Abstract
This chapter is about the literal jazz of teaching and the literal teachings of jazz, separate and as a whole. It is performative, imagining the soul that has—and sangs—the blues. Pablo Neruda, Willie Nelson, William James, Toni Morrison, Miles Davis. We live in a time and place where the teacher is expected to either succeed or fail, but these expectations miss the most obvious lesson: the teacher must be present, a companion, even when companionship is hard, impossible, and require that one must suffer on waves of anguish. This essay tries to show the jazz, teacher, and teaching that is always already there and what is lost when they are tossed to and fro between rigorists and sentimentalists.
Anybody
Better than
Nobody
In the barren dusk
Even the snake
That spirals
Terror on the sand—
Better than nobody
In this lonely
Land
Langston Hughes, “Desert” (1990, p. 93).
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Rocha, S.D. (2015). The Blue Soul of Jazz: Lessons on Waves of Anguish. In: Lewis, T., Laverty, M. (eds) Art's Teachings, Teaching's Art. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7191-7_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7191-7_14
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