School for Cool: The Academic Jazz Program and the Paradox of Institutionalized Creativity by Eitan Y. Wilf (2014)

The romantic idea, that the apprentice artist learns from the master in the respective environment and hence becomes a virtuoso himself sooner or later may be true for some of the arts. When it comes to jazz and jazz performance, however, this idea is not just old fashioned but can be called almost entirely obsolete today. This is rather sad, since especially in jazz and other arts heavily informed by African American means of presentation and communication, the individual style, a personal rendering of the content that is conferred and the message itself that is conveyed is of the utmost importance.

And naturally, one needs to know the language, in this case the ability to control the instrument and to know the basic themes, riffs, changes and the standard songs, all collected in the “Good book” of the jazz pro.

However, here the problems seemingly begin, if we consider Eitan Y. Wilf’s ideas about the many complications young jazz musicians face when they attend academic jazz programs and still never learn how to express themselves “properly.” (Remember, this is jazz Wilf is talking about, not creative writing, painting or sculpture. These institutions should neither be confused with departments of humanities where the history of jazz is part of the syllabus for American history.)

Wilf in his School for Cool centers on the academic programs that – not unlike the schools that prepare students to become classical musicians for the opera or an orchestra – promise to create professional jazz musicians. Nevertheless, the main ingredients to have a young jazz man/jazz woman develop a style unique and individual seem to be missing in many jazz programs offered by the schools today.
Like the first-hand experience and the communication with professionals who understand not just the changes and the score of the songs, but know their history, the different variations, the standard improvisations and the uniqueness of the titles. In academic jazz classes today, Wilf argues, the aspiring musicians are taught jazz history, scores and the entire output of one jazz great or another, but they learn it without the necessary contact to those who created it and even “lived the music.”
And that refers to a long line of musicians who shared their experience during years of, well, traveling apprenticeship, not unlike disciples, all around the country. Instead, so he argues, the academic program remains a sterile institution that uses the same mechanisms and educational means that are common in other disciplines.

And there lies the root of one of the main problems: jazz just is not like any other discipline.

It is this “Paradox of Institutionalized Creativity,” subtitle of his book, where he also sees a lack of creativity in American institutions in favor of conservative, homogenizing, sterile and nationalized testing of information that leaves the pupils hardly any room to become creative.

At the core of this problematic academic approach to the teaching of jazz, he sees the historically unique opposition of two theories which he calls the two “narratives of modernity.”
In his words, it is the clash between the one narrative of “modernity as increased rationalization (mostly associated with Enlightenment), and [the other narrative of] modernity as the expansion of normative ideals of creative agency (mostly associated with Romanticism). … This opposition is a key feature in the cultural logic of Western society.”
So as a result the student is confronted with a rationalized form of creativity, that seldom leaves him or her room for individual ideas. The academic programs try to boost their schedules with the presence of famous jazz masters to teach alongside educators. This is meant to promote some sort of express apprenticeship, like taking a shortcut, within a few weeks; but that original apprenticeship and training for the professional jazz musician took years and even decades back when jazz music was still a popular art form in the 20th century.

Although it may seem stereotypical: the establishment and use of an individual “own voice,” being able to improvise on the spot and having “a story to tell,” still is indispensable for a good jazzman. Ironically, those requirements are rather hampered by the pedagogical teaching of jazz.
The data for almost the entire study, which at times is difficult to read since Wilf mentions very many possible reasons for the failure of a functioning academic jazz program, is largely based on the comparison of two programs. He interviewed pupils, teachers and program officials at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and at the Berklee College of Music.
Wilf, who is a trumpet player himself and also a professor of anthropology, after enlarging on the different types of programs for many chapters, has reason to believe that current standards and procedures put the pupil in a very difficult situation that he hardly can escape.

The following quote illustrates that dilemma: “Taking the academic jazz program as an example, the strategies administrators, educators, and students deploy to reconcile institutionalized rationality and creative practice frequently sustain certain dimensions of the basic opposition between these poles. Their strategies reproduce purist binary oppositions such as aurality/literacy, blackness/whiteness, past/resent, intuition/theory, lowbrow/highbrow, associating creativity in jazz with the terms occupying the left side of these oppositions, and institutionalized rationality with those on the right side.”

This book may not only be of interest to jazz educators and future professional jazz musicians. The scholar of jazz culture and jazz history, however, may get somewhat disappointed.

Little wonder then, that a large part of the jazz connoisseur audience and many plain jazz fans simply always preferred the old and aged jazzmen of times long gone. One reason for this attitude could be the situation Wilf has described with so much background and field work.

Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2016

Eitan Y. Wilf. School for Cool: The Academic Jazz Program and the Paradox of Institutionalized Creativity. University of Chicago Press, 2014, 288 p.