DAVID BAKER: ELOQUENT DUDE by Eric Myers ______[This feature appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on July 12, 1980]

t was the most exciting and dynamic endeavour I've ever been associated with," said the American David N Baker. "Unqualifiedly, it was just a I blockbuster, man." Professor Baker, chairman of the Jazz Studies Department at Indiana University, had just conducted at The Entrance a four- day seminar on jazz education attended by NSW high school teachers, jazz teachers from the State Conservatorium of Music with representatives of the Department of Education and the Music Board of the Australia Council.

The Locanto caricature of David Baker, which accompanied this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald… As a result of this seminar, jazz studies, already a component of the NSW high school curriculum, will be considerably invigorated. In this respect, Professor Baker points out that NSW is slightly in advance of the United States, where similar moves are now being made to revitalise jazz education in the schools.

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David Baker has now gone back to the United States, after his fourth visit to Australia. He believes that the administrators of jazz education programs here can avoid many of the problems which bedevilled American programs when they first started 20 years ago. One problem arose because administrators believed the way to staff jazz programs was merely to invite professional players to teach. Professor Baker said: "I won't call names, but we had a whole host of players who destroyed nascent jazz programs simply because they were trying to teach at five different schools. This was evidently acceptable to administrators at the time, because they didn't have any point of reference. "In other instances, because of student demands, or pressure from the black community, administrators would just go to the person in the music department who had the lightest workload and say: 'Tomorrow you're going to teach jazz history and teach a jazz band'.”

Physical problems caused Baker to give up the trombone, whereupon he took up the cello...PHOTO CREDIT PETER SINCLAIR

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Professor Baker also said that many well-meaning jazz enthusiasts emerged as teachers, passing themselves off as authorities in the jazz area - "someone who might have played third trumpet in a territory band, playing Lawrence Welk music, or what have you." But they had not given a great deal of thought to teaching methods and how to deal with students. "For these reasons, a lot of programs simply fell by the by,” he said. Professor Baker believes firmly that jazz teaching is a highly specialised field, and requires an extraordinary width of preparation and experience, so that the jazz teacher has to be, in effect, a "renaissance man." "I can't think of any other program where you have to teach history courses, applied music courses, theory courses, pedagogy courses, individual instruments, improvisation, composition and arranging," he said. “A jazz teacher usually has to be so much better prepared than the other teachers in the music department." For some time, one of the stumbling blocks in this area has been the strong antipathy towards jazz education among professional jazz players.

US saxophonist Phil Woods: he said you can't learn jazz in a school… The American alto saxophonist Phil Woods, in Australia recently, espoused a common attitude when he said: "You can't learn jazz in a school; you learn it on the streets, in the back of a bus, in the movies, in smoky cafes. We have so many music majors coming out of the universities, but I don't hear the great

3 improvisers anymore. These kids can really play their instruments, but I don't hear that magic. It sounds like they're college graduates." To this, Professor Baker, said: "Well, I spoke to Phil . . . and he turned right around and came over and gave a three-hour clinic at the Conservatorium, where he tried to do exactly what he says is not possible." In few other art forms is there so much fierce disagreement as to how much the art owes to intuition. It is true that the art of improvisation cannot be a mere intellectual exercise. The good jazz player transcends the intellectual foundation of his art - based on scales, modes and chord patterns - and plays spontaneously, from the heart. Professor Baker said: "I think it is a big danger if responsible people start pitting the intellect against intuition, as though they are separable, because they're not. To be creative, you first have to have access to some kind of craft. It's impossible to put together a novel, to write a symphony, or play an improvisation, without having access to the tools of the trade. A dude who's got all the craft and skill and nothing to say is lost. But a dude who's got everything to say, and no means to say it, is also lost." Another myth attacked by David Baker is the view that only black men can play jazz. Baker of course, speaks as an African-American himself who played with the Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson big bands in the 1950s, before going on to establish a strong reputation as a jazz trombonist with the George Russell Sextet.

Baker established a strong reputation as a jazz trombonist with the sextet led by George Russell (above)…

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Later, physical problems caused him to give up the trombone, whereupon he took up the cello. Professor Baker agrees that, before about 1960, all the innovators who took jazz in a significant new direction were, without exception, black, such as King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Baker says there are a number of explanations of this phenomenon, one being that provided by Frank Kofsky in his book, Black Nationalism and the Revolution In Music.

"Kofsky says that, up to a certain point, because black kids had access to no other kind of music than gospel, spirituals, rhythm 'n' blues, and jazz, they came to this music as a first language," said Professor Baker. "I think Kofsky's point was true up to about 1959," he said. "But we are now starting to get white innovators, like the pianist Bill Evans; people who do, in fact, speak jazz as their first language."

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David Baker flew back to the United States well satisfied with his latest incursion into jazz education here, co-ordinated by Greg Quigley, of the Australian Jazz Foundation.

Baker’s latest incursion into jazz education in Australia was co-ordinated by Greg Quigley (above) of the Australian Jazz Foundation… PHOTO COURTESY JAZZ MAGAZINE One of the healthy signs for jazz education in Australia is that the position of chairman of the Jazz Studies Department at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music has now been made a full-time position. The appointment has been accepted by Don Burrows — the first Australian-born jazz musician to occupy the position, which was established in 1973.

The position of chairman Jazz Studies Department at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music has full-time, and has been accepted by Don Burrows (above)… ______

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