Jazz and democracy: a conversation about finding your voice, for the greater good
Image: Miti (Unsplash)
Editor’s note: Dr Wesley Watkins is an educator par excellence. Originally from Oakland, California – and having landed recently in Sydney, Australia – his specific expertise is in weaving together the study of music with subjects that students might otherwise struggle to engage with: in this case, the study of democracy.
He’s the founder and creator of the Jazz and Democracy Project, a music-integrated curriculum that utilises jazz as a metaphor to bring democracy to life, enrich the study and teaching of history, government, civics and culture, and inspire young people in particular to become active, positive contributors to their communities.
We’d originally interviewed Dr Wes for our reMAKERS podcast, but gremlins got into the sound recording and the audio ended up unusable for broadcast (the irony of this being an episode all about the power of music was duly noted). Unthinkable to waste such a valuable conversation, we decided to share Dr Wes’ wisdom as an article instead. Free free to queue up the jazz playlist as you read (his favourite recommendations are at the end).
"There is probably no better example of democracy than a jazz ensemble." - Michelle Obama
At Australia reMADE, we’re democracy nerds. We love talking about it, practising it, thinking about how to advance and strengthen it; and celebrating the people who take it to heart.
We also love the arts: the power of music, films, visual arts, theatre, words and story in all forms to move us, help us make sense of our lives, imbue our stories with meaning, connect us more fully to each other and to our own humanity.
So when we met an educator who was combining both into a program that inspires young people and adults alike to think about what it means to be part of a democracy, we were intrigued.
Why jazz, and why jazz and democracy: the origins of an idea
Dr Wesley Watkins
Meet Dr Wesley Watkins. He calls jazz a philosophy, a way of life. Like democracy, it’s one that strives to reconcile the tension between our differences into some kind of greater whole.
However ‘Dr Wes’, as his students call him, doesn’t actually consider himself a musician, despite childhood piano lessons and the influence of a father “with the best stereo system money could buy”. He was more of a mixtapes-in-high-school-kind of guy. He did join the gospel choir as an undergrad at Stanford University, and a year later was directing it. Then, at the University of Reading in England for his doctorate, he set up a student-run choir that still exists. Clearly a love of music was never far from the surface.
At Stanford he also took classes in jazz history, but the moment that made him fall hard for jazz didn’t happen inside a classroom, but rather standing over the bathroom sink.
“I was brushing my teeth, and I was just beginning to learn about jazz,” he remembers.
Sarah Vaughn’s ‘Live in Japan’ performance of ‘My Funny Valentine came on.
"I thought, I need to play that again," he said.
“Like something just happened. And I don't really know what happened, but there was something about this I couldn't articulate. I just knew — this is serious.”
Once he got on the jazz train, he was on for good; getting along to live gigs at his local jazz club in Oakland for the latest performances. “There's hardly a 10 o'clock show that I missed,” he laughs.
How did an amateur’s appreciation of music and jazz begin to morph into a calling and career?
Dr Wes had always taken education seriously, ‘probably too seriously for a kid’ and attended prestigious schools. But the higher he climbed in education, he noticed fewer and fewer African Americans students.
“I'm literally on Stanford's campus…right outside the bookstore. And something struck me…every time I go up the rung of education, it seems like there's fewer black people here. Why is that?” he wondered.
“And I just started to come up with this idea of like, ‘I wonder if you had a curriculum that was centred around music – and by centred I mean, that you can draw some type of genuine connection between whatever the subject is – math, English, history, science, whatever…if you can connect it to music, would it attract the subset of African American students who don't do well in school, or who loved music?’”
He decided to do his honours undergraduate thesis, and later his phD, in music education. As part of his undergraduate research he studied for a period at Oxford, learning from music educators at some of the world’s most renowned schools, including The Bedales School, Eaton College and The Yehudi Menuhin School. He followed on with a PhD at the University of Reading, then returned to Oakland to roll up his sleeves and try out his approach with the kids he most wanted to help.
Photo: Tolga Ahmetler (Unsplash)
His first partner into this first foray was a Year 5 primary school teacher, Rob Wilkins. Rob wanted to help his students grasp a sense of US history, government and social studies beyond just a collection of dates and events (‘when did George Washington do what?’). He wanted to help his students begin to understand what it means to live in a democracy; and as an educator, he felt like he was failing. Did Dr Wes have any ideas?
‘Well, jazz has been described as a metaphor for democracy,’ Dr Wes told him. ‘Why not try teaching them about jazz and see what that opens up?’ he offered.
