In Chapter One of
Living the Questions I read an extended "jazz" analogy for teaching. I think I mentioned this in either my reaction paper or my last journal entry or both.
I've heard or read things like it in the past. The jazz analogy is actually pretty good for describing anything that requires working within a framework or context or accepted set of conventions but yet responding, reacting and adapting in the moment in order to express something unique.
The thing I hate about that kind of descriptive writing, though, are the adjectives that are attached to what we do as musicians or the sounds of our instruments. All this "mellow," "smooth," "swinging," "cool," "carefree" type nonsense makes us sound like either we don't approach our art seriously as the product of years of practice and refinement, or that we are just curiosities, like zoo animals. "Look at the cool jazz players over there playing their jazz; aren't they something?"
I practiced and studied for twenty years easy to be a musician. I have studied far longer to be a musician than I have studied to be a teacher. I studied longer to be a musician than an attorney studies to get a law degree and pass the bar exam. I studied longer to be a musician than a medical doctor studies to be a licensed practitioner of his/her craft.
So I'm not a curiosity or a zoo animal who is born into my behavior. It is not something I do naturally for other people to regard as "cool."
Serious practitioners of jazz know the melodies and chord changes to thousands of tunes in what might be called a commonly accepted canon. If I walk into a jam session right now with my bass, and the player running the session calls "All the Things You Are" in Ab, I know that the first chord is F minor 7, I know to ask if we're doing that common intro to the tune using Db7#9 and C7#9 or if we're starting "right on it," I know how to construct and play a walking bass line for the tune that will spell out the harmonic framework for everybody but still be fresh each 32 bars, I know how to listen to the drummer and know whether it's more appropriate to play a "2" or "4" feel, I know how to create a solid timekeeping function by landing each beat of my walking bass line concurrently with the drummer's stick contacting the ride cymbal. I know when this is appropriate and not appropriate, and no, I can't explain it; it's something you know when you bring your experience to bear on what you are hearing that moment. I know how to listen to a soloist play several choruses and musically support a sense of compositional development in
their solo by the way
I play. I know how to watch and listen for cues that a soloist is concluding their solo and another soloist will step in. When I hear a soloist improvising over a tune, I can hear and understand the nature of harmonic and melodic devices that soloist may be exploiting and can respond accordingly by the way I play. All of these skills and many, many more are the result of thousands and thousands of hours over years and years, of listening, practicing, playing, studying, and evaluating.
When it comes to the highly refined skill of extemporaneously composing on an existing musical structure (and I will use this as a practitioner's definition of jazz), there is an undeniable need for the serious player to consistently examine and re-examine his/her relationship to the music, to practice persistently and diligently so that technical limitations don't hamper expressive ability, to listen to other great players and absorb deeply the approaches that personally resonate and make sense, to study with great masters of the art, and to synthesize and transform these experiences into new expression by channeling them through one's own vital, creative, ongoing effort.
I'm not a cool zoo animal with some fascinating inborn talent. I worked for this.
Maybe this is why the idea of "teacher research" seems kind of obvious to me. As a musician I have lived in that world most of my life already.
