[Dixielandjazz] Traditional Jazz Educators Network

[Steve barbone]

"Graham Martin" <grahmartin at bigpond.com> wrote (polite snip)
 
> I also applaud your encouragement for people to get involved with the
> Traditional Jazz Educators Network. As a matter of fact, a few years back, I
> had some correspondence with them about their plans for going international.
> They responded that they had no short term plans to do this but maybe long
> term. 

Still no short term plan term to go international

> I got the impression they felt they had their hands full educating
> American youngsters. And you do have to realise that it is basically a list of
> American educators who have some commercial (albeit educational) objectives
> for their members - as well as that fine Mission Statement you quoted.

And that is a valid impression. They indeed have their hands full with the
education of American youngsters. Jazz music education here, at the pre-
college level generally barely mentions pre 1940 music. So "trad Jazz" as
defined by many teens here is bebop and the progenitors are Bird and Diz.
There was quite a bit posted about this on the DJML over the years and
recently about the Cullum Jazz Band breakthrough at the IAJE convention.
Most IAJE'ers have heretofore ignored teaching about Traditional Jazz.

TJEN has an enormous project in the works: To distribute lesson plans, music
samples, course curriculum, etc., in a viable package to 10,000 schools
across the USA. ALL FREE, all focused upon their definition of traditional
jazz. They are an activist group at the school level and deserve every bit
of support they can get. Their web site is a gold mine of information. I
hope DJMLers will surf all of it.

http://www.prjc.org/tjen/

Now, if we can only get those kids gigs. :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve