Jazz Music and Social Change

 

UNIV 1784, section 027-1218: Freshman Honors Seminar

Jazz Music and Social Change

Fall 2022 semester
Tuesdays/Thursdays 11AM – 11:50AM (facilitator day: Tues., instructor day: Thurs.)
Classroom: MUSB 107
1 Credit

Instructor: Professor Earl MacDonald
e-mail: earl [dot] macdonald [at] uconn [dot] edu (Please allow 24-48 hours for a response to emails.)
Office: MUSB 207
Office hours: Wednesdays at 10 a.m., and by appointment

Co-Facilitators: Ayana Shrestha: ayana [dot] shrestha [at] uconn [dot] edu,
Brooke Duda: brooke [dot] duda [at] uconn [dot] edu

Freshman Honors Seminar is an introductory course designed to situate first-year honors students within the intellectual and cultural life of the university through focused, inquiry-driven study. This seminar examines jazz music as both an artistic practice and a vehicle for social change.

Throughout its history, jazz has served as a site of resistance, reflection, and reimagining. Musicians have used sound to confront racial injustice, articulate political consciousness, and respond to moments of collective crisis. In this course, students engage deeply with selected recordings alongside the historical and sociopolitical conditions that shaped them, developing an understanding of music as a form of civic expression.

This is not a survey of jazz history, nor does it proceed chronologically. Instead, the course moves thematically—tracing recurring questions, tensions, and responses across time. We focus on context, intention, and consequence: why these works were created, what they sought to address, and how they continue to resonate.

In the latter part of the semester, students shift from analysis to imagination. Each student will conceptualize an original album that responds to a contemporary sociopolitical issue of personal significance. Working from the perspective of a producer, students will determine the album’s concept, titles, sequencing, and aesthetic framework, translating ideas into a coherent artistic vision.


Opportunities for collaboration with jazz studies majors may be facilitated by the instructor in future semesters, beyond the scope of this course.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the semester, students will have:

  1. become acquainted with many significant jazz artists and be able to contextualize their artistic contributions historically, socially and musically.
  2. examined significant sociopolitical issues which inspired selected musical compositions and entire albums.
  3. identified contemporary sociopolitical causes to which they are personally devoted and hope to exert some influence.
  4. considered how to effectively engage in artistic social activism, in an effort to bring about public awareness and change (thereby relating the course topic to their own lives).
  5. fostered an appreciation and understanding of jazz music, social justice issues and activism – all of which could be further pursued going forward.

Assignments and Grading:

  • Individual Lecture Presentations – 15%
  • Written topical reflections/responses (4) – 20%
  • Album Conceptualization Project – 25%
  • Class Participation – 20%
    (comprising: regular attendance on Tuesdays and Thursdays, consistent engagement in classroom discussions, preparedness, promptness, and accomplishing the learning objectives articulated in the facilitators’ syllabus)
  • Concert attendance and review – 10%
    (due before 5 PM on Tues. Dec. 6)
    On-campus options:

Off-campus options:

  • Resumé requirement – 10%
  • There is no final exam!

Class Schedule:

Sept. 1 (Thurs.):

Sept. 5 (Monday): Labor Day – No classes

Sept. 8 (Thurs.):

Sept. 12 (Monday):

Courses dropped after this date will have a “W” for withdrawal recorded on the academic record. Last day to add or drop courses without additional signatures.

Sept. 15 (Thurs.):

Sept. 22 (Thurs.):

Sept. 29 (Thurs.):

Oct. 6 (Thurs.):

  •  student presentations:
    1. Rebecca D.: Grant Green – the Selma March
    2. Gage R..: Duke Ellington – Black, Brown and Beige

Oct. 7 (Friday):

Mid-semester progress reports due to students from faculty

Oct. 13 (Thurs.):

Oct. 20 (Thurs.):

  •  student presentations:
    1. Nina G.: Christian Scott – KKPD
    2. Jazmin C.: Charles Mingus – Meditations on Integration

Oct. 25 (Tues.): *Facilitators and instructors switch days. Instructor Session.

  • Reflection #3 due.
  •  student presentations:
    1. Lynn S.: John Daversa – American Dreamers
    2. Aisling H.: Dave Brubeck – Truth Is Fallen
    3. Leon N.: Fred Hersch – Out Someplace

Oct. 27 (Thurs.): *Instructor will be out of town. Facilitator session.

Nov. 3 (Thurs.):

* Upload your completed project as a PDF to the following drop box folder by 9AM:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MtZUTLE882cK0lPez_3wq9aQ039H1Fhu?usp=sharing

  •  student presentations:
    1. Rosemarie V.: Max Roach – We Insist! (Freedom Now Suite)
    2. Lillia R.: Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Volunteered Slavery
    3. Krystof L.: Nina Simone –  Mississippi Goddamn

Nov. 10 (Thurs.):

Nov. 14 (Mon.): Last day to withdraw from a course.

