Music Marginalized in Higher Education

I receive emails from NPR Music, but rarely find time to open and read them. Finally, I had some spare time this morning to peruse the email and read and listen to the materials. I'm glad I did.

What caught my eye today was the article, "A Band of Their Own," which gives a brief description of the Darlinettes, a North Carolina jazz band formed and run by women. This picture from the article shows the director, Doris Funderburk, and the band.

I normally do not see news of women in jazz and I'm glad that the Darlinettes story was featured.

Doris Funderburk Morgan played jazz all her life and enrolled in the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina in 1942 as a piano and vocal major. In her interview with NPR, Doris described how she had to hide her passion for jazz in college. As she practiced a jazz piece in one of the music halls, the door flew open and one of the organ professors burst in and said, "What do you think you are doing?!" (NPR, A Band of Their Own, 2015). This is interesting to me because a colleague I recently met at APME (the Association for Popular Music Education) described a similar experience he had when practicing jazz in college. 

This reaction from music faculty did/does not just occur with jazz, but modern "classical" music as well. I remember reading an article about composer Phillip Glass, who also experienced backlash from music faculty when visiting schools of music. Today, he says the students who were enrolled in those schools are now the professors at the schools and that he is welcome. Similarly, today jazz is welcome in music schools. 

While jazz and contemporary classical music might be more accepted in schools of music, I see other kinds of music being marginalized—popular and folk to name just two. I hope that we can keep pushing forward and working towards the inclusion of more diverse music in higher music education. I hope that we can learn from stories like Doris's to understand past prejudice and examine the current culture of music in higher education in a critical way.