At first they didn’t tell the kids their plan. Dr Wes just came in to talk about jazz once a week after recess. Eventually he asked the kids one afternoon, ‘why do you think I’m here?’. They gave him polite answers about the benefits of learning about music and an arts education making them more well-rounded.
“That's all true,” he smiled back at them, “but it’s really because we thought [teaching you about jazz] would help you understand democracy better,” he explained. And he proceeded to pose them a series of questions, like: “Can you give me an example in society of someone playing too loudly?”
“A girl raised her hand,” he remembers. “I called on her and she said, ‘that's like monarchy…one person's voice being more important than everyone else's.” It was an answer that had never occurred to him, and it stopped him in his tracks.
“I want to do this for the rest of my life,” he thought to himself. “That's it.”
Fast forward nearly 15 years and Dr Wes has taught alongside teachers in countless schools.
He’s presented to students for the US State Department in Brazil. He’s worked with school districts, education reform nonprofits and facilitated direct professional development with teachers, instructional coaches and administrators.
He’s learned a thing or two about music, especially jazz, as a metaphor and primer for understanding the rights and responsibilities of citizenship – and not just in the US, where jazz first originated in the African American communities of New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Jazz is created by the descendants of African slaves. They created the most democratic form of music the world has ever seen, while being on the outside of the democratic promise that our framers and founding fathers had established.” - Dr Wesley Watkins
Spend some time around Dr Wes and you quickly realise he loves jazz, not just because it’s fun or dynamic, but because it’s inherently democratic.
As he says in his Tedx Talk, “Jazz is very good at achieving the thing that is very difficult to do in democracy, which is to reconcile individual freedom with what's best for the group”.
Both jazz and democracy are about ‘who am I?’, as well as, ‘who are we?’ – two big questions that are never fully answered. Ultimately, they’re both forms of collective improvisation.
The jazz masters know how to balance these two tensions, Dr Wes explains. “They live in the fluid space between the two. My individual voice is paramount, but so is my interaction with everyone else.”
Arguably, our best leaders know how to balance these tensions also. Think of the politicians we most admire – the ones who get called ‘statesmen’ and servant-leaders. The ones who use their power not to divide and conquer, but to build and bridge; calling forth the angels of our better nature.
“Jazz reflects the light of democracy.” - Dr Wesley Watkins.
What can jazz teach us about how to elect, how to become, more like these leaders? What does Dr Wes teach his students about jazz, democracy and showing up as citizens?
By the end of our conversation, these were the three ideas I wished we could share with every voter, politician and candidate for office.
One: Recognise that you’re already on the bandstand.
“Australia is the bandstand, and you’re on it,” he said. “Okay, you’ve done compulsory voting, now what else? If you think of compulsory voting like brushing your teeth before you go to bed, how else did you spend your day? What else did you do? Part of a democracy is participating in some way, so how are you participating? Because you are participating, one way or the other.”
He tries to explain to kids that even in a country with compulsory voting, voting just to come and check a box so you don’t get fined is the meaning of the empty ballot.
“Silence is as much a part of the melody as the sound of the note,” he reminds us. “It matters when you don’t participate.”
Two: Learn how to listen and respond, even when you profoundly disagree
Democracy and jazz operate at their best when everyone is listening. So if both democracy and jazz are collective improvisations happening in real time, does democracy (particularly our Parliament) need a lot more ‘yes-AND’, rather than ‘my side vs yours?’.
Definitely, says Dr Wes, but reconciling our differences is challenging, and doesn’t offer any easy answers.
For example, “there is no part of me that says ‘yes’ to a racist,” he says.
What do you do when someone else’s ‘yes’ is your hard ‘no’ — and there are real lives and consequences at stake? The best he’s figured out so far is to remember that our response is everything.
“Think about it as a mistake on the bandstand,” he says. “Somebody drops a note or plays a wrong chord, it is literally now history. It's all happened. The only thing that matters is what are you going to do now?” he asks.
“You can be silent, you can be loud, you can try to find the balance, you can try to make a coalition. You can try and fight it like we're adversaries…How you want to respond is up to you.”
It also got me thinking more about the culture and work that go into forming the kind of band, or society, that plays together well in harmony. What’s the environment that shapes our performance? What values do we reinforce?
When our children are little we teach them about sharing, taking turns, respecting differences, finding their own voice, having fun while learning to get along well with others. As they get older, in cultures like the US especially, it becomes far more about competition and achievement, individual attainment.
