Living the American Musical Dream in Academia

I was lucky enough in my life to have experienced college teaching at two universities.  Three of those years were as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, and one year was as an adjunct jazz faculty member at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.  I will admit it was the holy grail of music jobs.  You commanded respect. You got to play music. You enjoyed a small amount of celebrity, or at least I did.  It is difficult to remember, because I never wanted to be a music star.  I was a college teacher.  When I began to write my own fusion jazz music and employed Chris Potter as our saxophonist, the group Quintessence began to enjoy a certain amount of notoriety.  Mainly it was because we won the semi-finals of the Hennesy Cognac Jazz Search.  I rented a cargo van and we trucked down to New Orleans with a trailer in tow to perform at the Storyville nightclub.  Doc Severinsen was one of the judges.  Largely responsible for our win were two female fans who happened to be girlfriends of members of the band.  They came with us on the trip.  I remember it was a trying time, and the logistics of moving our gear to the French Quarter was somewhat of a hassle.  I didn't enjoy any of it.  Evidently everyone else did, and surprisingly to me when we performed these two women went nuts for our show.  It was infectious, and Doc was smitten with the energy of the two attractive blondes.  I was grateful for the experience, but I did not know that success would change my life in the near future.  I was not teaching at USC at that time, but I was making a living playing music in Columbia.  I used this time wisely after I was passed over for the full-time position of jazz faculty member.  I spent two complete years studying the recorded history of jazz music with the help of local record store "Papa Jazz."  I had a friend who had completed the same degree as me, and he knew everything.  We became friends, and together we listened to most of the great "sides."  My jazz piano playing developed as it should have, and I produced my first recording called "Crystal Raindrops."  It was copyrighted in l991, and other than a treasure trove of underground internet videos  that have surfaced of Mr. Potter playing in "Pugs" at Five Points, I believe this could be considered to be his first professional studio recording.  Some day I will release it along with twelve CD's I have produced, much of my own original music.  As I mentioned earlier, I had no desire to be a jazz star.  I was a college teacher, or at least I was at one point.  Possibly out of necessity I found myself trying to be something I wasn't.  Shortly after I was passed over for the full time professorship, Lee and I broke up.  It was a nasty affair that ended badly.  Never did I get closure on the break up until decades later when I decided it was time to heal the wound.  The problem became suddenly I found it necessary to try to be something I wasn't, because the clout from my teaching position was gone.  Suddenly the support I had had from students and friends disappeared.  It was like I was dropped off of a cliff, and to boot I had been branded the bad guy from my ex spouse.  Desperately and without dignity I groveled in front of her and with my musical career.  Needless to say it was over on both fronts.  I continued to play music for a short time, but after realizing the height of my musical career had become being in a wedding band, I decided to move back home.  The year that came next was the worst of my life.  After this year of continuing to play my original fusion jazz music in North Carolina, I applied to the doctoral program at Ohio State University.  After being accepted I hauled myself and my belongings five hundred miles to Cowtown where I set out on a new and different musical journey.  Still being a music star was not in my consciousness.  I knew that being a jazz pianist was no vehicle to such a thing.  Instead I focused on developing as a musician.  I wrote jazz-oriented music for several years also while developing a classical style.  When the threat of the General Exams got closer, I had to shelve my jazz inclinations and focus on contemporary classical music.  As always I continued to play as a keyboardist both because I enjoyed it and because I could make money.  Never did I aspire to be a "music star."  What I did aspire to was what I feel most composers do.  I aspired to have my music available to the public.  Because much of the music industry is convoluted and is connected to large sums of money, it seems to me now that not many venues exist for marketing music at a grass roots level.  Why must it be that the music business is a "Do or die" scenario?  To this day it is perplexing to me.  Like any other profession musical skill is compounded over time.  With study, practise, and knowledge comes a better degree of musicianship.  For me it is like water.  I have played music my entire life.  It was in the genes.  The idea of having to pimp myself or my wares to a rabid public is repugnant.  There is no way I in any way ever will allow the integrity of my music to be judged on a panel of a American reality television show.  I have come to realize the public no longer is the proper litmus test for quality music.  For the most part they are musically illiterate.  That creates a great deal of tension in my life, because with a catalog of music rather vast where am I to use it?  This brings up an issue that has become disturbing to me.  As I reflect now I remember that I had an opinion about it before now.  I had to abandon this sentiment, because it had caused me great pain in my life.  My dedication to the field of music teaching was shattered when the job for which I seemingly was preened was given to a musical celebrity.  I experienced first hand the disappointment and reality of politics.  It was a difficult axe to bear in my heart.  I learned how the political game worked.  Academia in particular was a ruthless shark.  They take for themselves what they want, and cast the rest aside.  I saw how connections, friends, and networks decided who got the job, not who was most qualified.  It is the responsibility of the university to recruit students into their programs with flashy resumes, impressive biographies, and politics.  It didn't really seem to matter if the job really was going to be done.  It didn't, and to this day it seems to not to matter if students are being taught well in college.  It was a common anecdote that, "If you can't teach, teach teachers."  After being out of academic for for than twenty years, that brutal reality has beset itself upon me again.  It is as difficult a pill to swallow now as it was two decades ago.  The jobs in academia often are a popularity context.  Especially the music-oriented professorships, because they entail performance, are steeped in pretense and ego.  Please understand my sentiment about his is not sour grapes.  I have no desire whatsoever to exist in this vacuum.  In fact I have no desire to pursue music at all, because America as a country is not capable of understanding or feeling it.  I fight with this notion each and every day.  The things that always have motivated me to write and perform music are absent.  Instead I am back in the same black hole I escaped years ago by traveling to Columbus.  What exactly am I talking about?  I am talking about a contingency of musicians who seem not to know the roots of their music.  They are living in the same bubble of musical idolatry I did in the late l980's.  I have learned my lesson.  If the aesthetic of music is powerful enough to kill you, then I am not doing it.  Since I have left Columbus many many musicians I have known and worked with are dead.  It has been an enigma to me.  What possibly could be going on with musicians in Cowtown?  The reality is possibly once there was a nurturing, caring, loving environment which appreciated music.  I played in it for many years.  Then I realized this reality only was a bubble.  If you laid your musical heart out on the line, as America has devolved you could be slain.  Several musician colleagues  have committed suicide.  Others have died inexplicably.  In most of the instances their deaths are cloaked in secrecy.  What I want to suggest is that life in America should not be a matter of life and death.  While certainly it has been at certain points in history, we evolved as a country to provide a certain amount security and comfort to our citizens.  The War on Terror and the blatant Campaign of Fear and Intimidation by television as a whole is seeking to uproot this national security.  Many prolific jazz musicians were poor.  Because they were poor did not mean that they had to behave in a desperate way.  With education, knowledge, and thus wisdom men and women can learn to live in respect and harmony with the Creator no matter how poor.  As with music I never will ever put human existence up against a love and desire for musical fulfillment.  Music can satisfy deep human emotional needs, but the reliance upon these needs being met also can kill you.  It is better to take a step back and regain one's perspective when music is your only goal.