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What Is at Stake in Jazz Education? Creative Black Music and the Twenty-First-Century Learning Environment

Goecke, Norman Michael
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1438-719X
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1461119626

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Music.
This dissertation aims to explore and describe, in ethnographic terms, some of the principal formal and non-formal environments in which jazz music is learned today. By elucidating the broad aesthetic, stylistic, and social landscapes of present-day jazz pedagogy, it seeks to encourage the revitalization and reorientation of jazz education, and of the cultural spaces in which it takes place. Although formal learning environments have increasingly supported the activities of the jazz community, I argue that this development has also entailed a number of problems, notably a renewal of racial tensions spurred on by 1) the under-representation of non-white students and faculty, especially black Americans; 2) the widespread adoption of 'color-blind' methodologies in formal music-learning environments, which serve to perpetuate ambivalence or apathy in the addressing of racial problems; 3) a failure adequately to address cultural studies related to the black heritage of jazz music; and 4) the perpetuation of a narrow vision of jazz music that privileges certain jazz styles, neglects others, and fails to acknowledge the representative intersections between jazz and related forms of black music. The study seeks to answer two main questions: What is the nature of the twenty-first-century learning environment? Moreover, how do cultural and racial dynamics affect the ways in which jazz is taught and understood in formal and non-formal settings? My proposition is that teaching jazz as a part of a broad spectrum of black musical styles and cultural traditions, which I shall call the black musical continuum, provides solutions for the dearth of cultural competency and narrow vision of jazz found in many learning environments. Through a continuum theory, I seek to provide a framework for viewing, teaching, learning, and performing jazz that situates it within the larger socio-cultural context of black American music. I argue that such a reorientation toward African-American cultural studies will help jazz musicians, jazz educators, and school administrators better understand how to solve problems of racial disparity and cultural awkwardness or ineptitude in both formal and non-formal environments. Chapter 1 elucidates significant problems that arise from the lack of attention to appropriately targeted cultural competency within jazz education, with particular attention to the racial tensions within jazz programs and the praxis of color-blindness. Chapter 2 draws upon ethnographic methods, notably as promoted by Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. and Bruno Nettl, to construct a critical ethnography of jazz learning environments at the turn of the twenty-first century. Chapter 3 provides the ethnographic study of a Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop, to explain the workings of a unique milieu that influences not only how jazz is taught in schools around the world, but also how the music is culturally perceived and understood within and outside of academia. Chapter 4 delves deeper into the Aebersold Workshop community to examine dynamics of race and gender in that environment. Chapter 5 provides a second ethnographic study, conducted in New Orleans, Louisiana, in which I explore the intersection between non-formal and formal jazz learning environments by shadowing jazz trumpeter Mario Abney. The final chapter synthesizes data from these three ethnographies and explores the administrative and curricular implications of the study.
Graeme Boone (Committee Chair)
Ryan Skinner (Committee Member)
William McDaniel (Committee Member)
506 p.
African American Studies; American Studies; Black History; Black Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Fine Arts; Folklore; Music; Music Education; Performing Arts
jazz; jazz theory; jazz education; music education; African American Studies; African American and African Studies; African American culture; Jamey Aebersold; David Baker; Ellis Marsalis; Steve Davis; Mario Abney; New Orleans; black music; jazz pedagogy;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Goecke, N. M. (2016). What Is at Stake in Jazz Education? Creative Black Music and the Twenty-First-Century Learning Environment [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1461119626

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Goecke, Norman. What Is at Stake in Jazz Education? Creative Black Music and the Twenty-First-Century Learning Environment. 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1461119626.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Goecke, Norman. "What Is at Stake in Jazz Education? Creative Black Music and the Twenty-First-Century Learning Environment." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1461119626

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1461119626
10,863
© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.