(Too) Much Ado About Jazz

                We want our music educators to obviously be knowledgeable in their craft, that’s certainly a given. It is imperative that the standard American music teacher knows his or her music theory exceptionally well, so that we may be able to confidently answer any incoming question from our students. We want to have extensive knowledge pertaining to the history of music – specifically bibliographical information on the world’s most prominent composers, an accurate timeline of musical periods, and relevant major world events coinciding with cultural periods and composers’ lives – so that our students can better understand and gain valuable insight what has gone into the process of creating and analyzing today’s music. We must be able to guide our students through advanced topics such as composition and improvisation in order to train the next generation of well-rounded musicians. All of this is true. But when it comes to imparting knowledge of specific genres onto our students, how much expertise are we truly expected to have? Are some genres more important than others?

                It’s a tough question, perhaps, but one worth discussing a bit more thoroughly. Today’s standard music classroom incorporates all the instruments of your standard concert band – woodwinds, brass, and percussion. In greater detail, we have our flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, snare, bass, cymbals, and mallet percussion all contributing to the ensemble, which easily sets this ensemble up to play a multitude of symphonic band compositions, including some very famous pieces by some very famous composers (Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Gustav Holst, Vincent Persichetti, among others.) One thinks of band literature in the general music classroom and one cannot help but conjure images of pieces of this nature performed at school concerts and assemblies. But this same instrumentation is prominent in the standard jazz ensemble as well – trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and percussion (with snare, bass and cymbals condensing into the drum set) comprise the meat of the group, with instruments such as flute, clarinet, and vibraphone certainly finding their place in select pieces. Of course when two different genres share the same basic instrumentation, that both will find their way into the curriculum somehow. It’s just convenient.

                But keep in mind that specifically, and by the letter of the National standards, a jazz ensemble is not necessarily required. It definitely paves an easy road for satisfying components such as improvisation and music history, but there are other ways to get this done with genres other than jazz. It just appears that the rise of jazz being taught in the general classroom is because of the carry-over of instruments from both jazz and symphonic band, which of course has made music educators strengthen the overall importance of jazz. It is almost cliché that the common music teacher will go at great lengths to talk about how amazing jazz is, but is anyone else talking about it? It’s 2016 – our students simply aren’t choosing jazz as their genre of choice anymore. I personally have never met one student (or one child at all) who can honestly say that he or she loves jazz and listens to it on the regular. So why all the hype?

                There is no doubt that jazz has shaped American music, that much is true. Without jazz, there is no rock; without rock, there is no pop. You could go on. From its early African American roots, jazz has become ingrained in American culture in the same way that folk music has. But what came before jazz? And what came before that? What about Baroque music, or even Gregorian chant? Didn’t all modern music have origins in these genres as well? After all, without them, I can’t imagine what today’s music would be. “But jazz is relevant to AMERICAN music! It shaped our culture, and THAT’S why it has such significance in our schools!” True, we’ve all heard this point. But was America not founded as a country of immigrants? A melting pot of cultures from around the world? The first English settlers of America came here with their own music ingrained in their spirits, derived from the old classic periods. So why is Baroque music not considered equally as important to practice in schools, up there with jazz? Could it be because jazz music is more conducive to today’s standard school instrumentation?

                So should music educators today be experts in jazz? I don’t believe so – if we were expected to be experts in jazz, then we should also be expected to have absolute expertise in blues, gospel, Baroque, and Gregorian chant as well. Each have their own area of importance in shaping today’s American music, and I don’t see how one has more importance over another. I think we should all definitely have proficiency in discussing these genres, and we should be able to talk intelligently to our students about the important aspects of these genres and their relationship across other styles of music and to modernism. But to say jazz music is vital in education and Renaissance music is not, that is a mistake which gives our students the wrong idea about where music really comes from.

                What about American folk music? All American students should have some knowledge and fluency in the old nursey rhymes, which not only introduces user-friendly musical concepts such as pitch and rhythm, but also provides our youth with a source of our country’s identity. The same way Kodaly utilized his country’s folk music as a source of instruction, so too must we pass on this knowledge and preserve our heritage. If we’re talking about specific examples, “The Star Spangled Banner” and “America The Beautiful” are two obvious pieces of music that our students should learn. Other early tunes such as “Yankee Doodle” and “Mary Had A Little Lamb” are simplistic and provide a means for us to discuss the aforementioned topics as well as opening up new paths later on when introducing transposition, composition, and improvisation. Many of my students have taken a simple song like “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and have learned about how to transpose to a different key, because the melody is so basic and does not require much scrutiny in its analysis. The average music teacher does not need to be considered an expert in this subject. Those who choose to study American folk music specifically have degrees specific in this subject matter – they are the experts. What good are jazz or folk historians and musicologists in the first place if every music teacher is an expert in these fields already? There professions and degrees would become moot. And what good are cancer specialists if every doctor is already an expert in dealing with cancer? 

                I could go on, but the bottom line is this: music teachers need to be knowledgeable in all things music. We should be able to talk intelligently about jazz and folk music the same way in which we should be able to talk about Classical and Baroque music, and be able to answer most questions about them so as to guide our students along a quality path of education. But to go as far as to say that we should all be experts, that could be a bit of a stretch. Leave the very specific details and footnotes about jazz to degree-holding jazz historians, not the average 5^th grade general music teacher.