What to Do, What to Do, What to Do?
Most people think they are not the problem. Because we consider ourselves good people (and for the most part, are good people), we don’t think we are the ones who perpetuate unfair systems that give the benefit of the doubt to some and maintain skepticism toward others.
White supremacy, patriarchy, and other hierarchies are a structural problem, but individuals build, maintain, or deconstruct that structure every day. Because you can’t help but be a part of this structure, if you are not actively working against it in your daily choices, you are supporting it.
The first step is to acknowledge this structure. Most people don’t get to this first step, including many people marginalized by the structure. Many people succeed by ignoring the hierarchies and working to present themselves as the “exception.” The “exceptional” woman in jazz; the “exceptional” Black judge. They have a stake in maintaining the status quo because those are the rules by which they gained their power. This perspective sees hierarchies as an individual problem, not a structural one.
If you do acknowledge this structure, here are the steps to move in the direction of less sexism in jazz. They are basic.
1. Invite women and girls into your bands.
2. Don’t harass them.
I will dedicate a future blog to how the sexual harassment of girls and women has discouraged them from continuing. But for now, some further elaboration.
1. When I say women and girls, I am pointing toward all folks who are or have been read in our society as female and therefore treated as female (doubted, ignored, harassed, underestimated, etc.). An upcoming blog will get into the nitty gritty of my current thoughts on gender, sexism, and patriarchy, which like my other thoughts, I hope will continue to evolve as I learn more.
2. Don’t just invite the famous women jazz musicians into your bands. Many men do not invite local women musicians into their bands until they receive some national attention or will invite internationally famous women musicians to play with them. Work to make your local scene inclusive on an everyday basis. Invite your female students into your bands.
3. If your band has the word “Boys” in it or “Our” and it is a big band of JUST MEN, you are perpetuating the problem. If you name a song, “A Murder of Cheerleaders,” you are operating in an environment where you are not getting sufficient feedback from a cross-section of the society. These choices influence the young people who come listen to your music, telling them who does and does not play jazz; who is inside and who is outside; who is subject and who is object. You should be uncomfortable if your 18-piece big band is JUST MEN. Don’t ignore that feeling.
4. Don’t give up. If you join TEAM NOT ALL WHITE MEN you are joining a group of people who are pushing back on a tidal wave. You just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Which means making continued effort time and again to invite a more diverse array of people into your musical environments.
For those of us who feel we are on the outside, the main thing to do is what my friend and artistic partner, Amos A., says: “follow the love.” I write these blogs because I hold out hope for a younger generation of jazz musicians who don’t want to be jazzholes. While I want to constantly work against segregation, I also want to keep making music. I think we need to do both things: work with those people who nourish us, but also work to desegregate American society and expand our circles. It was white men in the mid-twentieth century who built a segregated lineage to avoid learning jazz in Black-dominated environments. This is why I continue to speak across the divides.
