On Alternate Lineages
In the fall of 1999—my first semester as a graduate student at the University of North Texas (UNT), I contributed my $5 to the saxophone club to enter Stan Kenton Hall. It was a talk by John Kelson and Brad Leali, then saxophonists with the Count Basie Orchestra. Although I was a “Bay Area Liberal” (as my dad would say), I was excited to be in Texas, intent on spending every waking hour becoming a better jazz musician. So when John Kelson shared with the scores of young saxophone students, overwhelmingly white and mostly male, “I never hire women; women just cause problems,” I was naïve enough to think, “Oooooooo, he’s going to be in trouble. This should be good.” I had only been there a few weeks and I assumed an instructor was going to say something about such an egregiously non-mentoring statement. Nothing was said, however, and this pithy bit of wisdom was filed away in the students’ young minds along with information about saxophone care and long tones. I started to burn in my chair. I just paid an extra $5 to be told that I won’t be hired no matter how good I get? I looked at all the very young, white men around me. One of them snickered when I asked a question about embouchure.
After starting in the Five O’Clock lab band, which was a good sign for a student’s first semester there, my O’Clocks started running backward after I spoke up about this incident and the sexism and racism I began to see and feel at the root of North Texas’s program. Of course, this confirmed that Kelson was right. Women who want to be jazz musicians have two options: Don’t do it OR cause a problem. If you love jazz and you don’t want to cause a problem, you can support as “jazz wives,” adoring fans, benefactors, or administrators. I stopped auditioning for lab bands after three semesters. But I kept practicing, played in small combos, earned two master’s degrees (jazz performance and composition), and effectively built a career responding to all that I learned at UNT.
When I recently returned for the 75th anniversary of the program’s founding I was asked by one of my former lab band instructors (an alum of the famed “One O’Clock”), “why are you here??” and by another alum after I played with him in a jam session, “how do I not know who you are?” I am part of the college jazz program’s alternate lineage—the ignored or uncomfortable margin that serves to stabilize the white male center. But we do have our own mug. We are CUNT JAZZ. Anyone who feels part of this alternate lineage can join CUNT JAZZ. We are a problem for John Kelson and for Stan Kenton, whose name no longer graces the hall at UNT. As many do not know, UNT’s jazz program was founded in Jim Crow segregation and for the first ten years Black students were legally prohibited from learning jazz there. In 1999, this white male lineage was still the foundation, teaching jazz as an exclusionary practice. I am keeping these blogs under 600 words. Much more to come.
