Pascal’s Espoused Beliefs About Jazz

Pascal saw playing jazz and teaching and learning jazz in different terms. He spoke of playing jazz as based on both what a musician knows and can do and on their personality or other attributes. In contrast, he spoke of jazz teaching and learning only in terms of knowledge: skill, techniques, theory and other concepts, repertoire, and so on. While these contrasting positions can be understood as representing two different specialisation codes (an élite code and a

knowledge code respectively), they both share an emphasis on stronger epistemic relations, that is on what musicians can do, the techniques they use, and the specialist jazz knowledge they use. Drawing on Pascal’s interview responses, I will look at these beliefs by discussing, first how he spoke of what it is to be ‘good at’ playing jazz in general, and second how he represented his

own achievements as a jazz musician. I then turn to examine his understanding of jazz teaching

and learning.

7.2.1 Playing jazz: what it is, where it comes from, and how it is done

Pascal argued that emotions and self-expression are fundamental to music, but so too are techniques and musical knowledge. He said he believed that playing jazz depends for its meaning on both ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’ aspects. In contrast to the other teachers in this study, Pascal did not believe that emotions themselves comprise jazz exclusively, instead describing jazz as a musical language through which emotions can be expressed. According to Pascal, the knowing aspects of jazz can be acquired through experience and cultivation and are not dependent on born qualities of knowers. For example, he explained that a musician’s musical experiences are the source ‘from which you develop your personal inner music, inner chant’, seeing the basis of jazz playing as expressive of emotion, but not defined by it, and facilitated by a performer’s specialist knowledge and technique. Like Drew and Julian, Pascal saw technique as ‘a sort of toolbox you … have to express your emotions’. Unlike them, he highlighted the potential for technique to inspire creativity, drawing an analogy with a painter’s brushes: ‘if you have a set of brushes, different brushes, you can paint many more things, than just with one’. In other words, Pascal valorised technique for its potential to inform self-expression with the proviso that it is ‘used musically’. This emphasises both knowledge, such as what a musician knows and can do, and their creative musicianship.

A good example of Pascal’s understanding of playing jazz is in a summary he gave of four ‘fields in music’ that he said contribute fundamentally to a person’s capacity to play jazz. Of these, two emphasised knowledge (stronger epistemic relations) and two emphasised knowing (stronger social relations). Those which emphasise stronger epistemic relations were: (1) specialist knowledge, or the ‘analytical, that is all that relates to chords, scales and structures, etcetera’ and (2), skills or ‘the part that relates to technique, your personal instrumental

technique’. Those that emphasised social relations were: (3) interaction with significant models or ‘your own musical background, what you listen to, what musicians you like, and your person’; and (4) feelings or ‘the emotional part, how do you feel about music? What feeling do you have when you listen or play something?’ Together, these four things expressed an élite code,

foregrounding both knowledge and knowing.

7.2.2 How Pascal characterised his own jazz playing

In contrast to his general characterisation of jazz as dependent upon both knowledge and knowing, Pascal spoke of his own jazz playing exclusively in terms of knowledge and

techniques. Where he viewed the field of jazz performance as an élite code, he downplayed the importance of knowing to his own playing. His ability to play jazz, he felt, was due to his acquisition of specialist knowledge, and skills and techniques developed through lessons and practice. This emphasis on knowledge and downplaying of knowing can be understood as a

knowledge code.

This was evident from his earliest encounters with jazz. Even in his first jazz moments, at about the age of 17, Pascal’s self-perception emphasised knowledge and downplayed knowing. He explained his early learning in terms of coming to know the music through its features,

techniques, and principles and downplayed his personal attributes as a source of his capacity to play. He recalled his interest was first sparked by the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue: ‘I heard it on the radio … I said, “What? That’s music? I want to play that. That’s amazing”’. He said he was initially intrigued by empirical features of the music that were unlike the classical music he had hitherto played. Even though Pascal recalled an emotional response to what he heard, it was

I was playing the piano and some classical organ and church organ before … I was absolutely amazed by the sound of the saxophone in the album. So I started by myself and that’s the way I fell in love with jazz. (Pascal, interview)

Pascal said his first attempts at playing jazz were made independently but, in contrast to Drew (Chapter 5) and Julian (Chapter 6), he said he soon found self-teaching insufficient and sought formal training. Even his initial attempts at autodidacticism were characterised as ‘trying to understand the language and how did it work’, emphasising principles of jazz—stronger

epistemic relations (ER+)—and downplaying self-expression—weaker social relations (SR–): a

knowledge code (ER+, SR–).

Pascal also expressed his subsequent, mostly formal, jazz education in the same terms.

In his late teens he joined an organised jazz workshop: ‘a band, sort of school band, where we played jazz standards’. Though he described the class as ‘informal’, he meant a relaxed social atmosphere and extracurricular rather than an absence of direct instruction:

it was just very informal, very easy-going. So we were playing standards, and the teachers were teaching us very basic things about scales and chords, how to improvise with them. And also how to be the group ensemble sounds. (Pascal, interview).

