UPDATED: The following post written in 2007 is no longer accurate as Northwestern currently has a Jazz Studies Major directed by Victor L. Goines.
The Northwestern University School of Music will be eliminating its jazz studies major. An official public statement was made by School of Music Dean Toni-Marie Montgomery today, a day after the news was announced in the Daily Northwestern Newspaper , on the Northwestern News Network (you can still watch the actual news broadcast ) and a demonstration in support of the jazz studies program was held on the Northwestern Campus informing students and campus faculty of the upcoming decision. The Chicago Tribune also published an article today regarding the cutting of the jazz major.
A group of students have created an organization called Friends of NU Jazz and are currently looking for support in keeping the program alive and drawing focus to the importance of a jazz studies major in a music school as important as Northwestern. They are requesting that people write letters to appropriate policy makers on the Northwestern campus supporting jazz studies as a legitimate and important major that deserves equal status to that of the classical music program. Other concerned musicians on the web have started writing their own opinions on the matter including the blog shake it and bake it , the seminal, progressive music blog, and trumpetmaster.com. Two years ago students’ concerns about the program were registered in the Daily Northwestern newspaper.
As music educators we must wonder what the implications are of a major school of music discontinuing a jazz major. What type of message does this send to students across the country and music educators working to expand students’ knowledge of the contributions of jazz artists to our cultural heritage as well as the importance of improvisation, our National Standard # 3? What implications does this have for our field if additional schools of music make similar decisions?
Is jazz supported and given equal status as other forms of music in your own music program?
Thanks for the link and thanks for supporting NU jazz. We are hoping to create as much noise as possible over this issue. I hope you will call Northwestern and register your support.
Evan,
As a jazz educator myself, I was very disappointed about this news and will also try to look into the department’s reasoning behind this -as they must have some pressing reasons to do something so “bold”.
You ask some confusing questions at the end of your post… I’ll be the first to talk about the importance of jazz not only for it’s cultural heritage in the U.S., but for it’s impetus with learning improvisation. That being said, western schools of music have been slow to add any other genre of music other than classical to their curriculums. Jazz was the first “allowed” and years after we finally get the “nod” for ethnomusicology classes. In general, the music genres of “today’s popular music” are largely ignored by the universities and I’m sure there are others asking about elevating the status of the others to that of classical as well, at least as course offerings in the departments. That being said, “jazz” is most likely the root to all(certainly most) of today’s “popular” music, and that alone is reason for it to take precedence over the other derivative forms in the university offerings.
I hope NU keeps the program. It would be a major loss for them and Chicago.
J. Pisano – http://www.mustech.net
Shame on them! This seems to be a disturbing trend. The University of MN did the same thing in the not so distant past. It seems that while Music Departments recognize the need for “new blood” in teaching and scholarship they don’t yet recognize that much of what is called, “Classical” music was the pop music of its day and that current pop music like, Jazz, Blues and Rock and Roll have always helped classical music out by reminding classical composers of this fact. I am thinking of the “rush” to include Jazz elements like Ragtime and Cakewalk in compositions as well as “Porgy and Bess.” The entire world recognizes the importance of US musical genres like Jazz, when will we?
That jazz is the root of popular music won’t be a useful argument in a music conservatory where, typically, the “root of popular music” will sound ominously similar to the “root of all evil.” Music conservatories don’t typically value popular music. A more strategic move would be to ally jazz, as the IAJE African American Caucus did year ago, with classical music, not with popular music.
This is a very interesting move on the part of Northwestern in light of decreasing interest in classical music, something that music conservatories view as a cultural attack on them. Advocacy is the cry of a failing institution–the call for people to support something they don’t really want and maybe don’t really need anymore.
I’m not sure I would agree that classical music was the popular music of its day, with a few exceptions (maybe Italian opera, for example). It seems to me that folk genres were generally popular then and that classical musics were (and still are) mostly for the socially elite.
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