Џeзот и усната традиција во високото образование
Jazz and Oral Tradition in Higher Education

Summary/Abstract: This essay examines the concept of oral tradition in the context of higher education jazz programs. The history of jazz education typically told focuses on institutional narratives and leaves out many of the educational modes employed by jazz musicians and composers in the early 20th century. More recent scholarship has shed light on the more complex and nuanced modes of knowledge and learning that occured in the jazz community outside the walls of the academy. Giving a brief overview of the literature on jazz education, this essay highlights scholarship that shows the complex relationship between oral and written traditions, aligning with arguments that challenge a binary opposition between the two. It supports scholars who de-essentialize jazz as purely based on oral tradition and, instead, situate its musical and educational practices in their historical, social, and cultural contexts. Demonstrating that jazz composition and improvisation, as well as the transmission of knowledge, involve multiple modes of musical thinking and lie somewhere between conceptions oral and written tradition, the essay suggests some practical approaches for the inclusion of elements of oral tradition in a higher education system positioned favorably towards the written, and it challenges existing paradigms of power that embody old prejudices and inequalities.

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