ALL THAT JAZZ FINDS HOME AT SDSU
Bram Dijkstra donates massive collection of records, some very rare
Bram Dijkstra doesn’t sing or play a musical instrument. But the acclaimed author and retired literature professor has spent nearly 65 years building his one-of-a-kind record collection. Now, he is poised to make a profound musical impact by donating his nearly 50,000 rare jazz, blues, gospel, reggae, soul and rhythm-andblues albums to San Diego State University.
“It won’t be easy to part with them, because these records have been such a big part of my life,” he said. “But I think the university will be a good place for them to be enjoyed by future generations.”
Announced today by Dijkstra and his wife, noted literary agent Sandra Dijkstra, The John Coltrane Memorial Black Music Archive will be housed at SDSU’S Love Library. Its monetary value easily exceeds $1 million, but its historical value is priceless. The twisting tale of intrigue that led the records to their new home at SDSU is almost worthy of a Hollywood screenplay.
“This is a fabulous and invaluable collection of rare depth and breadth,” said Chuck Haddix, the curatorial director of the University of Missouri’s Marr Sound Archives, which boasts more than 400,000 audio recordings.
“It will serve as an asset to the world for years to come and is a game-changer for San Diego State University.”
Those sentiments are shared by Robert Ray, head of SDSU’S Special
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Collections department, and Patrick Mccarthy, the university’s interim library dean.
“It’s amazing,” Mccarthy said. “This will get attention around the globe and bring people from all over to San Diego to use this material. And its impact will be much broader than just a musical one. Because the music in Bram’s collection tells about a people, their lives, hopes, dreams and a huge cultural phenomenon that has had an enormous impact on American culture and beyond.”
Ray, who was instrumental in landing the collection for SDSU, is both excited and humbled by Dijkstra’s choice of the school.
“Bram’s gift to the university is the pinnacle of charitable philanthropy, and you couldn’t put a price tag on it,” Ray said. “He could have sold it off, if he wanted. But Bram is embracing SDSU and the promise and possibilities of his collection, and we have to do the same. It’s a treasure chest.”
A model of vigor at 82, Dijkstra is still pondering whether to give parts of his collection to SDSU incrementally in the coming years, or all of it posthumously. Either way, he insisted that it be called The John Coltrane Black Music Archives. Dijkstra first heard the North Carolinaborn saxophonist on a record by Miles Davis in the 1950s, when he was a teenager growing up in Holland.
Coltrane connection
“There was something about what Coltrane was doing that really spoke to me. Essentially, he’s been my patron saint ever since and is a large reason why I came to America,” said Dijkstra, who was born on the Indonesian island of Belitung, where his father worked at the time.
“Black music is the center and soul of my collection. And I’ve always pursued some of the things Coltrane was interested in, like (the music of India’s) Ravi Shankar and the Eastern connection. All of that has been a tremendous source of influence in my work, thinking and writing. As far as records go, I only buy music I like. I hate the idea of collecting. It’s all about listening for me, and I’ve always been hungry to listen to a lot of different kinds of music.”
The collection numbers about 28,000 vinyl records, many of them long out of print and highly sought by archivists and aficionados, and 20,000 CDS. It is named, at Dijkstra’s behest, in honor of towering jazz saxophone icon Coltrane, who died in 1967 and was pivotal in expanding the parameters of modern jazz. It includes every album Coltrane recorded, some 200 or so in all, including some on his own label, plus extremely rare, self-produced albums by such fellow jazz innovators as pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonist Albert Ayler.
The fact that the collection ended up at SDSU, not the University of California San Diego — where Dijkstra taught American and comparative literature for four decades — is a major victory for SDSU. In fact, he had offered the collection to UC San Diego about a decade ago, only to be turned down flat.
“It was so insulting,” recalled Dijkstra’s wife, Sandra. “When we approached UCSD, where Bram has given 40 years of his life, the Special Collections director literally said: ‘We don’t do vinyl.’ ”
Bram Dijkstra still sounds a bit incredulous that UC San Diego turned down his collection without even seeing it.
“I don’t want to impugn whoever happened to be running UCSD’S Special Collections department at the time,” he said. “But that ‘no vinyl’ was obviously their policy, which seemed to be startlingly stupid.”
About two years ago, USC in Los Angeles came close to acquiring Dijkstra’s record collection. But the more he engaged in discussions with the school, the more it became clear to him that USC was more interested in his albums for their monetary value than their historical worth.
‘Wall of jazz’
Then, about 18 months ago, SDSU acquired Bram Dijkstra’s collection of rare pulp fiction books. SDSU Special Collections honcho Ray only discovered the record collection when he came by the Dijkstras’ Del Mar home to pick up the pulp fiction books. When he caught a glimpse of what Bram Dijkstra calls his “wall of jazz” — stored on floor-toceiling shelves that require a ladder to access the highest reaches — his eyes all but popped out.
Selflessly, Ray initially approached Rutgers University, UCLA and a few other schools noted for their substantial jazz record collections. Somewhere along the way, he realized that SDSU might make an ideal home for the albums.
The Dijkstras agreed. As a result, one of the world’s most notable privately owned record collections will remain in San Diego, to be shared with future generations.
“It was,” Sandra Dijkstra said, “a pure case of serendipity.”