Jazz Education: The Evolution of Jazz Mentorship

Introduction

What is digital humanities?
Digital humanities (DH) is a field in which researchers and teachers utilize computerized/digitized resources to accumulate and analyze information pertaining to the human experience from antiquity to the modernity. It is a dynamic field; constantly adapting to meet the evolving needs of those who wish to utilize DH resources as a provocative academic resource. As the print medium is supplanted by digitalized media, humanity projects must adapt to the digital to maintain accessibility, engage desired populations and distribute important information in a modern, effective manner.

The Jazz Mentorship Project
In this anecdotally-based Jazz DH project, you will explore how mentorship has influenced jazz education by instrumental type and temporally. You will be pushed to confront the following questions:  How did mentorship influence the early jazz musicians in becoming the notable jazz icons of the 21st centuries? Are jazz mentorships losing influence as jazz education has integrated into the classroom over the last 50 years? Is the passage of jazz via mentorship completely lost in our modern education system (e.g. college courses focused on jazz theory and composition)? To address these questions, we examine five jazz musicians thoughts on mentorship (sometimes referred to as apprenticeship) through their interviews with Monk Rowe and Michael Woods, directors of the Hamilton College Jazz Archive.  These jazz musicians include bassist Buster Williams, vocalist Germaine Bazzlecornetist Bob Schulz, clarinetist Allan Vache, and violinist Claude "Fiddler" Williams. Through these interviews, you will investigate what has prompted the shift in jazz education from jazz's mentorship roots to a more institutionalized  education. Additionally, you will be introduced to on-going efforts to return the mentorship-based jazz education within the confines of formal jazz education, such as the Jazz Education Network Program.

As you will soon read and hear, traditional jazz education in the form of mentorship was inherently personal. Thus, institutionalization of jazz education and thought coincides with the loss what jazz was meant to represent for early musicians. The loss of intimacy in jazz education may be one of the reasons jazz seems to be lost in popularity in modern American culture, as musicians maintain more superficial relationships with peers and tend to learn in a more impersonal manner as compared to previous generations.

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Table of Contents
1.
Evolution of Jazz Mentorship
2. Introduction
3. History of Jazz Education and Mentorship
4. Buster Williams
5. Germaine Bazzle
6. Bob Schulz
7. Allan Vache
8. Claude Williams
9. Race in Jazz Education and DH
10. Modern Mentorship
11. Our Other DH Method
12. Conclusion
13. Additional Works Cited ​
14. Annotated Bibliography
15. Process
16. Rubric
 

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