(Re)Imagining Jazz Education through the Lens of Black Feminist Pedagogy: (Presented at the 2021 Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice)

(Re)Imagining Jazz Education through the Lens of Black Feminist Pedagogy(Presented at the 2021 Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice) Paula Grissom Broughton Introduction Beginning in fall 2023, Berklee College of Music and Spelman College began a domestic exchange program that allows students from each institution to spend a minimum of one semester on each other’s campus every year. This agreement evolves from a simple question: How can we address the absence of jazz music on a campus where the art form was once performed, encouraged, and celebrated? Such a simple question required countless virtual meetings conceptualizing various components of what this academic domestic exchange would involve, from curriculum logistics to financial responsibilities. There were various concerns raised during the several months of meetings, but two key matters pervaded over the course of planning and developing this exchange: (1) jazz music is an essential component to teaching and learning music on our college campuses, and (2) women of color should be at the center of the curriculum content and pedagogical delivery of this music. Understanding the historical and musical background of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) like Spelman College provides educators, researchers, and pedagogues a framework for examining how institutions can reimagine teaching and learning jazz music. It is within the context of Spelman’s rich legacy and unique environment that this article examines and discusses the dissolution of its jazz ensemble and offers suggestions for future opportunities for revitalizing jazz studies at a women’s college. Spelman College—A Haven for Black Women’s Cultural Expression Of the current 101 HBCUs in the United States, Spelman College is one of only two historically Black colleges for women.1 Spelman is ranked among the top [End Page 51] US liberal arts colleges, as well as the top ten US colleges for women. Located in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, the cradle of the civil rights movement and home of two Nobel Peace Prize winners—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Jimmy Carter—Spelman cultivates “free-minded” leaders through speaking, writing, and critical thinking in the classrooms. Spelman helped birth twentieth-century movements that affected academic diversity through faculty and student leadership in, as well as support of, the US civil rights movement, through the 1981 establishment of a women’s center and comparative women’s studies program, and through faculty and student activism for its first Black woman president, Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, appointed in 1987. Spelman College has a long-standing mission of educating women of color and preparing its students to be change agents in their communities. The institution boasts of its recognition of being a global leader in the education of women of African descent, and its dedication to the intellectual, creative, ethical, and leadership development of its students.2 Spelman offers its students a learning environment that fosters social consciousness, political involvement, and cultural awareness, as well as artistic appreciation. Today, Spelman College is a forerunner in the development of Women’s Research Institutes that focus on courses and research pertaining to the cultural, historical, and social experiences of Black women. Music Education for Black Women at HBCUs HBCUs have played an integral role in the musical development of African American women since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Music instruction often consisted of the balanced need for formal instruction in the canons of Western music with “exposure” to and experience in Black vernacular and popular traditions.3 The intentions behind college musical training differed between white and Black women during the early 1900s. White women were educated in music to prepare young women for their roles as wives and mothers. For Black women, musical training was incorporated into the curriculum to foster the development of a well-rounded Black woman, capable of leadership and uplifting the Black race. At white colleges for women, music was considered an “ornamental subject,” meant for social refinement and elegance. For Black female students at HBCUs, music became a “vocational” area of study along with domestic sciences, nursing, and missionary training. Ultimately, music training for Black women served as a tool to improve the Black woman’s economic status through such musical employment as a...