I stumbled into jazz the way most good things happen to fifteen-year-olds: by accident, and because a world-class educator (Scott Brown, Roosevelt High School) showed me that, even at fifteen, I had something serious and authentic to say. By the time I got to USC I had already fallen permanently in love with this music. Since then, I’ve made a career out of two worlds that are more similar than not: being an artist and being an educator. I’ve toured the world as a GRAMMY winning musician, and I was invited to build and lead the jazz voice program at the Eastman School of Music. Which means I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what we teach the next generation of jazz musicians and, more importantly, what we don’t.
So let me say this loudly: Jazz is Black American music, built on the shoulders of human perspectives and lived experiences, inviting musical and authentic communication in an improvisatory way. If that’s true, then our job as educators isn’t to protect someone else’s narrow idea of what a “real” jazz musician looks like. Our job is to open the door wider, with thought and care. And, while we continue to address the gender and racial issues alive within this genre, an important and often under-discussed layer is how we see and treat vocalists.
Whether or not you’ve named it directly, you likely have heard this conversation before. At some point we might look across the room and think – huh, you know stuff I don’t know, and I know stuff you don’t know… Different! Scary! If you’ve ever sensed a gap between how you regard instrumentalists and vocalists, the below list of invitations might be for you.
Start with the composers. Ask your students to name five jazz composers. I’d bet real money that not one of them says Abbey Lincoln, and yet her writing carries the same weight as anyone in the canon. Betty Carter built entire harmonic worlds. Jon Hendricks basically invented a genre by putting words to instrumental solos. Nina Simone and Mark Murphy, all pushing the language of the music forward with a pen and a voice in hand. If your curriculum treats vocalists purely as interpreters and never as authors, your students are only getting a very narrow and biased portion of the story.
Feed your students’ ears. It’s easy to build a listening list that’s all instrumental heads and harmonic/melodic blowing. Make room for tracks where the voice is the lead instrument doing the same harmonic and rhythmic work as a horn. Start with Gretchen Parlato’s takes on Wayne Shorter’s “Juju” and “Footprints,” Kurt Elling’s “Resolution” (his vocalese setting of Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”), and Cassandra Wilson’s “Run the Voodoo Down” (Miles Davis). Let students hear phrasing, space, and risk-taking coming out of a body instead of an instrument, whether you hear scatting [get ready, final paragraph a comin’!].
Get honest about the actual boundaries (not limitations). We all have different bodies, height, weight, etc., and rarely (except for maybe the latter, after the holidays) do we feel shame around that. But notice how quickly defenses go up when a singer asks to perform a song in a non-standard key. Even if that new key ensures their default instrument will be unrestrained and they can access all tools at their disposal. Keys aren’t standardized for the human voice, in the same way that shoe size isn’t. Additionally, some vocalists might want sheet music or time to learn a tune (including the changes). A lot of what might be seen as a lack of musicianship in vocalists is likely a lack of understanding, which is fixable. Judgment dressed up as biased expectations is not.
Give your singers more to do than just the melody. The lead melodic line is one option among many. Asking vocalists to double a horn line or a walking bass part, bring in spoken word, call and response with the horns, write lyrics to a wordless melody, vocal comping under a solo, unison lines with the rhythm section, or harmony parts stacked under an instrumental melody are all great options. The moment a singer is treated as a voice in the ensemble rather than a decoration in front of it, the whole band starts interacting differently.
Please expand how we talk about improvisation. Scatting (melodic, lyricless, harmony-based improvisation) is one tool, not the whole toolbox. CĂ©cile McLorin Salvant improvises constantly, rarely scatting in the traditional sense, and yet she’s regarded as one of the great improvisers of our time. She’s using vocal color, diction, placement, pitch, volume, timbre, and EVERY tool available to her to communicate authentically in the moment. If your students are looking for incredible scat improvisers, point them towards Michael Mayo, Veronica Swift, Kurt Elling and Luciana Souza. Four very different approaches that all show there’s no single or right way to do it.
None of this requires an overhaul. It asks for a shift in what we might assume when a singer walks into the room. Hand them the same respect, the same openness, and the same understanding you’d give any instrumentalist. This music has always been generous to the people who take it seriously. Let’s be generous back, to anyone who wants in.
Sara Gazarek is a 3x GRAMMY Award winning jazz vocalist and Associate Professor of Jazz Voice at the Eastman School of Music; she is a founding member of the GRAMMY winning vocal ensemble “säje,” a National Trustee of the Recording Academy, and a board member and Education Committee member of the Jazz Education Network (JEN).
