Final Entry: My learning experience

Upon signing up for this course last fall I expected a number of things to come out of the class. First, I automatically assumed we would learn of some of the big names of jazz like Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Little did I know, these were just two of the many disciples of jazz and did not come close to covering all genres of the music. While Miles and Armstrong are pinnacles of musical achievement and innovation, their predecessors and influences were perhaps more inventing and helped foster their sounds. King Oliver mentored Armstrong, while Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie “Bird” Parker, some of my newfound favorite jazz artists, took Miles under their shoulders when he moved to New York in September of 1944. Secondly, I revised my views of the origins of jazz music. I had formerly believed that jazz was created sometime in the 1930s as modern jazz or bebop. I had no idea as to the origin of jazz in New Orleans as a combination of ragtime and blues, or the historical influences that enslavement of Africans and the Latin code of slavery had on jazz’s emergence at the turn of the 20^th century. The clash and fusion of African and European, composition and improvisation, spontaneity and deliberation… will follow us at virtually every turn in the evolution of jazz (Gioia 27).

Of the many concepts discussed in class, the idea of a dialogic between artist and community, as proclaimed by M.M. Bakhtin, has most changed my outlook on how art and culture emerges. M.M. Bakhtin argues that there must be a dialogic involved in the creation of an art form jazz. This dialogic imagination refers to the idea that a musician does not create a new piece without an intended listener in mind; they take the circumstances of that time and make it relevant in their art form (Lecture 2/7). Coming into the course this statement seemed logical to me; the culture reflects the community. But not until this class did I begin to understand the complex dialogic between the community and the artists. Dialogue may not be achieved in one direction. There must be dialogue back and forth. Not only can a community influence artists, but artists may create and influence communities through their work. Thelonius Monk, for example, was a product of his upbringing in San Juan Hill. The violent nature, diversity and segregation of the area led to a distinct sound in Monk’s piano playing. Through his playing Monk was later able to foster a unique bohemian community (Lecture 2/26).