My roommate is a college student majoring in jazz composition. But based on the content of her history classes and professors, you'd think she was the first woman to ever even touch a saxophone.
Out of about 8 on staff, 1 is a woman.
At her juries (assessment of her playing) last week, one of the two (male) professors looked her up and down, including her chest, and told her she should’ve done her hair up.
The head of her department asked a graduating female senior if her music sucked, because “that would really be annoying for the musicians.”
For her history of jazz essay comparing two musicians from the bop age, her professor denied her permission to include a woman saxophonist on the grounds that bop wasn’t “in her vocabulary,” and she was “faking it, at best.” They have not covered one female musician so far in the semester, and we’ve hit midterms.
That’s just a sampler of her experience in the jazz comp major.
This kind of mindset is one of the reasons jazz is so unapproachable for the general public, especially women. It’s a toxic environment of dudes with superiority complexes who think the more notes you play, the more scholarly you are and the more worthy of praise. It makes nobody feel welcome.
