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The Intersectionality of Music and Healing: How the Panamá Jazz Festival Brings Hope to and Cultivates Resilience in the Youth in Panamá City Rachel Evenlyn Frazer Advisors: Jenny Olivia Johnson & K.E. Goldschmitt, Music Wellesley College May 1st, 2020 1 Acknowledgements I would like to thank every single person who encouraged me and supported me along this journey including, but not limited to, my mother Heather Frazer, my father Carlos Frazer, my advisors K.E. Goldchmitt and Jenny Johnson, as well as Alonzo Ryan. Thank you also to the Daniels Fellowship Committee for the generous award. 2 Table of Contents Preface: Background 4 Introduction 9 Methods………………………………………………………………………………….15 Outline…………………………………………………………………………………..17 Chapter 1: Literature Review 22 ​ ​ Music and Health………………………………………………………………………..23 Exclusion of Women in Jazz…………………………………………………………….27 Chapter 2: How Jazz Music Can Heal and At-Risk Community 35 The Health of the Community in Panamá City, Panamá………………………………..36 How Music Can Be Used to Heal Individuals…………………………………………..42 Chapter 3: How the Panama Jazz Festival Heals the Community of Panamá City 55 Education………………………………………………………………………………..56 Jazz as a Mechanism for Spreading Cultural and Social Awareness…………………....66 Music Festivals and Community Building……………………………………………...68 Fundraising……………………………………………………………………………...71 Chapter 4: The Exclusion of Women in Jazz 74 Jazz Under the Lens of Feminist Scholarship…………………………………………...76 The Panamá Jazz Festival and the Tokenization of Women…………………………….84 Conclusion 87 Limitations………………………………………………………………………………88 Personal Connection…………………………………………………………………….88 Call to Action……………………………………………………………………………90 Appendix 92 ​ References 102 ​ 3 Preface: Background My father was born in Villalobos, a small rural village in Coclé, Panamá. Growing up, I was told countless stories of the rivers, the beautiful and perfect weather, the fresh fruit from the trees, the people, and the music. I developed a deep sense of nostalgia for a place I had never seen and a home I had never known. He would always emphasize how lucky my siblings and I were to have toys, a roof over our heads and food on the table for every meal when he, as a child had to work in the sugar cane fields for pennies in order to help provide for his family of seven siblings. Being raised by his grandmother, without a father figure, while his mother worked in the city and only came home a few times a year, to say that he struggled is an understatement. Even though in the eyes of society, I am considered low-income, because of these stories, I always felt privileged. I longed for nothing more than to learn Spanish and travel there to meet my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandmother. However, we never had the money for vacation, especially for travelling outside the country. Ironically, although my parents met when they made the mutual agreement to teach each other English and Spanish, I was not taught Spanish at home. Sure I learned a few words here and there but my mother was swamped trying to home-school her three children in every other subject, and my father worked such long hours that teaching his children the language that he had to put aside, in order to assimilate into U.S. society, was not his first priority. Still I wished to connect to this side of my identity with everything I had. But when the summer of 2017 was approaching, this longing increased ten-fold. My father had been forced to 4 return to Panamá without a chance to say goodbye and without a clear explanation. Although our relationship was not perfect, my connection to him symbolized the half of my identity that he gave me. And the unresolved nature of that connection felt like a gaping wound on my psyche and mental health. I felt as though I would never get the chance to see him again and that my opportunity for learning more about who I am, was lost. During this time however, I had just joined Wellesley BlueJazz and started taking classes in the music department with K. E. Goldschmitt. In this group, I found a community, I found a home, and I found a family that allowed me to be myself and get out of my comfort zone. In the classes, I learned how to dig deep into my sense of self and understand my identity, my own biases, and gained my own sense of radical ideas about health, music, identity, and society and was trying to find where they all connected. Every year the music department brings an artist in residency to work with the students for a few days or a week at a time to teach them about their career paths but also to teach skills in improvisation and performance. It was then that I met composer and grammy award-winning jazz vocalist from Brazil, Luciana Souza, during the same semester that I presented a paper “Sound Healing: The Issues of Access” at a regional meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, in which I explored the world of ethnomusicology for the first time by investigating how sound healing practices have been commodified in the U.S. Luciana, who I endearingly refer to as Lu, inspired me beyond belief. To meet a woman from South America who embraced her tan skin and curly hair, who I could actually relate to, breaking down boundaries of what some people thought it meant to be a jazz musician was incredible. 5 Not only does she sing, she is also an excellent teacher, she plays virtually every percussion instrument you can think and of course knows her way around the keyboard. I was so inspired because she represented everything that I knew jazz could be. She burst the preconception that jazz music was for white old men and proved to me that I, with my curly hair and brown skin, had a place here, too. She told me words that I would never forget and showed me the courage that I already had to raise my voice and sing. I wrote her a note at the end of the week to thank her for all that she had done for me and for inspiring me during one of the most difficult times in my life. She not only wrote an email in response but extended the invitation for lunch if I was ever in Los Angeles. Little did I know that I would spend the entirety of the following two summers living by and working a neuroscience internship at UCLA. As soon as I got there, I took her up on her offer and we had lunch. She gave me room to talk about my background, my family, my father, my identity, my desire to go to Panamá, my interest in helping at-risk youth, and my passion for using music to heal and immediately she gave me homework. She told me to research the Panamá Jazz Festival (PJF), to get in touch with its founders who live and work in Boston, Danilo Pérez and Patricia Zárate-Pérez, and to ask about volunteering opportunities. I immediately did as I was instructed and tears came to my eyes when I watched a video summarizing the festival. The PJF, established by Grammy Award-winning artistic director Danilo and his wife, music-therapist and saxophonist Patricia Pérez in 2003, is a week-long fundraising event in Panamá City, Panamá comprising various educational clinics, symposia, and concerts. The proceeds are then given back to the Danilo Pérez Foundation (DPF) that provides free music education to these at-risk youth and is also presented as full tuition scholarships to 6 Berklee College of Music for young Panamánian musicians at the end of the week. The entire festival is dedicated to enriching the lives of the youth of Panamá. Due in part to a history of complicated relations between the U.S. and Panamá from the early 20th century to the present, there has been a weakening of the Panamánian National Army and the Panamá Defense Forces resulting in a drastic increase in drug trafficking, theft, murder, and other types of crime. This has led to dis-ease in the community that continues to result in the displacement of much of the population. When he was nineteen, my father was one of the displaced citizens who was able to leave his home in order to have a chance at living a better life in the U.S. Although he was fortunate enough to have family in the U.S. to assist in this transition, many youths in Panamá do not have this option. The PJF is an opportunity for them to escape the cycle of crime and violence that many of them were born into. In order for this community to heal, social change is extremely necessary and Danilo and Patricia seek to accomplish this change through music. It was everything I cared about all wrapped into one. I emailed them promptly and awaited a response. Later that day, as I walked down the street, blabbering on the phone with my soon-to-be partner about how amazing it all was and the fact that I might actually get to visit my imagined homeland, he informed me that these same individuals were his teachers at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute and that they held open forums every week during the school year. Throughout all of that next fall, I went to every single forum, as though it was another required course (I should have asked for credit). Finally the day came that Danilo was giving a masterclass. With the encouragement of my then partner Alonzo, I got over my anxiety for meeting him and walked right up to him, thanked him for his inspirational 7 words, introduced myself and informed him of my connection to Lu and to Panamá.

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