Balancing and blending freedom with responsibilities, expression with belonging, the healthy ‘me’ with the healthy ‘we’ are some of the biggest challenges of life in a pluralistic, open society and democracy. How do we help people feel seen and able to contribute meaningfully, able to find and use their voice; while knowing their needs and wants aren’t the only ones that count, and they have no right to trample on anyone else?
Three: Know what to look for in a leader.
Dr Wes gets his students to think through nine criteria for evaluating candidates and leaders of public office (but they could probably equally apply in the private sector, or for any organisation). I love how these standards bypass the usual partisan, ideological and issue-based battle lines – because knowing where a candidate stands on key issues is important, but sometimes there’s more than one candidate aiming to represent the team. Also, minds change, issues evolve. We can do more than look at what colour shirt someone is wearing when casting our vote.
Dr Wes teaches his students to ask:
Can this person deal with the unexpected? Are they good at improvising? Do they have the skills and resources to deal with the crises and curve balls, and the mental capacity to keep all the plates in the air? Because unexpected things are going to happen.
Are they well-prepared to perform? Someone can be an incredible soloist, but isn’t great at listening and so maybe no one wants them in the band. Have they spent enough time practising, learning their way around their instrument? Have they spent enough time on the bandstand with other people, learning how to interact with others? (I wonder if this bodes well for David Pocock and other politicians who come from a background in sport or other heavily team-oriented activities?)
Do they know the tradition of the thing they’re stepping into? In jazz, that’s knowing all the greats. As an MP, President or Prime Minister, it’s really understanding the role they’re stepping into – not just what they enjoy about it, or what they want to personally get out of it. Understand first, then innovate, says Dr Wes. “The English language has 26 letters. If you don’t know them, you’re not innovating on the English language.”
Do they have vision? “No one gets credit for sounding like Miles Davis anymore, except Miles Davis. You have to have vision.” Does this person have a vision for our community or country, and do you agree with their vision?
Who are they listening to? Listening is the number one thing that needs to happen in a bandstand, and in a democracy. So what is this person’s input? Who are the people they’re listening to, and how does that sit with you and your priorities?
Are they open to learning something new? Every leader should have this quality. Are they curious and open, or defensive and shut down?
Do they negotiate? Leadership is negotiation at speed. “How fast is the music moving? Is it loud or is it soft? Did someone just play the wrong note? Do I need to intervene and make it seem like they didn’t make a mistake?” Negotiation isn’t just something that happens on big pieces of legislation, or over big differences between adversaries. It’s the very process of governing itself.
Are they thinking about the greater good? “If I’m thinking about how I sound and how I look and if I’m impressing the good-looking person in the front row, it’s over.” The greater good might be the quality of the music, the quality of the legislation, the integrity of the process, the intention behind it. What is their ‘why’? Do they have a bigger goal, a bigger purpose?
Do they seem fake, and do you like who they truly are? Does this person strike you as honest, and do you actually like who they are?
It’s not that jazz is the perfect metaphor for understanding democracy. Certainly no band leader in their right mind would set up a band like a two-party Congress or Parliament (imagine all the bass players trying to beat the trumpet section, or the piano player doing everything possible to silence the drums!).
Democracy is, after all, a contest over power; not just performance.
But even in its limitations, we see wisdom in stretching our minds to the metaphor. Democracy is also a contest of ideas for the collective. It’s about vision, harmonising our differences and jostling to determine what gets done.
Part of the exciting opportunity in Australian democracy right now is an appetite to change the culture to one of greater cooperation and willingness to work together on issues that matter. There’s an expressed desire from many in Parliament to serve with more ‘yes, AND’ where possible, rather than the tired zero sum game of ‘my tribe vs yours’.
We have real problems to solve, or as Dr Wes might say, real music to make. Time to show up and make it beautiful.
You can find Dr Wes at http://jazzdemocracy.com.au. He is available for work locally with young people at the primary, secondary and tertiary level, as well as with adults.
Feeling a bit jazzy? Here are two more of Dr Wes’ favourite tunes to recommend:
"You Look Good To Me" by The Oscar Peterson Trio
"Ain't Nobody" arranged by James Francies with Kate Kelsey-Sugg (Melbourne) on vocals
LILIAN SPENCER
Lilian Spencer is the Communications Lead for Australia reMADE. She believes that the secret to change is to, ‘focus your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’
Selected Other blogs by LILY:
If a tree falls in your front yard, who comes to clean it up?
What is our why? Reclaiming our sense of purpose as a country
