Musicking in Motion: A Jazz Professor’s Journey
Last term, I took History of Jazz (1900s-1950s) with Sean Peterson. I was ecstatic to learn the history of one of my favorite musical genres and be introduced to new music and musicians. About halfway through the class, I learned about musician Christopher Small’s theory of “musicking,” a verb used to describe the activities that involve music, such as performing, listening, and being present at a musical event. In an effort to share Peterson’s unique relationship with and connection to music, I met with him for an interview to better understand the role music plays in his life. While speaking with Peterson, I came to notice how his relationship with music represented an example of musicking. Peterson embodies this form of interaction with music on many levels: as a bassist and performer, listening to and indulging in music, and engaging in music through community interactions, whether at music events or by having thought-provoking discussions with his students in music classes. Read some excerpts from our interview below to get an inside look into his musical relationship.
Dr. Sean Peterson
How did you first get into music?
I first got into music by hearing it sung in my house and listening to it in the car a lot on our way to places–lots of popular music, lots of Billy Joel and Elton John. When I first started playing, it was in middle school, and I played the clarinet because that's the instrument my family had. I didn't like it that much, but it sort of started some sort of relationship with music and with music making. Then, I came to jazz and playing the bass, which is primarily what I do. At the end of high school and beginning of college, I started to teach myself a little bit of electric bass guitar. In my free period in high school I would sing bass in the jazz choir. When I went to college, I was sort of interested in that in a way that had not interested me in middle school.
What kind of music means the most to you? Has a certain kind of music impacted you in any specific way?
Jazz is the music that sort of speaks most strongly to me and has for 30 years. That wasn't the music that we listened to in my childhood, but when I was in college, I really got into listening to that. I hardly listened to anything else from you know, like the mid ‘90s to the mid 2000s. It was all just a study of the library of the repertoire of jazz basically. Now I’m more interested in newer recordings in jazz and trying to keep up with what modern musicians are doing…which is a different way of studying the music because there is so much history. It's almost like a library. I mean, there's so much good music back there. But it's also a living art form.
What led to your decision of settling on playing the bass?
Well, like I said, I was singing bass in choir, and so I was sort of getting in touch with that end of the tonal spectrum. And so I just thought I'd try it, you know, try playing jazz bass. It did something, sort of inexplicable for me. It turned a knob or something–nothing else had changed me in that way before. I was curious about that change, that work in my life. I just kept doing it and it has never let me down. I’m the kind of a person who tends to go from one thing to another quite a lot. I get interested in something, and then I do it for a little while and then I move on. But the bass never made me want to move on. I've always wanted to do it ever since I started. There's always new styles to play and people to play with. I just want to get better every year.
If any, do you have a favorite class that you teach?
Oh man, I love teaching the History of the Beatles class, and I love teaching the History of Jazz classes. But anything really where you can get in a room with people and listen to music and talk about it. It doesn't matter. I mean, there's good music in any style, and in all the classes I teach there's always good music. So, if you get there and you listen to it with people and people want to talk about it, that's what I'm into. The style of music isn’t as important. It's almost like the nature of the people in the room itself is as important or more important than the style of the music or the subject of the class. If we can have good discussions, that's what I'm in it for.
Why do you think music is such an important art form?
Every culture in the world makes music, and that alone, I think, argues for its importance to the human experience. Just like language is part of the human experience, music is part of the human experience. It's interesting to see what different people do with it and how it makes meaning in different cultures. But honestly, I just find it pleasurable. To make music is pleasurable. To make music with other people is a fun way of connecting with them. Playing music makes me feel closer to other people. I mean, you could say any number of things about how music can express what words can't and things like that—that's true of any art, visual art too. I think it helps us. It can be healing for people, the experience of making music and hearing music. Two very different experiences, but both can be healing for people and that's really important. I know that some people feel the need to express through their art, whatever that art is, and so for some people that’s music–that’s obviously important to those people. But it’s just meaningful, as both creators and listeners throughout the world, and that’s kind of incredible.
At the end of our interview, I asked Peterson if he had any extra remarks he would like to make, or something he found meaningful to share with the readers. Peterson was able to provide great insight, both for college students and music lovers in general:
I was in grad school, here [University of Oregon], studying jazz performance, and I took a musicology class. It was only then that I learned that there's a performance way to think about and do music, and there's an academic way to think about and do music. It really flipped my lid and totally showed me something that I didn't know was a way to engage with music. I knew I loved music already by that time, but I didn't know you could sit around a seminar table and listen to something, or read something, and just talk about it for hours and think about music in terms of how it's meaningful to people. There’s just so many deep layers of meaning to music that I had never considered before taking a musicology class and that, again, sort of turned something for me. It showed me something that I hadn't thought of before in life. That changed my life–it changed my professional life, but also my intellectual life. I love it. I love reading other people's writing about their research and their thinking. It’s cool to think about that side of music too. So anybody, I think, who's interested in music, from one side or the other, can benefit from going both ways.
My conversation with Peterson was enlightening. It was inspiring to hear about the way he, as a musician and music connoisseur, is able to experience such strong connections with the art form. Although I do not relate to Peterson’s connection to music as a performer/musician, learning about the ways Peterson has been able to interact with music throughout his life has definitely encouraged me to establish a strong relationship with music in alternative ways through the help of musicking.
Enjoy Peterson’s jazz playlist filled with some timeless tracks on Align’s Spotify: