College distances itself from controversial jazz prof
NewsAfter an ’emergency’ meeting with faculty and students, Trinity Laban principal Anthony Bowne has issued the following statement on social media.
You may be aware that in recent days a member of TL staff shared their personal views about the jazz scene in an email they forwarded to students which is now in the public domain.
We are unable to comment on actions taken in response to this email, but we want to make it clear that Trinity Laban in no way endorses or aligns with the views expressed within it. The member of staff is not performing teaching or examining duties.
After a meeting with our students today – held to give them space to express their concerns and feelings about this issue – we would like to say firstly how in awe we are of their sense of community and solidarity with each other. We also recognise that we still have a large amount of work to do to provide an inclusive environment in which our students feel safe from harm and discrimination.
In a message to students he adds: I’d like to remind you that if you need support through this issue, or this issue has raised anything that you would like to share with us, please contact myself or your Director of Faculty. We are ready to support you.
Bowne has been principal since 2010.
“we would like to say firstly how in awe we are of their sense of community and solidarity with each other. ”
I made the same point in the other story. Apart from anything else it is so heartening to see a generation of students willing to bravely go out on a limb and flex their collective muscle when things happen that should not happen in any educational institution.
Where previous generations were too cowed to directly confront blatant sexism, sexual harassment, racism, homophobia, predatory behaviour, bullying, verbal and physical abuse, fearing for their grades and careers, this generation aren’t having it!
More power to their elbow!
Naw, zoomers just drank the progressive Kool Aid.
Is wanting basic human respect “progressive Kool Aid”? Or do students need to endure actual abuse to prove their “non-woke” cred?
In what way was the professors email contrary ti basic human respect? Would you not say that taking a persons livelyhood over a disagreement is contrary to “basic human respect”?
Did you actually read his email?
You obviously weren’t around in the 60s and 70s. We invented woke.
So what happened? Teacher comments, expresses his opinion, students take to the fainting couch; all this is poor preparation for the brutally competitive (and many times, disappointing) profession of music. Coddling students from perspectives with which they may not agree is extremely bad precedent. It is worse precedent that they seem unable to actually discuss their dissent. They will pay the price later by acting in ways that make them unemployable and/or succumbing to entirely self-inflicted mental distress and illnesses brought on by the crashing of expectations with reality.
You got it in ONE !
Beautifully put. It’s already well-documented that the younger woke/liberal cohort suffer from an extremely elevated amount of mental distress/hysteria, far more so than older generations and their more conservative peers. I was certainly a liberal when I was at uni back in the 90s, but we did not act like *this*. We weren’t so infantile and infantilized nor did we think that we had to throw tantrums to get our way. My political bent has largely remained the same, but today that apparently makes me well right of center and an outright reactionary. I’m a liberal how, say, Bill Maher or John Cleese are liberals, which according to the woke, makes me a fascist. Go figure.
“it is so heartening to see a generation of students willing to bravely go out on a limb and flex their collective muscle”
There is nothing brave about taking the same position as the ruthless mob. Standing against the mob would be brave.
So the white jazz professor’s complaint is that there are too many black jazz players?
So instead of jazz’s traditional reverence for King Oliver or Duke Ellington or Count Basie, jazz should diversity and play more Hollywood’s anointed “King of Jazz” (real movie) Paul Whiteman (real name)?
So it’s the White-man’s call for DEI?
Oh my head hurts.
He said nothing of the kind. That’s in your imagination.
most of my CDS are
black artists. most of my books are about black artists.
jazz and blues,
my favourite racing
driver is black.
they have a lot to be
proud of.
Did you actually read his email?
It’s interesting how so many people have a point of view on something they haven’t read or seen. It’s a little dangerous I find to do some form of trial by social media.
So black people (well some, anyway) complain that classical music is too white, and white man complains that jazz is too black.
The music world is such a happy place in 2024.
Was he even complaining about that?
He didn’t complain about that at all.
when you go to a
recital. the piano is
black. the pianist wears black.
the audience wears
black. Artur Rubinstein said this.
I read his email. He certainly did not complain that jazz is too black. He is not a racist.
You could ask him what his view on one of his staff posting a celebration of Marcus Garvey on his public FB page recently. Garvey was a self avowed Fascist, a racist and anti-Semite who referred to mixed race people as mongrels and forged a supremacist alliance with the KKK.
It was ‘liked’ by numerous UK jazz musicians and educators.
What are your thoughts on that?
Funny how you do not give any context to all those things that you said about a revered black icon, as Marcus Garvey. For instance, why not say that as a christian , Garvey tried the route of integration but the white people fought against it, so he started putting his race first and wanting his people to be self reliant, all the things you say you want us to do now. In regards to his KKK alliance, after he realised that blacks were never going to get fair integration, he spoke with KKK, as they too wanted blacks to be separated from whites. Context is key and misconstruing is just deliberate.
Trinity Laban Principal Anthony Bowne sides wholly with the students because places mean money, then signs off with an illiterate “please contact myself”.
Faculty and students throughout the United States engage in rabid antisemitism under the guise of supporting Palestinians and university administrations all of the sudden get religion as regards free speech, which they had heretofore been at pains to curtail for the sake of, say, trans rights or whatever. This one guy dares to offend those same students’ racial sensibilities, however, and those administrators that pontificated about the right to engage in Jew-hatred a minute ago rush to assuage their students pathologically fragile psyches and assure them the offending professor has been summarily canceled. This is beyond simple hypocrisy. It’s systematic and systemic. There is something rotten to the core of American academia.
Your final word was redundant.
So you wish that it would read “There is something rotten to the core of American”?
Rats, wish I could edit my earlier post. This happened in the UK but the exact same point stands if not even more so.
One of the biggest drivers of this institutional madness is managerial cowardice.
They can run for cover and virtue signal at the same time. Job done, someone else’s problem.
But the delicious irony and outcome is that most are destined to spend their lives, er, institutionalized.
This is an utter shamble for Trinity. Turning into a trial by social media. Most people having opinions for something they haven’t read.
Did anyone figure out what he actually wrote? Or I guess that doesn’t matter.
Nobody that knows will share it, for some reason.
I have the email.
Billy: ‘I looked into his eyes and checked my grandfather’s old handbook of phrenology, and I decided to never buy a used car from that person in the picture.’
I think we are all forgetting in this debate that being underrepresented in society does not mean being that society is inherently racist but rather that less privileged kids have less access to education so more of the class issue.
And that’s coming from a woman, women being still very underrepresented in the jazz world.
The wisest words yet on this story.
Thank you. If we could listen to each other more, the world would be a better place, wouldn’t it?
So it wasn’t a private email, he blasted it to the student body?
It would be clarifying to see the actual text since it is now in “the public domain.”
Apparently, his email was in response to another mail, one sent by a person involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. Furthermore, he had allegedly cleared his reply with his line management before sending it to music students. Patently, this must be seen as a reasoned debate carried out by electronic means. The Principal was, I feel, ill-advised to issue an open response. The fact that he supports the student body entirely and offers no solace to lecturer is a clear case of prejudice and mismanagement.
It is also now on Slippedisc.com. Scroll down to the end of the comments:
https://slippedisc.com/2024/03/london-students-boycott-jazz-professor/
This comment belongs here rather than on an older SD item, I didn’t realize I wasn’t posting it on the most recent.
Thank you for being the one place where I can read the entire letter, posted here by a commenter on one of SD’s items a few days ago. This man did not write that Black people are overrepresented in jazz. He wrote that they are not under-represented in jazz. And he said that to the degree there is under-representation of them in classical music this is a class/income issue that applies for all races.
He also wrote that in jazz if there is under-representation it is of White people, and that in jazz, Black people are promoted, awarded, and hired based on color due to the desire of institutions to trumpet their diversity. He also took issue with certain planks in the BLM/critical race theory platform.
You can disagree with those assertions, and you can debate those assertions. But where is the vile, hateful bigotry and exclusion that merits destroying this man’s career, and probably his life?
I keep mis-posting on older items about this. Must keep up!
Here are links to write-ups by the Guardian and allaboutjazz.com describing some very cool and innovative work by this person. This situation seems like a tragedy. He apparently teaches at the Royal Academy also–will he be driven out of there as well?
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/02/martin-speake-duos-for-trio-the-music-of-bela-bartok-review-pumpkin
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/martin-speake-the-thinking-fans-saxophonist-martin-speake-by-duncan-heining
The photo with this post must be the school director? It definitely is not saxophonist/jazz faculty member/letter-writer Martin Speake.
Unbelievable witch hunt of a decent man who loves jazz, and by default reveres and respects those great black musicians who comprise a large part of the worldwide jazz scene, has worked and played alongside 100s of musicians “of colour” in his life has neither behaved nor spoken in a racist way; quite the opposite. Shame on the students and faculty who conspire to destroy this musicians career. May they reap what they sow.