Pascal’s description of the class emphasised the features of jazz music such as ‘scales and chords’, and techniques and procedures for its performance. It also foregrounds teaching and downplays learning or personal attributes of the students. Such emphasis on being taught and on learning through formal training was characteristic of Pascal’s account: he recalled that his further training included jazz piano lessons from age 20, extracurricular ensembles at university, and evening classes in jazz harmony taken while serving in the military and this continued into his early career as a professional performer. Pascal accounted for his own learning and

achievement in jazz as resulting from training rather than personal attributes such as talent or predisposition. This can be understood as an emphasis on epistemic relations and a downplaying of social relations—a knowledge code. I have shown that this was in contrast to the élite code

underpinning Pascal’s view of jazz playing more generally which leaves the question of how he understood jazz teaching and learning.

7.2.3 Teaching and learning jazz

Pascal’s knowledge code self-understanding was dominant in his beliefs about teaching and learning in jazz but he did not jump straight to that code. Instead, he first acknowledged the dominant code of the public face with some comments that are more knower code; for example:

If I refer to what Miles Davis said … and I totally agree with that, is that jazz is a sort of mindset, musical mindset. It can’t be taught actually, yeah. Of course you can’t teach someone to be free. (Pascal, interview)

However, he quickly pivoted to his own knowledge-code position by detailing aspects of jazz that he believed can be taught:

But I keep thinking that in order to be free you need to have a minimum of tools, musical tools, in order to manipulate them and to be able to gain some music freedom. I think perhaps the way … I think it’s possible to teach these basic things with which you’d build your own vocabulary such as chords and scales, etcetera, particularly for people who maybe have a less developed ear. And so ear education is maybe the most interesting thing in jazz. (Pascal, interview)

Further highlighting Pascal’s knowledge code, he even characterised things that are more knower-specific like the ‘ear’ and ‘your own vocabulary’ in terms of trainable skills rather than personal attributes. For example, he valorised the utility of ‘ear education’ in helping to develop ‘inner music’ as well as facilitating a range of other practical jazz skills:

How do you recognize a chord? How do you pick up something from a CD? How do you repeat a musical phrase that you like, you heard somewhere? And I think this can be

Almost all of Pascal’s discussion of teaching and learning was thus about jazz education in terms of knowledge such as techniques, skills, procedures, concepts, and jazz theory. He argued even the most personal aspects of performing can be developed through jazz education, even if ‘indirectly’ and self-expression can be a trainable skill. When he argued that technique is ‘useless’ if not ‘used musically’, he emphasised how to play, not how to feel.

Pascal also evinced a knowledge code when discussing pedagogy. Where the other, knower code, teachers in this study expressed concerns about teaching or direct instruction, in Pascal’s narrative, it was assumed as a given and uncontroversial. He saw jazz pedagogy in terms of a hierarchy of skills and concepts that build in complexity ranging from ‘the basics’ such as scales, simple harmonies, and basic rhythms, to ‘advanced’ skills and concepts like improvisational interaction, complex harmonies, and complex rhythms. To him the cumulative nature of concepts suggested a pedagogical logic to organise teaching and learning, for example ‘if you don’t know how to play the perfect fifth, you can’t play A-flat 13’. Foregrounding techniques and

cumulatively building knowledge rather than intuition or prolonged cultivation emphasises epistemic relations and weakens social relations—a knowledge code (ER+, SR–).

7.2.4 Summary

At first glance, it looks as though there are differences between Pascal’s understandings of jazz playing, his own capacity as a performer, and how jazz is taught and learnt. He spoke of the practice of playing jazz in general as an élite code (ER+, SR+), emphasising both knowledge and knowing as important. In contrast he spoke of his own playing and about jazz education as knowledge codes (ER+, SR–)—emphasising knowledge but downplaying knowing. Consistent throughout his narrative is that both codes emphasise stronger epistemic relations. When discussing the field in the interview, Pascal acknowledges the stronger social relations of its dominant knower code, but he remains convinced of stronger epistemic relations. When it comes to the more practical matters of his own learning and real-world pedagogic practices, the social relations fall away leaving a knowledge code. When Pascal discusses the field, he pays homage to its dominant knower code, but he retains his own emphasis on stronger epistemic relations, thus an élite code. His primary way of seeing things is to downplay social relations: a knowledge

In this Pascal is reflective of the dominated knowledge code in the field of jazz pedagogy

(Section 4.3.2), which is what makes him a worthwhile case study. To understand this dominated stance, it is necessary to be able to see how knowledge-code musicians like Pascal think about the field and about how jazz is taught and learnt, as well as how they act as teachers. Having seen Pascal’s personal rhetoric represented a knowledge code raises the question of what and how he taught. The next section analyses Pascal’s teaching using specialisation codes to see how he attended to both the ‘knowledge’ and the ‘knowing’ aspects of jazz and the extent to which his practice reflected his espoused beliefs.