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Introduction

Rebuilding Global Community Through the Arts is a series of projects that in their totality are designed to reconnect a global community of artists, scholars, students, and the general public with the creativity and richness of African and African derived music, visual and other art forms, and culture. This is accomplished through research, documentation, presentation, performance, teaching, and publishing.

Currently this project is comprised of 3 core projects (Encyclopedia of Innovative Global African Music; Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Global African Music; and Educating Tomorrow’s Creative Musicians and Scholars) and 1 local implementation (The Philadelphia Jazz Project) that combines elements of the 3 core projects. To date the project has already generated interest in several local communities. These communities would implement their own projects with central support from the 3 core projects. As the project is shared with other people interested in these issues, we expect considerably more growth and implementation of local community projects.

The core projects are being organized and directed by Dr. Karlton Hester, Professor of “Jazz” Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, with assistance from personnel from African American Innovators, LLC, Interdisciplinary Artists Aggregation, Global Publications, and Hesteria Records and Publishing.

One significant point to be made about this project is that it is being led from an Afrocentric point of view. This is significant because the vast majority of material that has been generated, whether it be scholarly, for popular consumption, or “industry” (the music industry) related, has been generated from a non-Afrocentric point of view. And while that does not invalidate the research or work, it does leave the body of work as a whole incomplete. The Afrocentric perspective provides an awareness of subtleties and “hidden” facts that might otherwise never come to light. Often these aspects are the defining elements of what makes “jazz” and other African derived art forms distinct and so powerful.

A final point on this subject is the need for the African-American community to take ownership of its own history and culture. It is by doing and engaging that learning and leadership will emerge. This very much mirrors the oral tradition of Africa and African-American culture. This project represents an Afrocentric initiative that stresses a self-determined critical yet inclusive approach to documenting, teaching, and presenting global African music. From this position of integrity emerges an opportunity for the African-American community to rediscover its core values and history and build upon those fundamental aspects of its culture to achieve a more equitable and self-empowering position in American society.

The timeframe for this project is initially 3 years, but many aspects related to planning and execution have begun already. Furthermore, due to the fluid nature of the concept behind this project, its objectives clearly will require many more years of work and many more participants to achieve. But, building and implementing this model, are essential steps in achieving these objectives.

Part I:
Encyclopedia of Innovative Global African Music

Mission
To create a perpetual, living history project that chronicles Global African music and sociocultural experience through the musical presentation, historical research and oral documentation of “jazz” and other Global African music.

Goals
To collect, catalog, and promote research on Global African music
To deposit the results of all research into an online Encyclopedia of Innovative Global African Music
To capture the sacred and secular dimensions of the inherently interdisciplinary Afrocentric approach to music
To create a “living” online repository for not only research, but contemporary issues and activities involving Global African music
To implement the Living Oral History Project as the primary research component of the online encyclopedia

Need
There is an urgent need to document the history of many artists who are intimately connected to the evolution of Global African music in the twentieth century. Many of these people are advanced in age and will soon be passing away. For instance, in the last few years Stanley Turrentine, Betty Carter, Melba Liston, Art Farmer, Nat Adderley, Tony Williams, Tito Puente, Milt Jackson, Grover Washington Jr., Lester Bowie, John Gilmore, Jonah Jones, Milt Hinton, J.J. Johnson, and numerous other “jazz” pioneers have passed away taking much of their tremendous knowledge, experience, and wisdom with them.

Since the history of Global African music was never told from the perspective of the progenitors of the music, it is an important aspect of world history yet to be exposed and shared. As a consequence of centuries of slave era mentality and its appurtenant disrespect, existing Eurocentric histories on Afrocentric music predictably reflect the entrenched arrogance and disrespect that remains attached to the history of relationships between Europe, America, and Global African music. Slave era mentality, and its debilitating oppressive racist economic practices, became infectious worldwide to such an extent that few today feel the need to even acknowledge the source of origin of “jazz” as African American music.

