The Culture of Jazz Aesthetics

(Instructors: Profs. Kenny Burrell & Alessandro Duranti)

ASSIGNMENT on JAZZ PERFORMANCE (for your MID-TERM):

[Updated April 26, 2006]

READ CAREFULLY BEFORE STARTING YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

FORM A GROUP. Form a group with others in the class (for the purpose of this assignment, a group is any combination of 3 or more people).

ATTEND A JAZZ PERFORMANCE. Attend (with the rest of your group) a jazz performance by a band that includes three or more players. “Jazz performance” means any situation in which jazz musicians play in front of an audience (you cannot use a performance done in a classroom or as part of a lecture). (You can find information about jazz performances on the web or in local magazines such as “L.A. Jazz Scene” or "L.A. Weekly." You could also attend a performance by students in the UCLA Jazz Program, or a performance announced as “Jazz” at a local Museum or Café). (N.B. you don’t have to spend a lot of money for this task. There are free concerts around the L.A. area and there are places that offer discounts to students during the week, e.g. the Jazz Bakery).

DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH TASK. You need to carefully observe the performance (and take notes whenever appropriate) in such a way to provide the following information:

GENERAL GOAL AND RATIONALE. This assignment is a multi-task project designed to help you develop observational skills with particular reference to music performance. You will have to pull together different resources you have been exposed to so far in the course. In particular, you will need to (i) read selectively and draw from Keith Sawyer’s book Group Creativity and Ingrid Monson’s book Saying Something; (ii) review your class notes on what was discussed by the instructors and on what the musicians who came to our class said about their music, their playing, their soloing, their relationship and communication with the other musicians in their band); (iii) rely on your classmates’ expertise whenever appropriate and useful.

WRITTEN REPORT. Think of this assignment as a research REPORT written by a team. Pull together the information collected by all members of your group (you might want to divide some of the tasks during the performance) and, after discussing each point among yourselves, organize your answers to the questions above sequentially, without worrying about fancy metaphors or beautiful opening and closing paragraphs. You will be rewarded for having been concise and to the point while showing that you worked hard at finding out something you didn't know before. What matters is how you go about making some interesting observations that might lead you to formulate some hypotheses about the culture of jazz aesthetics. We want you to enter the logic of jazz culture and aesthetics, as we try to do in class, when we interview musicians. We are not interested in an involved and involving narrative of your experience (that might be fun to do and read but it's not part of this particular assignment). We are interested in your analytical skills and more precisely in your ability to interpret the interaction during the performance mostly through the analytical lenses of the concepts that were introduced in the readings and in class. Don't give us fillers, don't try to be cute, and don't try to fake it. Don't write a lot to fill the page. Remember that for jazz musicians “less is (generally) more.” But don't be so brief that a reader won't know what to get out of what you wrote or why you made a particular generalization.

TOOLS. You need to bring some tools to document what's going on so that you can review it later. Minimally, bring a little notebook to write some notes on. Maximally, bring a camera or a camcorder (note: check with the people in the club before you start taking photos or recording with a camcorder).

ATTITUDE. Get into a learner's mindset. The idea is that jazz for you will not be the final goal of your research but a window on the universe of culture and communication.

* INFORMED CONSENT. Anthropologists, like all social scientists working in a university, need to comply with state and federal regulations on research on human and animal subjects. At UCLA, this is done through the Office for Protection of Research Subjects (OPRS). Any UCLA researcher (whether faculty or student) needs to (i) get a certificate that shows that he or she has learned the basic principles of doing research on human subjects (this is done through the web now) and (ii) accurately describe the project and how human subjects will be selected and treated (or how one might interact with them) and (iii) submit the proposal for the project and the protocol to OPRS, which reviews it for approval. It is a fairly elaborate procedure and takes time. For this project you will NOT need to go through the approval of OPRS for a number of reasons including the fact that this is a class project and you will be observing a form of public behavior (music performance) that presumably does not put you or your subjects at risk and does not violate their privacy. This means, however, that you will not be able to publish or use the material you collected for this project outside of class. If you wish at a later point to use some of the material and information you collected, you will need to comply with OPRS regulations.

* BEHAVIOR AS A RESEARCHER. As a researcher and fieldworker, you need to be on your best behavior, respect the culture of the community you are studying, even when you are there for a very short time. Be very polite, ask permission if you are doing something that is different from everyone else, and make sure to explain what you are doing before asking questions to participants. It's a good idea to talk to members of the audience, organizers, and also to the musicians if they are hanging around before or after the show. Don't be afraid to ask them dumb questions -- that's how you learn -- but don't harass them if they don't want to be bothered! Identify yourself when appropriate (i.e. you don't need to tell everyone you meet that you are a UCLA student doing a class project, but you should definitely let the musicians know if you are going to interview them).

* FIELDNOTES. As soon as you get back from the performance, write down everything you can remember from it including questions you might have, speculations about what happened and why things were done in a certain way. Fieldnotes are not written for an English class or a Pulitzer Prize, but they might be read by others (who knows? if you become a famous anthropologist or ethnomusicologist, your first fieldnotes might end up in the Smithsonian Institution!). Use the style that you are most comfortable with. Short phrases with no verbs are ok if that's the best way for you to write quickly and efficiently. You don't need to use a computer for this, but you need to keep these notes to include them with your assignment.

* NOVICE vs. EXPERT. It is possible that some of you already know a great deal about jazz whereas others might know very little or nothing. This might give you the impression that some students have an "advantage" (e.g. by being experts). However, this is not necessarily the case, the basic assumption of this assignment (and of ethnography in general) is that there are ways of turning your ignorance as an observer into an advantage. When you are an ethnographer, you are a "professional stranger" (and also, I like to say, a “professional beginner”). It is your lack of knowledge that must guide you, especially in the first stages of fieldwork, together with some theoretical concepts and methods. An ideal research group is a group with people whose expertise is differentiated and partly overlapping.

* TURNING IN YOUR ASSIGNMENT. Put together a folder with:

(i) A COVER PAGE with the NAMES of ALL the people in your group who participated in all the phases of the project;

(ii) Your REPORT (typed, double spaced);

(iii) a copy of your collective fieldnotes (these can be photocopied);

(iv) some evidence of your attendance, e.g. ticket, program, photos, etc.

Bring the folder to class the day when the assignment is due.