Jazz at Amman Baptist School

A group of musicians from Oberlin Conservatory are touring Jordan as part of an international Winter Term project, funded in part by the Julie Taymor fund of the Winter Term office, and also the U.S. Department of State. 

On Saturday January 9th, a jazz quintet from Oberlin Conservatory visited the Amman Baptist School to perform and teach young band students. Amman Baptist School boasts one of the most impressive collection of instruments in a band program in the country, including a xylophone and a four-valved tuba. Matt DiBiase, a jazz percussionist and dual-degree student from Oberlin, wrote about his experiences there.

Oberlin jazz students, including members of the group "Echoes," performing at Amman Baptist School; Zach Resnick on trumpet solo

The jazz quintet's time at the Amman Baptist School on January 9th proved valuable in many respects to our time here in Jordan. First, our performance for the students reminded me of the significance of both cultural and generational differences in music appreciation. When comparing the reaction of Jordan University students (mostly aged in their early twenties) with that of the younger generation at the Amman Baptist School (early teens), I was reminded of the rapid turnover pop music can have in a single decade in any culture worldwide. The Fairuz tune from the 70s that we performed had little to no engagement from the younger generation, while the older generation began clapping along during the performance. The younger students were also much more reserved as an audience, possibly because of the age gap between themselves and us as college students, but most likely because they were less familiar with the Fairuz song. Its also important to keep in mind that any audience could take our performance of their music as being disrespectful or incorrect, but we have yet to receive any feedback—which we would love! (Note - Max Bessessen, Oberlin jazz sax major, arranged Al Bint Al Shalabiya, and the group performed it previously at the University of Madaba last week. While the students at this school did seem to be more reserved in their reception of this song, their teacher subsequently got in touch with the group to ask that they send over a pdf of the music because they liked it so much that they wanted to play it themselves. Their reserved reception may have been more of an indicator of shyness or personal reservation rather than musical reservation or lack of familiarity.)

Max Bessessen lays it down on "Bebop"

Secondly, I (along with the rest of the Oberlin jazz majors) was extremely impressed with the level of musicianship displayed by the students at Amman Baptist School. This school represented some of Amman’s strongest young musicians, and may possibly be one of the best schools in which to study music at a young age in Jordan. While the talent of the students made me hopeful, I couldn’t help but think how much a small amount of funding can drastically change a student’s education. As we broke off into individual instrumentations for lessons, Zach found himself with two students who, despite being relatively young, both brought their instruments home to practice during the school week and listened to trumpeters like Louis Armstrong for pleasure. I sat down with the piano students and discovered that they knew quite a lot about various pop tunes by Adele and Taylor Swift. Chase found himself learning a new rhythm from the student to perform with our Fairouz song.

Max Bessessen teaches wind students at Amman Baptist School

Each of the Oberlin students addressed different topics in their lessons with the intent on having students collaborate in the future and combine the techniques we were trying to teach. Zach and Max covered various forms of wind and brass instrument technique and armbiture, Tim taught the guitar and bass players about standard blues form, Chase focused on standard drum set rhythms from various styles, and I focused on analyzing diatonic chords of basic pop tunes to reveal common scales and techniques for improvisation and composition.

Finally, I wanted to discuss more specifically my experience teaching the keyboard students - both of the students with whom I worked ate up the new material I threw at them about chord analysis, traditional western music theory progressions and opening one's mind away from shapes on the keyboard to singing what’s in one's mind through one's instrument.