Tourist or Occupant?
Lyricist Andy Razaf on “Ain’t Misbehavin,” 1929: “[Fats] worked on it for 45 minutes and there it was.” (source: http://www.jazzstandards.com/)
In the HBO film Boycott, the character Bayard Rustin compares the political implications of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott to “jazz” as a way to give the act meaning, a contextual significance, to turn it into a movement. If I were to write a different kind of essay to unpack and support this comparison, no doubt I would find that this particular moment in time did indeed possess rhythm (or, a foundational coherence, a logic, a reason), improvisation (or, spontaneity, intuition, freedom, confidence), and call and response (or, collaboration, cooperation, thesis and antithesis, innovation). Aren’t these basics necessary for change of any kind? These are the tools for cause and the outcome, or effect, is what Dr. O’Meally called “a thick slice of culture.” At any given moment, painters, writers, historians, journalists, politicians, philosophers, musicians, and ordinary citizens are in a jam session creating that “thick slice of culture.” And yes, sometimes, it’s a slice of filet mignon, and sometimes, it’s, well, meatloaf. Walt Whitman, an ur-jazz poet of sorts, claims America is its own greatest poem, that collectively, it is free verse, pushing at its boundaries, and constantly, to rework Ralph Ellison (and Professor Herman Beavers), losing its identity as it is finding it.
To be more concrete: What if, in late August, I begin my American Literature class with jazz, the music? What if I started the first day, without any front-loading, playing a sampling of Armstrong, Parker, or Coltrane? Williams, Bryant, or Fitzgerald? Would a basic jazz vocabulary, and the music, give students an interesting path into Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, our first major text of the year? Would this approach help students access their voices, the logic, and originality in their writing? Would hearing a call and response between the piano playing styles of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, between the renditions of “Summertime” by Ellington and Greg Osby, help forge a classroom community of learners? Learners who ask questions, practice, explore, take risks? Is “call and response” how I want them to think about my comments on their drafts and about me as a teacher of writing? If using art in the English classroom helps students hone their analytical and conceptual skills, will layering art and literature with jazz really bring it home? Or somehow make it more meaningful? Or, heaven forbid, more fun?
These questions reflect the big thinker in me; as teachers, we don’t often have the time during the academic year to ask the big questions, to ponder significant and meaningful change in curriculum, so the luxury of the Institute for me has been the opportunity to consider them. While my inner optimist lives strong, particularly in late July, a reality check may prevail and my ambitions may be reduced to a curricular unit or two. At least for this coming year, for example, upon arriving at the moment in which the paintings of Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence provide an interesting and useful pairing with Locke, Hughes, and Hurston, I can thicken the slice of culture by challenging them with Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy,” and “East St. Louis Toodle-oo,” Waller’s “African Ripples,” and “The Joint is Jumpin.” Using creative vehicles, giving them a jazz vocabulary would also mean a set of “jazz culture” questions that could lead us into discussions of race, power, gender, identity, and whatever else the students come up with that I can’t ever anticipate.
I leave with many questions and many temptations to experiment, take risks over and above the routine I’ve established in nineteen years of teaching. I am hoping that my own ongoing processing of, and response to, the material, lectures, and people I’ve encountered here at this Institute will continue to sit here inside allowing me to piece together some kind of theme and variation, with a blue note here and there. Now, being the neophyte that I am, I need to retreat to the woodshed and work on the swing within.
July 27, 2007
Lyricist Andy Razaf on “Ain’t Misbehavin,” 1929: “[Fats] worked on it for 45 minutes and there it was.” (source: http://www.jazzstandards.com/)
In the HBO film Boycott, the character Bayard Rustin compares the political implications of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott to “jazz” as a way to give the act meaning, a contextual significance, to turn it into a movement. If I were to write a different kind of essay to unpack and support this comparison, no doubt I would find that this particular moment in time did indeed possess rhythm (or, a foundational coherence, a logic, a reason), improvisation (or, spontaneity, intuition, freedom, confidence), and call and response (or, collaboration, cooperation, thesis and antithesis, innovation). Aren’t these basics necessary for change of any kind? These are the tools for cause and the outcome, or effect, is what Dr. O’Meally called “a thick slice of culture.” At any given moment, painters, writers, historians, journalists, politicians, philosophers, musicians, and ordinary citizens are in a jam session creating that “thick slice of culture.” And yes, sometimes, it’s a slice of filet mignon, and sometimes, it’s, well, meatloaf. Walt Whitman, an ur-jazz poet of sorts, claims America is its own greatest poem, that collectively, it is free verse, pushing at its boundaries, and constantly, to rework Ralph Ellison (and Professor Herman Beavers), losing its identity as it is finding it.
To be more concrete: What if, in late August, I begin my American Literature class with jazz, the music? What if I started the first day, without any front-loading, playing a sampling of Armstrong, Parker, or Coltrane? Williams, Bryant, or Fitzgerald? Would a basic jazz vocabulary, and the music, give students an interesting path into Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, our first major text of the year? Would this approach help students access their voices, the logic, and originality in their writing? Would hearing a call and response between the piano playing styles of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, between the renditions of “Summertime” by Ellington and Greg Osby, help forge a classroom community of learners? Learners who ask questions, practice, explore, take risks? Is “call and response” how I want them to think about my comments on their drafts and about me as a teacher of writing? If using art in the English classroom helps students hone their analytical and conceptual skills, will layering art and literature with jazz really bring it home? Or somehow make it more meaningful? Or, heaven forbid, more fun?
These questions reflect the big thinker in me; as teachers, we don’t often have the time during the academic year to ask the big questions, to ponder significant and meaningful change in curriculum, so the luxury of the Institute for me has been the opportunity to consider them. While my inner optimist lives strong, particularly in late July, a reality check may prevail and my ambitions may be reduced to a curricular unit or two. At least for this coming year, for example, upon arriving at the moment in which the paintings of Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence provide an interesting and useful pairing with Locke, Hughes, and Hurston, I can thicken the slice of culture by challenging them with Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy,” and “East St. Louis Toodle-oo,” Waller’s “African Ripples,” and “The Joint is Jumpin.” Using creative vehicles, giving them a jazz vocabulary would also mean a set of “jazz culture” questions that could lead us into discussions of race, power, gender, identity, and whatever else the students come up with that I can’t ever anticipate.
I leave with many questions and many temptations to experiment, take risks over and above the routine I’ve established in nineteen years of teaching. I am hoping that my own ongoing processing of, and response to, the material, lectures, and people I’ve encountered here at this Institute will continue to sit here inside allowing me to piece together some kind of theme and variation, with a blue note here and there. Now, being the neophyte that I am, I need to retreat to the woodshed and work on the swing within.
July 27, 2007
1 comment:
What a wonderful final message! I was reflecting on some of the lessons we received this summer when I found your beautifully written record of your travels, your reading, and of course, your jazz listening.
Back to the woodshed, indeed.
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