A live jazz quintet has just finished playing an original tune in the large Platte River Elementary gymnasium, the notes barely reverberating away before a group of students surrounds the drummer and the stand-up bass player.
The kids are all Caucasian, in stark contrast to the two musicians, who are African-American and are enthusiastically fielding questions.
"How long have you been playing?" they ask drummer, Sean Dobbins, from Detroit. "How heavy is that thing?" they ask bassist, Marion Hayden, also from Detroit.
Sure, the questions are easy ones, and don't really address the levity of the workshop that just transpired, yet the scene is a testament to the effectiveness of the Building Bridges with Music workshops, a program originated by local jazz musician, Jeff Haas.
"The students enter the gymnasium, see a multicultural quintet playing music that is energetic, engaging, and acceptable--it gets the students' attention and opens their hearts and minds to the topics we're about to discuss," says Haas. Those topics run from open-mindedness about music, to diversity, to bullying, and end up at Hitler.
"The workshop starts out with information about the music and practicing open-mindedness towards music," Haas says. "We talk about what open-mindedness is--the willingness to try new things, not taking other people's opinions as your own. From there we segue into practicing open-mindedness about people as well, people from different cultures, races and religions. It's a real natural segue, with music setting the scene."
In the Platte River gymnasium, almost all hands go up as Haas asks, "How many of you love music?" Hands go up and down as he continues along this line of questioning. "How many of you like classical music? Opera music? Country? How many of you love jazz music?" A few hands remain up. "I bet you grew up with jazz and never even knew it," Haas says as the quintet launches into the
Flintstones theme, a song based on Ira Gershwin's
I Got Rhythm.
Haas tells the audience, "There's all different kinds of music. Country has different kinds of country music, rock has different kinds of rock, and so does jazz." To demonstrate, the quintet plays the cartoon theme song three more times, as a Brazilian version, a samba, and finally, as the audience cheers and claps along, Dobbins pounds out a strong backbeat before the band launches into a rock-n-roll version of the
Flintstones.
"See, you can take a song and play it a whole bunch of ways. It's important to keep an open mind about music and when you do, your world gets bigger. And the same is true about people; if you keep an open mind about people, your world gets--?" Haas leaves his sentence hanging.
"Bigger!" the audience shouts.
The Building Bridges with Music Program is an outgrowth of Haas' Jewish roots in Detroit and his life as a composer and musician within the world of jazz. As the son of a Jewish immigrant musician, Haas grew up sitting on an organ bench as his father played at synagogue. He studied classical piano through childhood, but started falling in love with the music of Motown in his early teens and jazz in his mid-teens.
Many years later, after receiving a commission to write an hour-long jazz suite, and on a whim, he came up with a novel place to rehearse the music.
"The Detroit area schools had just gone through deep cuts in their arts and music programs" Haas explains. "I went to my old elementary and high school and proposed that my quintet come in for two hours and use their auditorium for an open rehearsal. Students could just attend and watch as we put the music together. They could listen and hear the music develop right before their very ears."
It was in these open rehearsals where the germ of the workshops took root in Haas' mind. "From the very start, what happened during our breaks is that we got flooded with questions. The kids would all come up to the bandstand and ask questions, and much to my surprise, some of the questions related to race. This was in the inner city schools with an all-black student population and often times the question was, "So--how did you guys meet?"
In short order, Haas realized there was a discussion to be had with students of all ages and backgrounds about diversity. He has since taken his open rehearsals into numerous schools and while experiencing diversity on the bandstand, he wasn't seeing any in the mostly racially divided schools where they rehearsed.
Based on these experiences, Haas developed the program that would use his music as a springboard for discussing diversity issues and the importance of being open-minded when you're around people who are different than yourself.
All the members of the quintet support the workshop message with their own stories, taking turns in the telling and adjusting the intensity of the details depending on the age of the audience.
Sean Dobbins tells of his Syrian wife being disowned from her family for marrying an African-American. Marion Hayden tells of packing enough food for the entire drive to Alabama to visit relatives as nobody along the route would serve them. Saxophonist Laurie Sears tells of her sister being bullied relentlessly while in school, resulting in years of depression and drug abuse. And even handsome and accomplished Chris Lawrence, who plays trumpet, tells of being called a loser by his peers all through high school.
The personal stories of racism and bullying ends with Haas' telling of having never met his grandparents who were put to death in a Nazi concentration camp.
"I can usually hear a pin drop when I'm telling my story. Granted, it's an oversimplification, saying Hitler was the biggest bully that ever walked the earth, but the analogy works for the kids, the fact that there was this one person who convinced an entire country that Jewish people were bad," he says
Back in the gymnasium, Haas and the quintet punctuate his story by playing a song titled
Tzadik, an original composition he wrote about his grandparents. The song gives the students a few minutes to process the stories and to air out the room of the intense emotion.
Wrapping up their time with the students, Haas announces, "We're going to play one more tune--this one has a drum solo, so get ready." As the band plays its last upbeat, danceable tune, the students get out of their seats and dance around the gymnasium. Some are doing a version of the twist, some are in line, arms entwined, high-kicking, and some are processing the discussion they've just had, eyeing up the musicians and formulating the questions they're about to ask.
To learn more about the Building Bridges with Music program, check out their
Facebook page.
Brian Confer is a the managing photographer for Northwest Michigan Second Wave. He can be reached via email. Like what you're seeing here on Northwest Michigan's Second Wave? Well, we'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment here,
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