Although labels such as German "jazz", Latin "jazz", Asian "jazz", and others are now common, referring to African American "jazz" is most often considered polemic. Without acknowledging the source of origin of this music, artist ownership, respect and cultural agency within the African American community is denied. Consequently, the experts found within the Global African community (those in intimate contact with the evolution of an art form, thus those most capable of setting and enforcing cultural standards based on their knowledge and experience), are rendered unqualified. This is unacceptable.

Furthermore, this separation of the firsthand history of “jazz” from the popularization of “jazz” has infiltrated the African American community. Whereas at one time it was a requirement in the African American community to know and understand the history of those that came before them, there is now an acceptance of what has been popularly written about “jazz”. Unfortunately, what has been popularly written doesn’t contain the cultural elements necessary for the African American community to continue its stewardship of the “jazz” tradition or build from the cultural pride that such knowledge would bring. Creating this online resource will provide a nucleus for this information that will have far greater distribution into classrooms and communities than any other method could.

Finally, there is a severe need to re-establish and reinforce the benefits of community. Tying together various aspects of the Global African music Diaspora will create a virtual community that mirrors what must happen in real communities---people sharing knowledge and working toward mutual goals that improve opportunities for everyone. The need for rebuilding communities in this way is more apparent now than ever. As individuals become more isolated in their personal pursuits, and the proliferation of the idea that success is achieved and defined by working harder and having more possessions, has created an isolationist mentality that works against community. This dangerous trend needs specific and tangible counter examples that challenge its validity, effects, and very purpose.

Description
Essentially, the Encyclopedia of Innovative Global African music is a matter of pooling some of our best minds, resources, information, talent, and technology to create a living (self-perpetuating) record of Global African musical creativity, thoughts and achievements. The process involves continually evolving techniques to capture as many aspects as possible of the Global African music experience.

Part II:

Subject: UCSC/ISIM Festival/Conference at UCSC

Time: December 3, 2009 at 3pm to December 6, 2009 at 5pm
Location: University of California Santa Cruz Organized By: Karlton E. Hester:

Event Description:
Theme: Improvisation, Diversity, and Change: Uncovering New Social Paradigms Within Spontaneous Musical Creativity.

In cooperation with the International Society for Improvised Music, with the generous support of Porter College Festival Funding at UCSC, and additional support from UCSC Music Department, the IAA and AAI, we will host a co-sponsored festival & conference of improvised, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary music and arts festival/conference. This is continuation of the Global African Music Festival series and a recent collaboration with International Society of Improvising Musicians that has grown out of 2007 and 2008 ISIM conferences.

The primary objectives and purpose of the UCSC Improvising Artists Festival and Conference (IAFC) is to host a collaborative set of joint events under the co-sponsorship of the annual International Society for Improvised Music Conference (ISIM) and a UCSC festival aimed at an ongoing effort entitled, “Rebuilding Global Community through the Arts.” Thus, the focus of the festival/conference is on creating an environment and infrastructure where people from different creative genres and disciplines can come together for a weekend to explore and imagine new avenues of interdisciplinary, cross-cultural discourse and interaction focused upon 21st century improvisation, diversity and change.

Event Description
The conference will contain approximately forty events within three days. All events will feature members of ISIM, invited guest performers and scholars, with a special emphasis on UCSC students, invited guests, and faculty presentation and participation. The first two days of the conference will have one keynote speaker in the morning and keynote artists in the evening, for a total of four keynotes.

Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Global African Music
The Santa Cruz Contemporary Global African Music Festival is intended to be a joint venture involving musicians from around the world supported by private and public agencies within and outside the local community. We seek initial support from African American Innovators, LLC; University of California at Santa Cruz (Arts and Lectures Fund); WRTI-FM, Temple University; Kuumba Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; KUSP, Santa Cruz; Bank of America; Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce; Meet the Composer; The Ford Foundation; the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund; Microsoft Corporation (Northern California Programs and Events); Borders Bookstore; the Santa Cruz Council for the Arts; Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Global Publications at SUNY Binghamton; and the Guggenheim Foundation. We hope to gradually link our festival, encyclopedia and other efforts to related programs worldwide.

