Jazz Domination
I teach that music should be an ethical practice. Of course, life should be an ethical practice. This would entail looking at our own behavior, rather than pointing elsewhere as the ubiquitous problem spot. It would be to get honest about the choices we make each moment. I would love if we lived in a society where that was what we were all doing. Instead, we live in a world where the norm is to have blinders on and to generally not disturb other people’s blinders.
I believe the vast majority of people want to do the right thing. But what keeps them from being as good as they would like to think they are (fair, altruistic, grateful, etc.) is that they walk around with blinders on. When you don’t look at things, you can do a lot of damage without letting yourself know about it.
This is why I say the things out loud.
I say the things out loud so it is a little bit harder for people to keep the blinders on. They must make more of a real choice.
For example, some people out there think it is ok to hire a band for an outdoor gig, expecting the band to hold the date, but they reserve the right to cancel the day of. My first thought is they are making that demand out of ignorance. I feel it is a simple matter to explain that this exploits musicians, many of whom earn their primary living making music. The client wants a guarantee but doesn’t offer any guarantee to the musicians. With that very clear case made, if the client still expects that unreciprocal arrangement, they are now making that choice not out of ignorance, but actively. But since most people want to be good, if someone tells them the (obvious) truth it is harder for them to make an exploitative choice.
More difficult are the blindnesses that are white and male normativity. That is, those people who will claim space because they learned a long time ago that this was their right. I have been in many environments with women of color in which I started to notice my own tendency to claim space. This has been extremely fruitful and it actively inflects how I think about and interact with white men. I understand it is hard to see privilege. It is embarrassing to see it. But I return to the life/music as an ethical practice bit. What is more important than removing these blinders? I have women of color to thank for helping me to see mine better.
Surprisingly, white men haven’t thanked me for pointing out their privilege! As a woman saxophonist in a very male dominated field, I have to claim my space (and the space of others who don’t assume the center is theirs) extremely actively, especially in jam sessions. In a recent jam session, I did not do this and there was no buffer for the manspreading (never leaving the stage, playing every tune, playing behind other people’s solos). When I do not actively put up guard rails, the norm crushes in: The women (me) are presumed to be making space for them which they are there to fill like it is their job.
Maybe if more people said the things out loud these men would know that we notice how they always talk about who is on what album in a way that is quite unique to white men and their desire to prove their worth through measurable metrics. That they spend so much time bloviating we can’t get a word in edgewise, but what we have to say might be something they need to hear, including, gasp, thoughts about jazz.
It is interesting how often these white men frame jazz in terms of “dominating.” Dominating is a synonym for colonizing. Dominating or colonizing space; countries; conversations; others. For whom is dominating more important than feeling in music? This is rhetorical because my book will give my answer to that (with evidence). To express feeling in music involves awareness of others. It involves being vulnerable. It is, perhaps, the opposite of dominating.
