Popular Music and Jazz in the American Junior College Music Curriculum during the Swing Era (1935–1945)

Abstract

Introduction Using popular and jazz in formal education is controversial for educators and some extent, the greater popular community. Many musical styles historically categorized as popular, such as jazz, blues, country, musical theater, rhythm and blues, gospel, rock, and hip hop were created in the United States. But American educational institutions have been slow accept these indigenous musical practices as worthy of study in the higher education curriculum. Nonetheless, as the twentieth century progressed, a small number of college programs began add popular the curriculum. In this article, I will present preliminary research on how junior colleges included popular and jazz in their curriculum during the Swing Era, spanning from 1935-1945. American Popular in Higher Education In an address the MENC Society for Research in Education in 2000, Jere Humphreys observed, American educators have been trying bend the American public's musical knowledge, tastes, and practices our collective will since before our nation became a nation. Beginning in colonial days and extending the present day, educators and others have been trying tell Americans what of they should perform, listen to, and even appreciate. (1) kind of music that Humphreys mentions is Western European art music, as it is known in the academy, or classical music, as it is more commonly known by the general public. Although the curriculum began diversify during the second half of the twentieth century, Western European art still provides the foundation for academic musical studies in higher education. In his ethnographic study of Midwestern university schools of music, Heartland Excursions, ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl concludes, ... the 'music' in schools of always means, exclusively or overwhelmingly, Western classical (also called 'art music,' 'canonic music,' 'cultivated music,' 'serious music,' and even--wryly--'real music' and 'normal music'). (2) Reviewing the course catalogs of college and university programs in 1998, Sammie Ann Wicks arrives at a similar conclusion. She writes, The rigid 'classical-music-only' orientation has dominated American universities' department curricula for so long, in fact, that this cultural style is now considered universal and is assumed be the model for all others. We do not have Theory of in the Elite Western-European Tradition in the curriculum, we have 'Music Theory;' not 'Appreciation ofMusic in the Elite Western-European Tradition, but 'Music Appreciation.' (3) In an address his American colleagues at MENC, British musicologist Christopher Small comments on the lack of value placed on indigenous American musical styles in all areas of education. He writes, to this outsider it seems strange that in the very heartland of this powerful and endlessly varied musical culture he should find that those who are charged with developing the musicality of young people should place so little value on it, and should cling instead, with a tenacity that looks a little like desperation, the great works of the European past. (4) These scholars are informed by the contemporary concepts of multiculturalism, which arose during the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 1960s. Its apogee can be seen in the pronouncements of the Tanglewood Declaration in 1968, when a group of educators agreed that Music of all periods, styles, forms, and cultures belongs in the curriculum. musical repertory should be expanded involve of our time in its rich variety, including currently popular teenage and avant-garde music, American folk music, and the of other cultures. (5) It is unclear whether the authors of this statement were addressing the entire spectrum of formal education including college and university programs, but nevertheless these sentiments had a significant effect in the years following the declaration. …