The artists we invited to our first annual festival in April 2002 included Twin Seven Seven (Nigeria), Samite Mulondo (Uganda), Mamadou Diabate (Mali), Cecil Taylor (NYC), Nelson Harrison (Pittsburgh), James Lewis (Paris), and Eddie Gayle (San Jose, "Concert for World Peace"), among others. In the past Dr. Hester has organized 9 annual “jazz” festivals at Cornell University where he has brought such reknowned artists as McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Cecil Taylor, Jaki Byard, Randy Weston, and and Billy Taylor to the Cornell University campus. The guest artists would perform with the students, as well as give clinics and lectures. More information on these events is available upon request. Dr. Hester now seeks to expand his efforts to a broader community and to include other global African music.

Part III:
Educating Tomorrow’s Creative Musicians and Scholars

Educational projects designed to enlighten the community to the cultural, economic and spiritual forces associated with African American artists in “jazz” and other Global African music through conferences, workshops, master classes and other events is essential to strengthening the Global African music community. Special attention is also necessary to make Global African youth aware of the importance and necessity of Global African music innovations and evolution.

We plan to train young musicians to document and write meaningful critiques for Global African music. A long-range plan and sample course description for such an evolutionary project are below. Dr. Hester worked with the writing program at Cornell for the past two years to introduce students to African American music through listening, critical and analytical thinking, research, and writing (a copy of the course description is in the appendix). Young students of African American music can be trained to learn to write their own music history, sociocultural analysis and meaningful critiques.

Narrative:
Our goal is to develop interdisciplinary course structures and curricula that provide students with a hands-on education in “jazz” history and direct contact with the innovators of the music that are still alive. This compliments the development of the Encyclopedia of Innovative Global African Music by creating learning opportunities that will be documented in various components of the encyclopedia such as oral histories, period research, and contemporary traditions. The results of this project will provide educational materials, a curriculum model and sustainable funding for the future.

The educational territories that will be covered through this project are Music Performance and Music History, Africana Studies, History, Sociology, Humanities, and Geography. In addition, when our project is fully developed, students will ultimately learn a range of technical skills. Such skills potentially include research on the internet and in libraries, writing skills, basic and multimedia website design, use of audio and digital video equipment, the use of various computer software programs, as well as introductory publishing experience. The intellectual material will be focused on the history of African-American “jazz” and African American music, tracing the evolution of the music from its roots in Africa to the present and its living innovators.

The direction of this project is towards exploring the relationship between the evolution of African American music and the sociopolitical milieu in which it developed in America. The class will examine the world of the progenitors of African American music through listening (to recordings), reading, discussion, and writing. Students will circumscribe the historical context that contains African American music innovations (through recordings, film and reading); then, through midterm and final papers, the students will explore ways to create systematic solutions to chronic problems that limited the independence and economic success of African American music in the past.

In addition selected guest lecturers, associates and advisors will share their knowledge of related topics, such as Math & Music (Dr. Donald Byrd), The Metaphysics of Music (Dr. Nelson Harrison), Afro-Cuban Music (Pamela Wise), Music of Mali and the Kora (Mamadou Diabate), The music of Uganda (Samile Mulondo) amongst others.

Much of the evolution of Global African music, and the stylistic defining characteristics, is motivated by spiritual concerns. This area of influence is generally ignored in the analysis of “Black” music allegedly because empirical tools cannot be applied. Nonetheless, this is an important aspect of our pedagogical directions. Dr. Nelson Harrison’s research tools allow us to approach this subject with a firm foundation of knowledge.

“The Metaphysics of Music is a comprehensive look into the properties and values of music known by the ancients and rediscovered in modern understanding with an examination of its value and utility in the new millennium. Touchstones of discussion are: Music as Art, Music as ESP, Music as Gnosis, Music as Healer, Music as Kinetic Force, Music as Language, Music as Motivator, Music as Pedagogy, Music as Power, Music as Revelation, Music as Science, Music as Synchronicity, Music as Training and Music as Vision, Music as Semiotics.”

Although the focus of the intellectual subject matter of this course is the evolution of African-American “jazz”, the students will be provided with the historical, social, sociological, geographical and cultural contexts of the music. Our emphasis focused upon the use of primary sources on the indirect level through studying primary source texts and on the direct level through contact with living “jazz” artist-scholars.