I) A1 Queens Colleqe's Aaron Copland Sch00l 0f Music, Jf conlributor t}avid R, Adler teaches an undergrad course called "Wriling About Music:The }iislory 0f Jazz"

e aching j azz history canbe overwhelming at first,and this article doesn'tpretend to ofer the delini-tive approach. It is simpiymy perspective, with inputfrom others, focusing onnuts-and-bolts tasks as wellas overarching goals andideas. Assume that college

freshmen or high school seniors are theintended audience.

The main challenge is that jazz his-tory isn't a topic-it's a thousand top-ics. It is nothing less than the history of

)AZZI |AES EDUCATTON GUTDE 2015/2016

American popular music. To teach it,one must be versed in a range of com-plex and often charged subjects, suchas slavery and its aftermath, throughthe civil-rights era to the present;blackface minstrelsy and the originsof American musical theatre; the his-tory of social dancing; the history ofthe recording industry and Americanbroadcast media and film; the historyand sociology of New Orleans; the im-pact of both World Wars, Prohibition,the Great Depression, the Cold War,the New Left and the counterculture;and the list goes on.

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By David R.Adler

with groups of students who don't knowjazz and aren't musically educated (withsome likely exceptions).

On one level, you have to be ready torepresent and advocate this misunder-stood art form and examine-withoutrose-colored glasses-its role in Ameri-can culture, then and now. Throughyou, students have a chance to discoverthe aesthetic marvel and historical andpolitical import of jazz. It's a big deal.At the same time, you cait put jazz onsuch a pedestal that you isolate it fromthe wider world of music, closing offways for students to draw connections.In my classes I've had fans of metal, hip-hop and every kind of pop, and I d be afool not to help them see the jazz nexusin all of it. Don t belittle your students'musical tastes; you'll drive them away.Instead, meet them where they are andbring them in.

"What people dont get is that teach-ing isn t only about teachingi' says LewisPorter, pianist, author and longtimeprofessor at Rutgers University-New-ark. "You are in front ofpeople who arestrangers to each other and to you. Andif you can't get their good will at the be-ginning, or if you generate ill will, you're

dead. You will have no success the wholesemester. If you generate good will andget them talking to each other, soonyou'll have students who say, 'You know,I don't feel like such a stranger in hereanymore, and I can raise my hand."'

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lhal is jazz history, iti essential to nar-row it down. I erred in the other direc-tion when I taught my first graduatesurvey course at Queens College's AaronCopland School of Music (ACSM) inFlushing, N.Y. I had roughly l5 stu-dents, all performance or compositionmajors, fairly well versed in modernmainstream jazz but lacking in theirknowledge of early jazz as well as theavant-garde. My job was to lill the gaps,but in my zeal I covered too much, andtoo quickly.

Soon I taught two larger freshmanclasses (up to 58 students). These werejazzhistory surveys as well, but muchmore introductory. Along with a diverseAmerican contingent I had studentsfrom Egypt, Guyana, Iran and othercountries. (Queens County, where thecollege is located, is often cited as the

Of course you've also got to know themusic, but you can t just play it in classand expect students to gape in awe at itsbrilliance. Be prepared for the disheart-ening experience of sharing cherishedworks of art and getting a range oflukewarm or even hostile responses. Tosome students, the hippest Blue Note re-cord will sound "like background musicin a cigar lounge"-a direct quote froma recent undergrad class. But get pastit, or better yet, use it and bounce off ofit. Because you're not just teaching jazz,you're teaching listening. You'll needingenuity to find a human connection

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most ethnically diverse county in theU.S.) I still covered too much, but was bet-ter equipped to get students to connect towhat they heard, and far more successfulengaging the class in issues-based discus-sion. Some students zoned out; othersgave feedback that I'll never forget.

Currently at ACSM, I m back to teach-ing my graduate survey course in additionto a new undergraduate course called"Writing About Music: The History ofJazz!' '[he latter has elements of basic jazz

appreciation plus a heary writing compo-nent that demands a more thematic focus.There are four required essays, so I've cre-ated four units: the blues; improvisation;modernism and the avant-garde; and jazzand cMl rights. These allow us to jumparound in the chronology, touching on theimportance of Armstrong and Ellingtonthrough Parker and Coltrane and more,but with a set oflarger conceptual andwriting goals in mind. My ideal surveycourse, always a work in progress, wouldcombine aspects ofthese two approaches,chronological and thematic.

