Saturday, March 1st at the Arthur Zankel Music Center was an exciting night for me—not just because Melanie Charles and her band delivered an astonishing performance, but because the night was dedicated to people of color, specifically women, in jazz. As I sat there, dumbstruck by Melanie’s talent, I thought, “This is jazz. This is how it’s meant to be performed, and these are the musicians meant to perform it.”
Zhenelle Labelle, Director of the Zankel Music Center, has been a powerhouse in her role, constantly making an effort to diversify the Skidmore music scene and bring people of color to the stage. During her introduction for Make Jazz Trill Again: Trill 101, on March 1st, she shared her deep appreciation for Black women and emphasized the need to amplify and support their voices. This performance filled the Skidmore community, and all those who attended, with unbridled joy. However, there is still an undeniable divide between jazz performance and jazz education that we must remain aware of.
Skidmore College is a predominantly white institution (PWI); this much has always been clear to the student body. We strive to be inclusive, diverse, and knowledgeable about our privilege, yet still have a ways to go, particularly within the music department. Jazz as a “white boys’ club” should be an oxymoron. Yet, like many art forms forged under the weight of oppression, jazz has been reshaped into a genre adopted and defined by white people—specifically, white men.
The Skidmore jazz faculty consists of undeniably educated and talented white men, but are they aware of the weight this holds? Should white men teach and instruct a majority white classroom in a PWI on a genre that was built by African Americans?
During the mid-20th century, Black jazz musicians performed for entirely white venues but were not allowed to sit among white audience members, all the while subjected to violence from their employers and crowds. In his novel Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music, Gerald Horne states, “Certain musical riffs on the piano were drawn from the ‘rat-tat-tat’ of gunshots, a not infrequent sound heard in the often mob-controlled clubs where artists were compelled to perform.” Similarly implicating, blues emerged from the work songs of slaves on plantations, with a call-and-response pattern ingrained in jazz to this day. Many parts of jazz were developed from African music that arrived in America alongside the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. For African Americans, jazz holds various meanings: for some, it serves solely as a reminder of oppression, while for others, it represents creative expression amidst the strictures of slavery and Jim Crow laws. Shouldn’t we learn, perform, and celebrate jazz on the terms of those who created it?
The faculty fails to teach their musicians the complete and unfiltered history of jazz, focusing mainly on theory. The study of jazz in the U.S.—and Skidmore—has developed from Eurocentric teachings, excluding the initial ways in which jazz was created and performed. While music theory is undeniably important, how can anyone fully appreciate and perform jazz if they lack knowledge of its roots? A course listed on the Skidmore music website, MU 306: “A History of Jazz in America,” has not been taught for years. Most semesters, there are music courses at Skidmore that teach the history of Black music and artists, but they are only ever taught by white male professors, usually Dr. Benjamin Givan. With any class about African American art taught by a white professor, it should be customary for that professor to introduce the course with a nod towards the elephant in the room: they are a white person teaching a Black art form, and therefore, they should earn their students’ trust rather than feel entitled to it. At Skidmore, this should be the protocol in every jazz class, as our jazz faculty is composed entirely of white men. Both jazz professors, Haight and Givan, however prolific and knowledgeable in their jazz experience, fail to acknowledge their place within the jazz world when addressing their students.
There are audition-based jazz performance opportunities at Skidmore, but none are accompanied by a mandatory study of jazz history. The jazz faculty, led by Dr. Russell Haight, forms small jazz combo groups each semester; there are combos often entirely made up of white musicians. Only white vocalists performed this past fall, and the same trend will be continued this spring. White students take to the stage each semester, many holding little to no knowledge of the gravity of performing jazz as white musicians. Audience members might be similarly unaware of what jazz means to the all-white faculty who produce these performances. Each performance should be accompanied by a brief history of jazz and what it means for the students to study and perform it. Many students outside the music department know of and attend the Skidmore Small Jazz Ensemble performances, and many state their inclination to focus on the vocalist rather than the instrumentalists. To the audiences of these events, jazz at Skidmore is represented by a consecutive string of white frontmen.
I want to finish this article by recognizing that I cannot possibly speak for African Americans or the Black music experience. Even in writing this article to condemn the whitewashing of jazz, I am aware that I am not a representative voice for Black individuals because my life has not been shaped by the perpetual reminder of former enslavement and ongoing oppression in this country. My goal, however, is to urge white jazz musicians at Skidmore to make a similar acknowledgment of their place within the jazz world.