Jazzing Up the Core

WHEN I came back to campus and read in my coursebook that Music 30, "Jazz History for Non-Majors," had been magically transformed into a Core Curriculum course, I was elated.

Having taken the course last spring, I had suddenly picked up a Core credit in Literature and Arts B by doing little more than flipping through the course catalog. It guess it was inevitable that Harvard would prevent anything that logical and generous from ever happening.

A Core Curriculum subcommittee had decided that Core credit would be granted only to those who took the new course, Lit and Arts B-71, "Jazz: An American Music"--and not to those who had taken Music 30.

Although I was disappointed, I conspired to save myself some work by attempting to take the new Core course. My labor-avoiding instincts were thwarted for a second time when I learned that I was ineligible to take Lit and Arts B-71 because of the substantial similarity between that class and the class I took last year.

HOW similar are the two courses? On September 23, The Crimson reported that "two of last year's three required texts are also on the reading list this year" and that "as in past years, the new Jazz requires three papers, a midterm and a final." According to Assistant Professor of Music Graeme Boone (the professor for both courses), the new Jazz is about 90 percent equivalent to its predecessor.

For further proof of the absurdity of the Core subcommittee's distinction, one need only examine a 1982 analysis of the original goals of the Lit and Arts B division of the Core and compare the course descriptions of the two courses.

Getting at the Core, Associate Dean for Academic Planning Phyllis Keller's description of the formation of the Core Curriculum, states in part:

The objectives [of Lit & Arts B are] to increase students' visual and aural perception, to give them some knowledge of the means of artistic expression, to enable them to judge quality with discrimination and to acquaint them with a few selected masterpieces...with the greater part of each course left for dealing directly with the masterpieces themselves.

Next, let's look at the description of Course X:

Explores the world of jazz, from its origins in ragtime and 19th-century band music up through recent developments such as fusion and free jazz. Emphasizes listening, and focuses on...the hearing of form, of texture and of style. In this way the masterpieces of jazz are illuminated....

Finally, Course Y's description:

Traces the overall progress of jazz music from its distant origins in Africa and the New World to current trends. Emphasizes "jazz listening," in the analysis of musical form, of the different period styles...and of the personal styles of the greatest jazzmen.

Which course is Music 30? Which is the Core? And most importantly, does either description do a better job of satisfying the objectives set forth by the founders of the Core?

THE answer is definitely not clear. The first description is that of the new Core, while the second describes the old Jazz. The difference is fuzzy at best. And some evidence suggests that last year's course may even be more Corelike than its successor.

The renaming of Jazz as "An American Music" goes against one of the stated goals of Geyser University Professor Henry Rosovsky, one of the chief founders of the Core at Harvard. Rosovsky wrote,

[A]n educated American, in the last third of this century, cannot be provincial in the sense of being ignorant of other cultures and other times. It is no longer possible to conduct our lives without reference to the wider world in which we live.

If this is the case, then why does the new course disregard jazz's true origins in "Africa and the New World" and begin with "ragtime and 19th century band music"? Instead of adopting a broader philosophical view of jazz, the course has limited its scope.

The powers-that-be at the Core Curriculum may feel that the new Jazz somehow succeeds at embodying the philosophy of the Core while the old one does not. This is clearly not the case. To claim that there is a significant distinction between two courses which are virtually identical--in texts, listenings, professor, requirements, meeting time, course catalog number and exam group--is at best a poorly executed decision. At worst, it is a penalization of the students who demonstrated a true interest in jazz by taking the course before it became just another magnet for students filling requirements.