Journal of Jazz Studies (JJS)
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Hacking Viral Jazz’s Gendered Hierarchies: Grace Kelly’s Entrepreneurial Polygeneric Art
No full textDespite insights gained from studies of algorithmic cultures, the extent to which online platforms impact artistic practice and career potential in jazz music has been little examined. This study expands recent knowledge in relation to the affordances of online platforms for jazz musicians, drawing attention to jazz’s gendered dimensions within networked music sites. It examines how jazz musicians adapt to online ecosystems, variably retaining established gendered performance conventions yet updating them to attract new audiences. A critical perspective on current modes of music performance and promotion within jazz genre, recently coined as “viral jazz,” is spotlighted as the context within which Korean American jazz saxophonist Grace Kelly has developed her virally attuned polygeneric jazz aesthetics. Through a multi-faceted study of her prolific performances and promotional strategies online, the study reveals how combined expertise of “algotorial” curation systems with acquired wisdom regarding pervasive cultural and gendered ideologies stimulates innovative promotional and performance contexts for Kelly as a virtuosic female multi-instrumentalist. Yet these new contexts contain residues of entrenched hierarchical gendered performance expectations and ideological evaluative contexts. Given the continued power of these historically prominent categories, online platforms are revealed as failing to fully upend the hyper-masculinity and male domination promoted by pre-digital jazz institutions. Nevertheless, they afford critical exposure for especially entrepreneurial and polygeneric jazz musicians such as Kelly and jazz-oriented vocalist and composer Laufey, two of the few twenty-first century jazz musicians to have broken the glass ceiling in both online and live music performance contexts
Towards an Inclusive Jazz Pedagogy: Lessons from Post-Apartheid South Africa
No full textWomen have come to represent around half of the enrolees in South African tertiary jazz programmes, yet remain under-represented in the academy, professional performance, and composition spaces. This mirrors international patterns of exclusion and marginalization in what is now widely known as a hostile environment for women and others who do not conform to patriarchal discourses. Mostly modelled after American programmes, South African tertiary jazz programs have historically foregrounded the technical mastery of bebop, propagating the master narrative of jazz as a masculine domain and side-lining other forms of jazz and jazz-adjacent genres. Closely tied to this tradition is a well-documented culture of systemic racism, sexism and misogyny. In recent years, this culture has started to wane because of the presence of empowered and empowering women at the highest levels of its tertiary education and professional performance scenes. Amanda Tiffin and Chantal Willie-Petersen both occupy positions of power traditionally reserved for men and use their respective platforms to advocate for gender equality and de-colonialism in jazz education and practice. They represent a growing contingent of jazz educators committed to eradicating outdated pedagogical traditions rooted in oppressive hierarchies of power. Focusing on narratives of resilience and agency, this article draws on elements of feminist post-structuralism and theories of dis-identification to amplify the work of progressive educators like Tiffin and Willie-Petersen. Their own experiences of “othering” have informed multiple aspects of their pedagogical practices, from curricular design to the creation of nurturing learning spaces both within and beyond the classroom. This article explores the impact of feminist pedagogical practices and social awareness on the transformation of what had, until recently, been a highly exclusionary space. Moreover, it aims to encourage scholarship that pays close attention to the complex intersection of gender, race and colonialism in jazz education
“‘High Energy’ Jazz and Sex”: Listening for Gender in Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Performances
No full textThis article considers the intersections between gender, sexuality, race, and disability in the works of jazz multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935–1977). Kirk is primarily known for playing multiple saxophones simultaneously, flutes with his nose, sirens, whistles, and other unusual instruments. As a blind man, Kirk performs disability by presenting a “deviant” musical body, such as performing on several odd-looking instruments at once, and by utilizing unconventional techniques and sounds, like playing through the nose or executing feats of almost superhuman circular breathing. However, we can also think of these characteristics as constituting a performance of gender and sexuality that is a response to both the feminization of the disabled body (after Garland-Thomson 1997) and dominant stereotypes of Black masculinity during the 1960s and 70s (after hooks 2004 and Wallace 1979). The article explores how Kirk performs the stereotype of the hypersexualized Black man, which can be seen as a way of reacting against both the historical oppression of Black men in the US and the dehumanization he experienced as a person with a disability. For example, in “Volunteered Slavery” (1969) Kirk proposes that his sexual prowess can help women break free from society’s chains. Kirk also performs masculinity sonically through his presentation of musical sounds that epitomize stereotypes of strength and virility, such as his (multiple) saxophone playing and his flute playing. Counteracting notions of the flute as a feminine-coded instrument, Kirk’s flute sound is purposefully aggressive, as he hums, sings, grunts, and screams while he plays. Altogether, these characteristics resulted in the perception of his work as gendered and sexual. In a 1970 review entitled “Roland Kirk: High Energy Jazz and Sex,” Stratton characterized Kirk’s performances as “the embodiment of his extreme horniness,” and listening to his music as “a valid measure of [the listener’s] sexual potency.