Whatever route one takes, I recom-mend "Constructing the Iazz Traditionl'the influential l99l essay by historian,author and pianist Scott DeVeaux (col-lected in Robert O'Meally's anthologyThe lazz Cadence of American Culture).Exploring the origins of what DeVeauxcalls "an official history of jazzl' the es-say sheds light on how there came to be

"substantive agreement on the definingfeatures ofeachljazzl style, the pan-theon ofgreat innovators, and the canonof recorded masterpieces." It's a starkreminder that the official history, whileuseful in many respects, is manmade andopen to revision. Keep that in mind asyou plan.

"Jazzhistory, like any history, is writ-ten from a particular perspective," saysAlexander Gelfand, a freelance writerwho studied ethnomusicology and hastatghtjazz and other music courses atSt. Johnt University, Skidmore Collegeand Grinnell College. "Sometimes thingsappear to be written in stone and certainnarratives take root, but they can bequestionable. Even presentingjazz as asuccession of styles that implicitly repre-sents some kind of progress in terms ofsophistication can be problematic whenyou go back and listen to the early stuff.A teleological approach to jazz history

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was written into a lot of jazz texts, and ittsomething you can seriously dispute. Ittgood to ask students, 'Do you think thispresentation of the way in which the mu-sic progressed or evolved is fair, or does itmake sense given what you just heard?' Ithink students respond to that. They liketo question things."

IN I$EPINGTIITE ROBIRT WAI.SER'S AI{IHOI.OGY

of jazz readings, one can find the syl-labus for Marshall Stearns' 1950 course"Perspectives inlazz" at New YorkUniversity, a breakthrough attempt atcodifying jazz history. Stearns wasntnecessarily the first, as Walser notes:lazz-history pedagogy in some formstretches back to the late 1930s, ifnotearlier, so the idea ofjazz's arrival asa "legitimate" subject of study onlyrecently is not fully accurate.

Today, a number oftextbooks parse the'bfficial history" in different ways. One ofthe newest is /azz by Scott DeVeaux andGary Giddins, fust published by Nortonin 2009. It's the book I ve used the most, inboth its fullJength and abridged versions.The prose is clearly a cut above and themusical choices are strong, though I substi-tute my own audio just as often and usuallydepart from the textbook altogether duringclass time. It's there for background and ageneral narrative framework and can bedrawn from as needed. IVe assigned shortwritten responses to different sections inthe book to generate discussion and ensurethe reading's being done. (For my under-grad writing class, I assign specific readingsfrom Keeping Time.)

Jazz opens with two chapters onmusic terminology, instrumentation andform; I recommend them to studentsbut don t discuss them. I ve found aquicker way to introduce the elementsof the jazz ensemble, byprojectingonscreen the cover of Meet the lazztetbyArt Farmer and Benny Golson. In thephoto I identify the frontline and therhythm section, naming each player andadding brief background on the bandeven if that's not the main point.

Another introductory exercise I'veused is the century-wide span. I play anearly Kid Ory track back-to-back with anew Steve Coleman track, for instance,and ask students for a quick compara-tive analysis. The goal is to illustrate thechanges thatjazz has undergone in areiatively short time, and to prompt dis-cussion of what makes all of it"jazil'

From there it's on to basic vocabulary.I like to use Herbie Hancock's "One

Finger Snay'' from Empyrean Is/es, one ofthe most immediately gripping perfor-mances I know. I show them the chart forthe tune and explain the terms "form,""bars,"'thorus,"'thangesl' "time" and soon. I point out the walking bassline, theride cymbal pattern, the comping of thepiano. After this they are ready to com-prehend such things as the 12-bar blues.

Counting bars and such might be tootechnical for a few students, but mostwill grasp it on the level of a listeningexperience and understand why it mat-ters. "I see my primary objective thesedays as teaching students how to listen,period," says trombonist and HunterCollege professor Ryan Keberle. Tostudents who've argued that technicalmatters "take the fun out of listeningi'Keberle responds, "Man, you could notbe more wrong. The deeper you start tounderstand and really feel this stuff-these are physical sensations, especially

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when you're talking about rhythm andresonances of harmony-you're talkingabout levels of enjoyment in listeningthat you havent experienced. You haveno idea how much more there is, andthis is how you get there."

That is why in my classes we begin thechronology-from plantation music toblues, ragtime and onward-only afterthe essential listening tools are in hand.But how does one fit decades ofstylisticand cultural change into a one-semesterclass? "You have to take everything outi'says Phil Schaap, preeminent jazz his-torian and broadcaster and the head ofJazz at Lincoln Center's Swing University.

