It has been said that jazz is one of the most influential and important art forms the United States has given to the culture of the world. Jazz draws its unique language and style from many societies and cultures from around the globe and in turn, has itself become an influence for artists from all walks of life. This course will examine the origins of jazz, major performers and composers who have shaped its sound, and major styles throughout its history. Emphasis will be placed on historical recordings and knowledge of important figures and styles in jazz.
This course also approaches jazz as a part of American and global cultural history, with emphasis placed on diversity and equality among people from different cultural, racial, and ethnic groups in the United States. Students will explore the changing social contexts in which jazz musicians have worked and lived. They will develop critical skills for analyzing and understanding the connections between music, ideas, and culture. The basic premise of this course is that musical and cultural meanings, particularly throughout the history of jazz, are created in connection to one another and in relation to specific issues of social equality and inequality. To understand these relationships, students will investigate ways in which jazz musicians and audiences define and redefine themselves through their music; study the interactions of the diverse groups of people who have created and transformed jazz (including African-Americans, European-Americans, other ethnic groups and nationalities, men and women, successive generations, and members of distinct economic strata); explore the controversies over identity and musical value that have marked jazz history; examine communities of musicians as well as prominent individual artists within those communities; and learn to recognize distinctive musical characteristics of the idiom.
Social equalities and inequalities are a very real and influential part of American social history, and these issues along with the social and ethnic diversity of the United States, directly influenced and shaped one of America’s original art forms: jazz. In this course, students will learn to describe how identities (i.e. religious, gender, ethnic, racial, class, sexual orientation, disability, and/or age) are shaped by cultural and societal influences within contexts of equality and inequality. They will study historical, social, political, and economic processes producing diversity, equality, and structured inequalities in the United States. Students will address social actions that have led to greater equality and social justice in the United States (i.e. religious, gender, ethnic, racial, class, sexual orientation, disability, and/or age). And lastly, constructive interactions between people from different cultural, racial, and ethnic groups within the United States will be discussed. By comparing different historical periods of jazz and jazz from different groups of people, they will gain an understanding of how equality and inequality can directly and indirectly affect the creation and development of a specific artistic genre. In this process, students will be introduced to concepts through various means: those of first-hand accounts from jazz musicians, jazz scholars, published literature on the subject, ethnomusicology, contemporary reporting, critical reviews, and visual arts.
