BRAD GOODE: Jazz Is Not a Language. @JEN 2024

Jazz Is Not a Language: Critical Thinking vs. Imitative Learning in Jazz Education.

Presented by Brad Goode
The University of Colorado, Colorado Conservatory of the Jazz Arts, The Jazz Trumpet Consortium.

By any standard of measurement, the Jazz Education movement has been wildly successful, and for this we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to its pioneers. The battles that they fought to gain acceptance for Jazz within academic culture were very tough battles. To quantify and qualify Jazz related topics with administrations, curriculum committees and accreditation organizations, they may have needed to veer toward topics and formats which would be more easily quantified and qualified. With the wider acceptance of Jazz and other Black Musical traditions in academia, the time has arrived to examine our effect as educators on the direction of the music itself, and to ask important questions about the nature of our advice to new generations of musicians.

A trope often used in Jazz Education compares the development of improvisational skills to the learning of a language. While “jazz is a language” can be an illustrative metaphor, it is not literally true. Jazz, in its tradition, has always been an artform highlighting self-expression and a diverse array of individual stylists. The musicians most revered have always been those who are most distinctive, whether they have been innovators or have played within more traditional stylistic frameworks.

The teaching of jazz as a language most often encourages imitation as a means toward proficiency. This has led to some outcomes that stand in direct opposition to the jazz tradition. Students have sometimes been encouraged to develop “jazz vocabulary.” This vocabulary model posits that fine jazz musicians share common phrases, and that in order to be recognized as stylistically appropriate, the student should learn and apply such phrases to their own improvisations. This teaching model looks to transcription and pattern playing as primary methods for acquiring such “vocabulary.”

This presentation challenges both the effectiveness and the validity of teaching jazz through imitation and content memorization. It examines the effects of such methods in the nature of the music produced by students receiving this training. It proposes alternative options, based on more traditional ways of learning jazz, and it applies a cultural lens through which to view the mission of the jazz educator. I wish to raise two important questions for all of us within the jazz community: 1. Do we better honor a cultural legacy by venerating its past or by keeping its traditions alive? and 2. Is it ever appropriate to prescribe content for improvisation?

[kylemulqueen]

This was such an interesting and inspirational presentation. All of the points you mentioned in the beginning really resonated with my experiences through music education. Those 3 ways of practice you mentioned in the Q&A at the end (purple shirt) were really cool, especially the practice intuition/not thinking part. Looking forward to accepting and improving on who I am as a musician after this. Thanks