Nov. 17 (Thurs.):

  • elevator pitches

Nov. 20 – 26: Thanksgiving Recess

Dec. 1 (Thurs.):

  • completion of elevator pitches.
  • SET surveys

Dec. 6 (Tues.):

Dec. 8 (Thurs.):

  • Class “debriefing”

Dec. 9 (Friday): Last day of fall semester classes

Dec. 10, 11, 15: Reading Days

Dec. 12 – 18: Final Examination

 

* The above schedule and content is somewhat fluid and subject to change at the instructor’s discretion.

Examples of music which may be discussed [an evolving list, in no particular order]:

  • Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit
  • Charle Mingus: Fables of Faubus, Meditations on Integration, Prayer for Passive Resistance, Remember Rockefeller at Attica, Free Cell Block F ‘Tis Nazi USA
  • John Coltrane: Alabama, Reverend King (on Cosmic Music)
  • Herbie Hancock: The Prisoner (album)
  • Fred Hersch: Out Someplace
  • Max Roach: We Insist! (Freedom Now Suite), Members Don’t Git Weary, Garvey’s Ghost
  • Duke Ellington: Black, Brown and Beige, Black and Tan Fantasy
  • Miles Davis: Tutu
  • Sonny Rollins: Freedom Suite
  • Oliver Nelson: Afro/American Sketches Suite
  • Oscar Brown Jr: Baby Brown, 40 Acres and a Mule
  • Bob Brookmeyer: American Tragedy
  • Jim McNeely: We Will Not Be Silenced
  • Fats Waller: (What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue [also Louis Armstrong renditions]
  • Dr. Billy Taylor: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
  • Lee Morgan: Mr. Kenyatta, Angela by Jimmy Merritt, Search for the New Land (and Doug and Jean Carn’s version)
  • Art Blakey: The Freedom Rider, The Core (by Freddie Hubbard)
  • Ambrose Akinmusire: Rollcall For Those Absent
  • Ryan Keberle and Catharsis: Find the Common Shine the Light
  • Freddie Hubbard: Sing Me A Song of Songmy, The Core (on Blakey’s Free for All)
  • Tom Varner: Neutron Bomb Shuffle
  • Grant Green: The Selma March
  • Les McCann: Compared To What
  • John Benson Brooks – Alabama Concerto
  • Charlie Haden and the Liberation Orchestra: Not In Our Name, and material composed by Carla Bley
  • Archie Shepp: Scag, Poem for Malcolm, Attica Blues
  • Noah Baerman: Soul Force (MLK tribute album)
  • Miguel Zenón: Identifies are Changeable
  • Christian Scott: KKPD (Ku Klux Police Department)
  • Dave Brubeck: Truth Is Fallen (a dedication to students killed at Kent State and Mississippi), The Real Ambassadors, The Gates of Justice
  • Joe Henderson: Power To The People, If You’re Not Part of the Solution You’re Part of the Problem, In Pursuit of Blackness, Black Narcissus
  • Gary Bartz: Uhuru Sasa from Harlem Bush Music, Taifa, the Drinking Song
  • Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Volunteered Slavery
  • Fabian Almazan: HUGs
  • Terence Blanchard: A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina), Breathless
  • Su Ra Arkestra: Nuclear War
  • Joe Sealy: Africville
  • Wynton Marsalis: Black Codes From the Underground, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, Blood on the Fields
  • Noah Preminger: Meditations on Freedom
  • Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddamn, Baltimore
  • Gil Scott-Heron: Winter In America, Pieces of A Man, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, It’s Your World with the Bicentennial Blues
  • Kenyon Harold’s: Mugician
  • Henry Working: Kenston
  • Fred Ho: Tomorrow Is Now!
  • Jimmy Greene: Love In Action
  • Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters date with Bern Nix
  • Darcy James Argue: Real Enemies
  • Antonio Sanchez: Bad Hombre
  • Dave Douglas: Marching Music, Strange Liberation, Witness, ENGAGE, UPLIFT
  • Kazemde George: I Insist
  • Gregg August: Dialogues on Race
  • Felipe Salles – The New Immigrant Experience
  • John Daversa –  American Dreamers
  • Curtis Steward – Of Power
  • Brad Mehldau – The Prophet Is A Fool
  • Charles McPherson – Reflection on an Election (from “Jazz Dance Suites,” a response to the 2016 elections.)
  • Oscar Peterson: Hymn to Freedom
  • jaimie branch – “prayer for amerikkka pt. 1 & 2”

Copyright: My lectures, notes, handouts, and displays are protected by state common law and federal copyright law. They are my own original expression and I’ve recorded them prior or during my lecture in order to ensure that I obtain copyright protection. Students are authorized to take notes in my class; however, this authorization extends only to making one set of notes for your own personal use and no other use. I will inform you as to whether you are authorized to record my lectures at the beginning of each semester. If you are so authorized to record my lectures, you may not copy this recording or any other material, provide copies of either to anyone else, or make a commercial use of them without prior permission from me.

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