"People are surprised when they see mysurvey courses-I leave out aimost every-body. That's the only solution." Currentlyat work on his own definitive textbook,Schaap narrates his in-class approachover the phone as ifhe's playing a jazzsolo, and it all stems from this insight:"[You] dont have to have many names,and you could eliminate all of theml'

Schaap is not suggesting the names areunimportant. Ofcourse the great figures,the Armstrongs and Ellingtons, will ap-pear one way or another as elements in astory that students can follow. "You couldjust say that the real secret ofjazz studiesis that it's one of many African-Western

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European hybrids in the New World, amusical onel' Schaap continues, layingout a quick and elegant pr6cis from NewOrleans style to orchestral, from swingto bebop, from free jazz to fusion, trac-ing the economic peaks and valleys ashe goes. "Then you point out what thestoryline is of today's scene and you'redonel' he declares. "It can be done in asemester. I ve been doing it for 40 years."

But for Schaap, as for Keberle, "the realassignment is listeningJ'All the stylisticdescription and sociopolitical context"wili have less meaning as a jazz course ifit's not supplemented with the music thattravels along with the storylinel' Schaapinsists. And central to listening, forSchaap, is song form, which he calls "thelinchpin for the lalperson. ... Within acouple of classes, if they understand songform then all of a sudden listening to jazzmakes sense."

AroilG wlIH THE GilolilCAL ltlusl( Wtcover in my writing ciass, I make a pointof sharing jazz that is happening rightnow. It's essential for students to seethat young people-ethnically diverse,male and female, with wide-ranginginfluences-are doing great things withthis music. When I play video of bandslike Kendrick Scottt Oracle, Linda OhiSun Pictures or Melissa Aldanat CrashTrio for writing exercises, the responseis palpably enthusiastic. I also requirestudents to attendjazz concerts (easilydone in New York), and I make the artofthe performance review a key focus.

There's been much discussion lately

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about antagonism between studentsand professors over trigger warnings.political correctness and the like. Thoseissues are real, and I have my opinions,but my classes have been pretty smoothon that score. I'm a liberal Jewish profes-sor teaching what is essentially a branchof African-American studies, and I'vefound that being myself, using com-mon sense and establishing trust is allthat's needed. I dont self-censor: I showracist and anti-Semitic images onscreen;I quote foul language; I talk gender,sexuality and drug addiction. I haven trun into problems.

When it came time last semesterto discuss "Strange Fruit," "Fables ofFaubus" andother jazz protest songs,the Walter Scott video had just beenreleased and Baltimore was about toerupt over the Freddie Gray case. The*BlackLivesMatter campaign was gain-ing ground, and we naturally foundourselves examining current eventsthrough the prism of Mingus, Max

Roach and others. When the massacrein Charleston occurred just weeks afterthe end ofciass, I couldnt stop thinkingof my students and the way theyd con-nected with'Alabama," John Coltrane'sode to victims of the 16th Street BaptistChurch bombing in 1963. The police-re-lated deaths we were discussing seemedbad enough; we didn't know horv muchworse it would get.

Queens College, part of the CUNYsystem, is a public commuter schoolright ofl the Long Island Expressway, a15-minute bus ride from the last stop onthe 7 train. The students aren't rich kids;they have jobs, they help support theirfamilies. Some will drive you crazy, butgiven the pressures, many put in a goodeffort. It's critical to know your studentpopulation on that level and find an ap-proach that will challenge them but notneedlessly overtax them.

I always note that Queens is theresting place of Louis Armstrong, Scottloplin, )ames P. fohnson and more. Bix

Beiderbecke died here; Cecil Taylorwas raised here. The Louis ArmstrongArchives, run by archivist and super-hero-blogger Ricky Riccardi, are righton campus, and the Louis ArmstrongHouse Museum is a few exits away inCorona. I've lost count of how manyextraordinary Armstrong guest lecturesRicky has done in my classes. We'venever missed a semester, and now he'slaunching his own Armstrong courseat ACSM this fall. I ve been fortunateenough to lure many other guests, inperson or via Skype, including musi-cians Ethan lverson, Michael Blake, DanTepfer, Ben Waltzer, Brian Carpenter,Matt Munisteri, Alexis Cuadrado andTodd Marcus; writers Nate Chinen,Ashley Kahn, Marc Myers and LaraPellegrinelli; and conductor/scholarsRandali Keith Horton and Maurice Per-ess. The range ofperspectives and thesheer commitment to music they havedisplayed is an inspiration to students,and I can t be thankful enough. JI

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