Middle schoolers getting all that jazz
Program in S.F., Oakland equalizing access to music education
Juan Romo, 11, had heard of jazz music, but didn’t know much about it. The San Francisco middle school student had neither played it nor listened to it. He didn’t think he would like it.
“I used to think it was just music,” the sixth-grader said. “But now I understand people can share how they feel through jazz.”
Juan’s new appreciation for the American art form followed a two-week workshop at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, sponsored by SFJazz.
The course is part of a $3 million effort to reach each of the 23,000 middle school students in Oakland and San Francisco with some form of jazz instruction — ranging from an introduction like the one Juan received to semester-long mentoring provided by professional mu-
“I used to think it was just music. But now I understand people can share how they feel through jazz.” Juan Romo, 11, San Francisco middle school student
musicians.
The program seeks to expand access to music education, and specifically jazz, said Rebeca Mauleon, SFJazz director of education.
“Jazz is our American classical music,” she said. “It’s the great equalizer.”
Yet access to jazz, an art form rooted in the African American experience, is not equal, she said.
In 2015, of the 526 U.S. college students who earned a degree in jazz or jazz studies, 296 were white, 44 were black and 38 were Latino, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The vast majority were male.
And for the first time ever, there are no African Americans in the elite SFJazz High School All-Stars Big Band, Mauleon said.
“If you want to play basketball in middle school, it’s free,” said Terrence Brewer, a musician who is one of instructors for the middle school workshops. “If you want to play music, you have to buy an instrument and buy lessons. Music is not free.”
Even if schools offer music instruction or music appreciation, they don’t often include jazz, said Professor Chris Venesile, assistant professor of music education at Kent State University in Ohio.
“That’s always been very, very puzzling to me because the story of jazz and the history of jazz is a history of America,” he said. “It’s a history of racial injustice in America. It’s a study of democracy.”
And there’s just something about jazz, Venesile said — the improvisation, the ability of strangers to sit down and play the blues.
“Once the door is opened and they walk through, suddenly they’re in a Technicolor world they’ve never known before,” he said.
SFJazz is trying to fling open that door in 70 schools over the next three years, including Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School in San Francisco, where musicians mentor a diverse group of band students.
Drummer Michael Mitchell, 28, works with Willie Brown students three times a week, with a recent lesson spent on John Coltrane’s “Equinox.”
Mitchell wants the generation behind him to know jazz, to have the opportunity to feel what he felt falling asleep every night as a child listening to Coltrane’s “Favorite Things.”
He wants the students to know “there are people who do this for a living, and there are people who appreciate people who do this for a living,” he said.
Mauleon said the $3 million grant program will not turn 23,000 middle school students into jazz musicians.
“But we can give some kids a chance,” she said.
On a recent day at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, Juan and classmates appeared to be doing well with their jazz appreciation. But they were about to try their hand at the real thing on the final day of the workshop, performing an original spoken-word piece with a jazz combo playing in the background.
“All we need are the berets and the turtlenecks,” said Jaru Subia, a spoken-word poet and workshop instructor, as students lined up to perform.
“People said I was a fool,” said one student, gripping the microphone as the combo played a bossa nova tune. “People said I was a fool, but turned out that I was cool.”