In sound bite form, the thesis of my research program might go something like this: American society isn’t mixed. American music is. Therefore, according to our founding ideals, public institutions ought to emphasize a comprehensive education in American music.
The Broadway musical isn’t exactly a public institution, but it is a sort of national forum culturally speaking. In ancient Athens, to be in the audience of a theatrical tragedy was “to play the role of democratic citizen,” as Simon Goldhill puts it. Perhaps this is why in 2015 the NYC Department of Education and various philanthropic organizations bought tickets for 20,000 Title I public school students to see Hamilton on Broadway—to learn the role of democratic citizens.
Now, not-for-profit performing arts organization TDF is offering free memberships to graduating seniors from New York City public and charter schools and a chance to win tickets to the new Alicia Keys musical Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway (music by Keys, book by Kristoffer Diaz, music supervisor Adam Blackstone). The show includes a jaw-dropping vocal performance by NYC public schools alumna Kecia Lewis as Miss Liza Jane, an elderly master pianist who saves the teenaged Keys from falling into trouble. Jane takes Keys under her wing circa 1998 after the two meet by happenstance in the Ellington Room, a practice space in Manhattan Plaza, the performing artists’ housing complex in Hell’s Kitchen.
When I went to see the show a month ago, I was expecting to hear a lot of great R&B, of course. You won’t be disappointed if you go for that, as the performances are virtuosic across the board. However, what surprised me was the historical perspective of Hell’s Kitchen, which foregrounds the Black American musical lineage that preceded Keys. References to Ellington, Hazel Scott, Florence Price, Max Roach, and Clyde Stubblefield aren’t just musical window dressing. They are central to the show’s narrative. In the end, Keys isn’t saved by one teacher, or even 88 keys. She is saved by culture.
In her 1978 “Multicultural Preparation and Teacher Effectiveness in Desegregated Schools,” Geneva Gay wrote:
“The concentration on the technical problems of rearranging bodies overlooks the necessity of reforms in human values, attitudes, and resources.”
In my research on American music education, I find more and more the most interesting questions have to do with the integration or segregation not of bodies but of multiple musical cultures within the curriculum, especially segregation between Black musical cultures like jazz and R&B. The post-1968 jazz education movement provided many benefits to American music education, but it also placed jazz (“America’s classical music”) on an academic pedestal alongside European classical music, leaving R&B in the cultural gutter, so to speak. As Virginia music educator Undine Smith Moore said, “Social status has absolutely nothing to do with aesthetic value. The blues are an original creation, something that never existed before on earth.”
According to an interview in the Guardian, “[Alicia] Keys spent her formative years exposed by her actress mother to the jazz of Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. By the age of seven, she was receiving classical piano training, an education she regards as invaluable.” Monk himself was influenced by Juilliard and traveling with a gospel revival show. Louis Armstrong adored Enrico Caruso’s records. Far from a ghettoized treatment of R&B culture, Hell’s Kitchen celebrates the polyglot vibe of New York City and, by extension, the United States of America. The term “melting pot,” in fact, is originally derived from Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play of the same name, in which a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York City composes an American symphony with dreams of a future free of ethnic divisions. After more than 100 years, I’m sorry Izzy. We’re still working on it.
In Hell’s Kitchen’s stage-setting, opening scene, Keys takes the elevator down from her apartment to the ground floor of Manhattan Plaza, hearing musicians of different cultures practicing as the doors open on each floor. At the base of everything is the Ellington Room, where piano teacher Jane helps Keys make sense of her dissonant life by putting it all together on the keyboard.
In my Father’s house are many mansions… And on Broadway, a melting pot.
Teachers—take note.
I had the benefit of tremendous music teachers who were all—for the most part—Black men, but who were all practicing musicians themselves, performing usually jazz and R&B.
—James “Plunky” Branch, saxophonist and community organizer