The History of Jazz Education: A Critical Reassessment

Abstract

Most narratives of the history of jazz education seem to reinforce the perceptions of a fundamental distinction between academic and non-academic practices. This essay explores the development of a historical identity for the field of jazz education, and how this historical narrative speaks to the ways in which the field has emerged as a unique cultural system within higher musical education itself. The narrative of history, to this end, serves a distinct purpose, in which such an identity becomes not only one segment of a historical document, but also an instrument in the power-laden relationships which characterize musical study in higher education. Rethinking the History of Jazz Education The relationship between jazz educators and those within the professional jazz community has been, at certain times, a troubling one. In particular, academic jazz programs have often been accused of being too far removed from the traditions of jazz - as these traditions developed through both performance and informal learning situations. In reflecting upon his own experiences as a student in jazz education programs, Keith Javors advances the view that jazz education represents, in some sense, a clash of musical cultures, that of academia and what he terms the indigenous jazz community. He writes that [The] concern for jazz performance programs developed through a colliding of experiences in what I increasingly believe can exemplify two disparate value systems related to jazz performance: that encompassed within professional practice and that encompassed within academia.1 The historical construction of jazz education as represented by documented histories of the field presents a fundamentally diachronic narrative of its