| MURRAY: | Mr. Raymond Walker has joined us and will add to what Robbin Ware talked about earlier. Please begin by identifying yourself and your organization. |
| WALKER: | I'm Raymond Walker, an artist and illustrator who works for the Del Paso Heights School District in Sacramento. One of the things talked about earlier is the fact that education is probably the key to raising an awareness of jazz heritage in America. I'm one of those persons who was introduced to jazz in school as a youngster. In 1963, I was 13 years old and had a junior high school teacher who brought in jazz for music appreciation. I was introduced to jazz through Westside Story. It's not really jazz and the teacher said so, but I still got a taste of it and I liked what I heard. It was Leonard Bernstein, of course, but it opened my ears up a little bit to another sound that I was not used to. I was into Motown at the time. In order to understand what we need to do with jazz, we need to see jazz from another perspective. We must figure out ways to change the existing view America holds about jazz in order to accomplish its preservation. We have to do it with the youth. We have to do it in the schools. We can't expect teachers to suddenly educate youngsters towards an appreciation of jazz when they possess little or no jazz education. We have to finance some way to re-educate educators. One way is to provide them with in-staff, in-service education on school time so that they don't have to go through the formal educational system in order to increase their awareness and educational ability. Another thing we need to do to increase public awareness of jazz is to increase government funding in public schools, public television and public radio. But before all that, we must first create an understanding that America should appreciate jazz because jazz is exactly what America is supposed to be. America has always presented itself to the world as being home of the world's greatest experiment in how culturally diverse people might live together. But jazz or African American classical music is possibly the world's greatest experiment in how people might play together. It is the music that represents America to the rest of the world. When people in the world hear classical music--what we call classical music--they think of Europe. When people in the world hear jazz, they think of America. It is America's music and is the most multicultural classical musical form in the world combining the musical heritages of Europe and Africa and able to include influences from many other places without breaking its musical form. It also uses these new ideas and influences to change and expand. This is exacting of what America is supposed to be able to do as a nation. This is what we say we are able to do. Jazz is a classical music. It is one of the most creative musical forms in the world. As Edsel Matthews said, we have everything from the oldest forms of jazz all the way up through the most experimental and abstract forms of jazz. When people in the world hear these forms of music, they think of those "creative" Americans--it's another thing that comes from those,"creative" Americans. It's the music that represents America and we should see it as such. This music is highly communicative. With all segments of whatever kind of aggregation is playing, this music is able to communicate immediately and there's a complete sharing. Again this is what America is supposed to be. We should see this music as representing exactly what America is supposed to be. there are no wrong notes when a jazz band is playing. If a jazz master is playing solo and makes a "supposed" mistake, it suddenly turns into something that for a moment we all share and it sounds good. Something bad has turned into something good ... |
| MURRAY: | Do you think there's any threat that it might not always be here? |
| WALKER: | I think what we have to understand is that it is just like all other forms of art: it will continue to expand, it will continue to change. |
| MURRAY: | So you don't think there's a threat that it will disappear? |
| WALKER: | I think what a lot of us are worried about is that we will loose the awareness of its actual heritage. We will become less familiar with what authentic jazz is and be duped into thinking that pseudo jazz is jazz because its been commercialized and brought to the fore as jazz. We are also concerned not only that jazz be appreciated as American music--which it should be and should therefore be at a high funding level, even higher than classical music since classical music came from Aurope and jazz is born on American soil--but we are also concerned that it be recognized as an African American contribution. That is a great concern to many people ... |
| MURRAY: | You don't think we have to be concerned about its preservation, we just have to be concerned about the African American contribution to its origins? |
| WALKER: | Yes. If you are completely aware of its origin, then you are also going to be aware of its authentic form, and when it does not exist, you are aware of its extinction. |
| MURRAY: | Do you think its extinction a threat? |
| WALKER: | Yes, it is a threat, but it doesn't appear that we can stop new jazz masters from coming forward even with the demise and decline of jazz on commercial radio stations. We still have some very strong youngsters coming up. If we don't raise them here, they will be raised elsewhere. In fact, there's a crop of them in Britain that is going to tear up the rest of the world and there's a number of young jazz musicians in Japan. In order for this music to really get the kind of respect that it should--and no art form in America does--we are going to have to see it for what it really is: America's music. It should be presented as such. |
| MURRAY: | Thank you very much, Mr. Walker. |