"Straight, No Chaser": An Unsung Blues

• In Event: No Limit (CRT) Soldiers: Scholar Activists Breaking Through Raced Academic Boundaries Using Critical Race Theory

Abstract

Objectives and Purpose
While social agents in U.S. music schools and their music education programs have taken steps within the last few decades to confront racism and hegemonic structures, in this chapter, I contend that these efforts—deficient of Black critical voices—contradict their intended aims and contribute to what I refer to as “an unsung blues,” a collection of choruses that have yet to be performed by those to whom they belong. These programs further contribute to this dilemma by creating and encouraging weak diversity and inclusion attempts that, in turn, have emboldened passive recruiting and retention efforts (assuming students will automatically attend), as well as devious gatekeeping tactics (manipulating applicant pools).

Perspective and Theoretical Framework
Using critical race theory, I critique how U.S. college music programs’, particularly music teacher programs’, negligence to confront racism has commissioned three choruses of an unsung blues (the recruitment and retention of people of color, hegemonic structure of music teacher education programs, and scholarship dominated by White voices).

According to recent data illustrating music faculty and student enrollment, Black student populations experienced only a 2% increase in the last 30 years, while Black faculty experienced no growth at all (NASM, 2020). Meanwhile, U.S. college music programs, despite aspirations to become more inclusive and equitable, continue to implement admission policies and audition practices that disproportionately produce obstacles for students of color and those who are economically disadvantaged must negotiate. Additionally, not only do music schools promote curricula that largely centers on Western Art music, aesthetics, and teaching practices, but when courses outside of this paradigm are offered (i.e., jazz, gospel, hip-hop), they are situated as mere electives. Thus, many music teachers enter into the teaching profession with assumptions that certain perspectives including music outside Western Art music is inferior, and with little to no knowledge and skills about how best to appropriately teach and perform such music, contributing to a systemic cycle of ongoing musical marginalization. Additionally, due to poor representation of Black bodies in the academy, fear and intimidation, and the privileging of etic[1] over emic[2] perspectives, White scholars have been situated as experts on the experiences of Black folk and other people of color.

Thelonious Monk, African American jazz icon and genius, gifted us with explicit counternarratives to traditional musical concepts which have been observed repeatedly as unconventional, strange, and disharmonious. However, through extraordinary skill and mastery, Monk transformed the uncomfortable into thoughtful, clear expressions of artistry and sound. In “Straight, No Chaser,” a 12-bar blues, and other musical works, not only did Monk embrace innovation and celebrated difference, but he unapologetically shattered the status quo.

Methods, Techniques, and Modes of Inquiry
Using Monk’s compositional and performance styles, I illustrate how his music and other cultural artifacts could be used to confront many choruses of racism in an unsung blues, and provide a better path forward to realizing substantive change among U.S. music schools and their music education programs.


[1] Outside the group (from the perspective of observer).
[2] Within the group (from the perspective of the insider).

Author

• Joyce M McCall, Arizona State University - Tempe