpacking. Wynton Marsalis has done so much for the jazz community, and I think we can all acknowledge that without the “young lions” movement of the 80’s and 90’s we’d be in dire straits. However, in this quote Marsalis implies perhaps that his potentially narrow definition of jazz is only narrow because he has to teach it to other people. When I try to put myself in his shoes and imagine that my connection with this musical tradition goes as deep as Wynton’s, this position makes sense in a way. He is simply trying to pass down the music that he loves and knows, quite frankly, like the back of his hand. There are perhaps legions of talented educators who feel the same way as Wynton on this issue. Let us look for a second though at the standard model of jazz education in America.
[For this blog post let’s define standard as jazz education in the public school system for a student that plays a “traditional” jazz instrument]
So you are a middle school/highschool student who has sat patiently through 5-6-7th grade concert band and you hear that there is a Jazz band you can audition for. You get really excited because surely this music must be more fun that what you have been playing for the first 2-3 years of your musical training. So you play in Jazz band all through highschool, maybe if you are lucky your teacher shows some scales, or better yet introduces you to a set of Aebersold books. Maybe that leads you to a private instructor you teaches you patterns and chord-scale theory. Armed with such mathematical puzzle pieces the student ventures forth into the world and audition for college and honestly, the student probably sounds quite good.
[To be honest, my education was a little more than what I just described but a lot of colleagues that went to school me had this exact background]
So in college the chord-scale theory is more than likely expounded upon until you are blue in the face. You learn standard after standard after standard and just keep applying this more and more “advanced” scales. This model creates a lot of impressive improvisers, so please don’t think I am discounting the method. However, I think that while it can be very time consuming for the student to learn in this method, it fairly easy for the instructor to churn out student after student who knows there scales! [I would certainly count myself as one of those students] Now I have never taken a lesson with Mr. Marsalis, and can therefore not speak to his teaching methods; but I think there is something more universal that could be taught that would allow students to play both in the “tradition” that Lincoln center upholds and the equally rich “tradition” that the AACM upholds. If the focus of jazz education from the beginning became the expressive quality of tone, the subtly of rhythmic feels, and the ability to develop and utilize ones ears; then I think that would do a lot in the way of passing on and/or innovating upon this great tradition. The issue is, are we not doing it that way because it can’t be taught? Or are we not teaching that way because it just takes too much energy.
I’ve had a few recent teachers who in fact have refused to teach improvisation, in favor of dealing with issues of rhythm and tone. Paraphrasing one such teacher “If you want to be a better improviser go but on your favorite record and start learning, I’m here to help you become a more expressive musician, not show you the ‘right notes’”. Definitely an interesting approach and I have been back to see that teacher many times since that first lesson. If we truly want to preserve this music and make it viable, creative and exciting; I think we need to first examine what and how exactly we are teaching this music that is SO difficult to teach. Stylistically people will play what they like, but if you really listen we are all rooted in the SAME SCHTUFF!
You should be careful not to polarize – as it seems you do – Marsalis and the AACM. I’m fairly certain that Marsalis speaking of the “folk roots” of jazz, he’s speaking to the same Afrological modes of musical expression that inform AACM musics and musicians. The polarity, if anywhere, lies between Afrological and Eurological modes, as exemplified by the primacy of oral tradition and vocal expression on one hand, and the privileging of musical texts on the other. (For more on these categories, see Lewis, “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives”.)
ReplyDeleteThe picture with Marsalis gets complicated because he’s trying to appeal to oral traditions in the context of an elitst, Eurocentric institution. The way that these logics and power systems rub up against one another as he pursues a frankly ambitious and unprecedented manoeuver is fascinating, to say the least.
You ask: “are we not doing it that way [with expressive attention to tone, rhythmic feel, ears and interaction] because it can’t be taught? Or are we not teaching that way because it just takes too much energy.” I don’t think it’s laziness, but rather a distance from oral tradition that’s responsible. That distance can take different forms – race, social class, generation, culture – but I know that a concern for what’s lost in these distances is shared by musicians from many different categories.