Restorative Approaches in Jazz Education: Structural Initiatives for Cultivating Safe and Supportive Environments
No full textWhen university jazz programs center and privilege male, straight, white, cisgender, and other dominant identities, individuals with identities beyond these dominant categories often face systemic disadvantage and harm as they begin careers in jazz. Various forms of harm—including those based on gender, race, sexuality, ability, and other social categories, as well as sexual harm—are frequently embedded in institutional structures and pedagogical norms. In response to the persistence of harmful environments in higher music education, many institutions have turned to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, though those efforts often fall short when implemented in isolation or without accompanying structural change. A more comprehensive approach has been taken by the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which has worked to reformulate university-level jazz education by grounding it in feminist and antiracist principles. But many institutions with jazz programs lack the resources, prestige, or institutional support to launch a program at the same scale. This article suggests that, even in situations where resources are limited, positive change toward a safer and more equitable jazz education for students of all genders, with their many intersecting identities, is possible. Drawing on intersectional feminist perspectives, the article outlines several systemic initiatives grounded in restorative justice principles that were implemented in a university jazz program, and discusses their impact. By suggesting that restorative practices are closely aligned with the collectivity and care at the heart of jazz, the article offers a starting point for those envisioning safer, more equitable, and more vibrant jazz spaces to begin implementing restorative practices in jazz education and other jazz environments
“Bring Your Identity With You”: Recent Feminist Interventions in Jazz Ecologies
No full textIn response to the historical domination of patriarchy of those overlapping and mutually constituting spaces of education, performance, and sociality that I call “jazz ecologies," a multitude of voices demanding reform continues to grow. Multiple movements animated by the relational logic of Black Feminism have been initiated to better represent and create opportunities for women, non-binary, and queer people in jazz. This short piece outlines some recent work being done by three such groups creating feminist-informed interventions: the Berklee Center for Jazz and Gender Justice (JGJ), the Women in Jazz Organization (WIJO), and This Is A Movement (TIAM). In various ways these organizations offer support through material, educational, and performance opportunities rooted in identity-based values that specifically serve persons and communities with underrepresented subject positions. Historical context and insights from recent interviews with leadership from these organizations offers a window into the values, actions, and outcomes of ongoing feminist movements in jazz ecologies
Not Yet a Woman, Never a Jazzman: Listening for Jazz in Midcentury Girl Cultures
No full textThe middle decades of the twentieth century produced powerful—and contrasting—images of teenage girls as hyper-feminine, suburban consumers and jazz as authentic, masculine art music. These archetypes continue to shape scholarship today, making it difficult to imagine girls in the history of jazz. Yet there is plentiful documentary evidence that high school girls were highly involved with jazz at midcentury. In this article, I examine this evidence to argue for turning toward jazz audiences as a way of reorienting narratives of jazz history. First, I consider high school yearbooks and student newspapers, where girls are well-documented as jazz fans, players, and critics. I then turn to the widely circulated magazines Seventeen and Tan Confessions, both of which frequently included jazz coverage, to demonstrate that the jazz culture cultivated among girls in schools was also visible at a national scale. The sources show that most girls were amateurs who engaged with jazz at school and in female-focused media. Yet their experiences were, in many ways, more representative than those of professional jazz musicians. Most people involved with jazz at midcentury were amateur players, listeners, and critics, and this majority included thousands of girls. I argue that understanding ubiquity as a criterion for historical relevance in turn allows us to reshape our ideas of gender in jazz history
Quality Improvement of an AI System for Determining Pass-Fail in the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery: Accuracy on a Cohort of New Users
No full textSurgical residents must pass the fundamentals of laparoscopy surgery test to proceed with their training. While simulation gives them an environment to practice outside the operating room, it lacks supervision. To fill this gap, we recently proposed an AI system that evaluates pass-fail in the fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery. In this quality improvement study, we sought to evaluate the model’s accuracy when detecting a failure. To do this, we performed software testing on a cohort of high school students. The students were asked to conduct the essential peg transfer FLS task under the supervision of our AI system, which evaluates them in real-time as they perform the task. Out of 18 students, the system correctly predicted the student error in 13 cases. The model must catch up on student errors due to underlying model mispredictions in the remaining five. The model was not trained to handle such edge cases where it failed. These results show the potential of AI to make grading more fair, objective, and efficient
Women College Musicians Take on the World: Gender in Cold War Jazz Diplomacy and Collegiate Jazz Programs
No full textIn U.S. Cold War jazz diplomacy, a focus on women as student musicians reveals how they were promoting jazz worldwide. Because they were not as famous as other high-profile professional musicians who also toured with the State Department, these women are harder to find in the historical record, but nonetheless important. By examining at a set of U.S. State Department-sponsored collegiate jazz tours during the Cold War, I highlight the variety of women’s participation and influence in three collegiate programs and their tours. Specifically, I address: 1) the University of Michigan’s Symphony Band’s 1961 tour of the Soviet Union, Middle East and Eastern Europe, which featured a jazz band; 2) the University of Illinois Jazz Band’s 1969 tour of the Soviet Union; and 3) North Texas State University One O’Clock Lab Band’s 1967 tour of Mexico and 1976 tour of the Soviet Union. Through these case studies, I argue that collegiate women jazz musicians made a distinct and unacknowledged contribution to U.S. cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. Through their musical abilities and interpersonal interactions, these women expanded the diplomatic reach and success of their tours. Drawing on archival materials from universities, the State Department and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, I reveal the ways collegiate women jazz musicians contributed to diplomatic efforts