Teaching a class: some thoughts
So my big news this month is that I'll be teaching a new course that I developed with a colleague at the Moores School of Music. You can read all about it at the new UHjazz.com site. In the process of gathering and organizing information to teach people how to listen to (and appreciate) jazz music, I've discovered a couple things and formed opinions that I did not previously hold. In other words, I really need to unload my brain.
Assembling a YouTube playlist
As part of the course, I've decided to implement a journal for students to record their listening habits and tastes as a means of developing their "active listening" skills. To help with this, I've started to build a YouTube playlist for each student to remotely access and write about. (Remember less than 10 years ago when copying CDs for playlists could be such a hassle?) In a recent post by another Houston jazz artist/advocate, I noticed the phrase, "Isn’t it funny...how YouTube has become the world’s largest free music jukebox?" This is so true, and yet, I'm a little apprehensive about the notion of assembling a large playlist of videos to obligate students to write about.
First:
Should I program their listening selections? They will already be responsible for knowing a handful of truly great landmark recordings for exams. Is it smart that I should try to continue to cram this stuff down their throats? Would that give me or the student a more honest depiction of their habits and observations? At first, I thought that maybe I should instead open up the listening journal to all musical styles, but this seems counter-productive. After all, I'll need to be reading these entries and I don't really need to read 20+ entries on hip-hop or country music or whatever else. Instead, I'll just try to include as much significant jazz music (and jazz-based music) that can be had on YouTube, whatever I feel will be relevant to the course. I just hope it doesn't discourage anyone from exploring a new realm of music, something I consider to be the most exciting aspect of listening.
Second:
YouTube has those darn user comments. Do we really need to be subjected to some anonymous person's pretentious and/or racist remarks on ANYTHING? I just read a great CNN article on this. My vote? Eliminate these completely from YouTube.
Future of Jazz?
Here's another good read on the future of jazz, or better yet: jazz today. I'm really looking closely at the history of jazz music in the United States, its cultural impact and its significance. I'll have to be teaching this to people who I assume will have had little to no encounters with the music in their past, and if they did, it was probably unpleasant. Because of this, I've been reassessing all those big artistic questions that need to be answered in order to explain and defend anything deemed "relevant" or "important". I have no problem doing this and I think it's something that a lot of artists should do more often, especially in the 21st century. (For instance: "cool" ≠ "art")
I have yet to watch Icons Among Us, but I speculate that it's a worthwhile documentary that appeals to both the jazz enthusiast as well as the newbie without being shackled by the pre-conceived notions of historical conventions of the art form. And really, that's my goal for this course. I want new people to appreciate a music that has played a crucial role in the development of our country, in addition to understanding why it's still significant and NOT dead. While you must acknowledge the history and the classics, you cannot also lose sight of the present and future.
I just hope this works. (crossing fingers)