Teaching Sound Study Habits

“OK,” Bobby McFerrin says, “how many people here can read music?”

Hands are raised as the 10-time Grammy-winning singer-conductor looks around to survey a classroom full of junior high students.

“And how many people can’t read music?”

An equal number of hands are raised.

“Now, those who don’t read music,” McFerrin continues, “would you call yourselves lesser musicians because you don’t read music?”

He is answered with a loud chorus of “No!”

“OK, why not?”

“Because,” one young woman says, “you can still have talent, even if you can’t read music.”

“So whether you read music or you don’t read music,” McFerrin says, “you can still call yourself a musician. Right?”

“Right!”

“And you can still understand and appreciate music. Right?”

“Right!”

The spirited exchange took place recently at the 32nd St./USC Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School. The eclectic McFerrin--jazz singer, classical conductor and creative chair of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and composer of the 1988 hit song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”--was making a Los Angeles stop in a national tour of eight cities to present a program aimed at enhancing musical awareness in young people.

The tour, now in its second year, was designed in 1996 by trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis and electronics expert Dr. Sidney Harman as part of a joint effort--titled “harman: how to listen”--to stimulate a revival of interest in music education. In addition to McFerrin, this year’s programs include similar performances in five other cities by Marsalis and singer Betty Carter.

McFerrin’s encounter with the students of the 32nd St. Magnet School was the first of two unrelated but essentially similar programs that took place on consecutive days, each dedicated to the understanding of music.

The day after McFerrin’s program, pianist Patrice Rushen, bassist Nedra Wheeler and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, three of the most visible female jazz musicians in Los Angeles, were onstage at the Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre before a boisterous audience of 1,500 Los Angeles-area high-school music students.

Carefully watching the performance from offstage, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, longtime jazz fan and Monk Institute Board member, pointed out other similarities--between basketball and jazz.

“They’re very comparable,” he said. “They both take teamwork, they both involve passing the ball back and forth, and they both have their own kind of soloists.”

Pointing out that the emergence of women in basketball is not all that dissimilar from the current higher visibility of female jazz artists, Abdul-Jabbar expressed hope that the net result would be an increased overall awareness of the importance of jazz.

“We hear jazz our whole lives in America--in commercials, movie scores,” he said. “We hear it, but we don’t treasure its uniqueness. There are kids in Venezuela or Holland or Japan who know more about jazz than American kids do. And it’s time to change that, to take jazz away from that stepchild status. That’s something that goes beyond women in jazz, and into the whole importance of understanding and appreciating America’s cultural diversity.”

The program was the kickoff event in the recently announced collaboration between the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and the Music Center of Los Angeles County. Described as an “informance” (an informational performance) and titled “Women in Jazz,” it was an effort to emphasize overall music appreciation as well as the vital role that music can play in creating self-worth.

The tone for the “informance,” in fact, was set at the very beginning by Sandra Kimberling, president of the Music Center Operating Co. “I grew up in Compton,” she told the assembled young people. “And today I’m the president of the Music Center. If I can do that, then you fulfill your dreams, too. Remember, you can do anything you want to do. You can be anything you want to be.”

Introducing the members of the trio, Rushen asked each to say a few words about themselves. Opening remarks aside, the group dug into a jazz number, quickly demonstrating the considerable extent of their skills, frequently generating cheers, especially from the young women in the crowd.

“We’re going to talk about the rhythm section today,” said Rushen, after the opening number. “Because that’s what we have here, a rhythm section.”

Appropriately, bassist Wheeler and drummer Carrington seemed to attract the most attention, in part because female bassists and drummers are still rare.

Wheeler’s first extended solo was greeted by a chorus of shouts: “Go, girl, go! Do it!” She responded with verve, plucking funk-driven rhythms from her unwieldy instrument.

Carrington’s crisp, energetic playing was also a favorite, triggering rhythmic, unison hand-clapping and foot-stomping.

“Play, girlfriend, play!” shouted one enthusiastic young female.

When singer Sandra Booker joined the group, another musical perspective was added, as the talented vocalist demonstrated connections between classical singing and jazz.

“They wanted at first to make this a woman-y kind of thing,” Rushen said. “But I thought, you know we really don’t need to emphasize that aspect all that much because there we are, we’re up there playing. And it seems to me that gets the message across--that women really can play--more clearly than all the talk in the world.

“And what’s really important,” she said, “is that we can make this kind of education--this kind of awareness of the importance of music--begin to happen. And the good thing is that it’s beginning. It’s actually happening. And I’m happy that we were around to get this whole thing off on the right foot.”

Getting things off on the right foot was also a first priority the previous day at “harman: how to listen.” The program was initially influenced by Marsalis’ “Listening to Music” series for PBS. And last year’s presentations by Marsalis leaned heavily upon the trumpeter’s innovative methods of explanation: using the metaphor of a railroad train, for example, to describe the functions of a jazz rhythm section.

But attempting to lock McFerrin into a format is like trying to cage a hungry lion, and it was inevitable that he would find his own way to teach the 32nd St. students how to listen.

Ten minutes into his program, McFerrin already had several students in front of the class with him. Asked about their favorite music, they replied, “House music,” and McFerrin promptly suggested they demonstrate.

Two of the boys began huffing out a vocalized rhythm: “Um, um, um, um-fah; um, um, um. . . .”

McFerrin listened for a few moments before joining in with a spontaneous, wordless melody.

“You mean,” he said after they concluded, “all this time, I’ve been doing house music without knowing it?”

Then, remembering that one of the students had mentioned Beethoven, McFerrin asked the class to join in singing the “Ode to Joy” melody from the Ninth Symphony.

A spirited rendition followed, but McFerrin had a better idea.

“OK, let’s get the ‘house’ rhythms going again,” he said, urging the two boys to once again huff out their rhythm. Waiting a few moments for the “Um, um, um, um-fah” to become established, McFerrin signaled the class to begin singing the “Ode to Joy” again in a combination of Beethoven and urban street sounds.

“The best way to get anyone to learn how to listen,” said McFerrin after the performance, “is really by participating. I could sit out there and talk to those kids about music, and after about five minutes they’d be zoning out. But if you can actually get them to participate in doing something together, that’s when the real learning, the real understanding takes place.”

* Future Monk Institute events include a benefit gala at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Dec. 9, a series of History of Jazz programs in the Music Center Grand Hall, starting in February, and concerts at the Chandler Pavilion on March 17 and 18.