Commonwealth of Jazz: A Community History of Jazz Musician Educators as Agents of Social Change in Richmond, Virginia
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Douglass, Scott
- Graduate Program:
- Music Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 02, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Linda Thornton, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Robert Gardner, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Sarah Watts, Major Field Member
Bryan Nichols, Outside Field Member
Raymond Gilyard, Outside Unit Member - Keywords:
- Jazz education
integration
Richmond
Virginia
oral history
culturally relevant pedagogy
public schools - Abstract:
- Richmond’s historical narrative is dominated by the commodification of tobacco and enslaved persons, the Civil War, Confederate monuments, and the city’s leadership in massive resistance, the white supremacist political campaign opposing school desegregation. Although Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954, Richmond Public Schools did not begin legal desegregation until 1971. Much historical and scholarly attention has been given to the centrality of public education as a battleground for the integration of American society in the latter half of the twentieth century. However, less well understood is the role Black music has played in the massive transformation of society that was envisioned and attempted by the public school integration movement. In this study, I investigated the relationship between jazz and integration through the oral histories of Richmond’s jazz musician educators. I wove together first-person recollections of their lived experiences with threads from the historical record and educational literature into a narrative analysis embodying the network of mutuality that I call the “Commonwealth of jazz”. A story that began at the dawn of the 20th century culminated in the watershed year of 1979 when Richmond jazz musicians, educators, administrators, and community organizers started the Richmond Jazz Society, the precursor to the Richmond Jazz Festival, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Jazz Studies program. Through oral history and collective biography, I map out the pathways that led up to and away from this pivotal year in jazz education history in one southern American city grappling with racism and segregation in the arts, education, and society.