Using music as a foundation and metaphor, artist Jeff Haas wove lessons of diversity into a repertoire of jazz music.
Presenting on Monday the first of about 50 workshops on diversity to elementary students in grades 3-6 this fall, Haas and musicians from Jeff Haas and Friends forged parallels between keeping an open mind about music and keeping an open mind about people.
The diversity workshops are presented in partnership with the Dennos Museum Center and funded by a $35,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Haas and his fellow musicians will give the workshop to an estimated 5,000 students around northwest Michigan and the Detroit area by mid November.
Beginning the hour-long presentation at Cherry Knoll Elementary School by asking how many students liked jazz — garnering a few unsure hands from the assembled third and fourth graders — the band then played the theme from "The Flintstones.” Based on Ira Gershwin's swing tune "I've Got Rhythm,” Haas told the kids, who recognized and enjoyed the piece, that they appreciated the genre but did not realize it.
"I never heard jazz before, I like it now… liked it all along but I never knew it was jazz,” said Trenton Engle, a third grader at Cherry Knoll Elementary School.
Haas and the band next played the same theme in Bossa Nova, samba and funk styles, weaving the music around a story about a Flintstones character visiting Brazil.
"You can take your favorite theme or favorite melody and play it in a lot of different ways,” he said. "We heard four different ways, just four examples of different kinds of music in jazz.”
"Don't let your friends tell you what kind of music you should like or don't like,” he concluded, laying a foundation for the next lesson.
After introducing the band and the roles of the different instruments, he also talked about improvisation and it's importance in jazz. Just as jazz has many different styles and sounds, each valuable and unique, people are different from one another. The same way students can learn to appreciate different music, they can learn about people, cultures or religions that may be different or unknown.
"That's why it's so important to keep an open mind and make up your own mind,” Haas said. "You keep an open mind about different types of people just like with music.”
Getting to the heart of the matter, Haas asked students how many had ever been called a name on the playground. Relating that he had "braces and buck teeth” in fourth grade himself, he was funny looking and called names. Drawing on the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., Haas told how Dr. King had preached that a person's actions are based one either fear or love.
"When someone calls a name, they might be feeling scared or sad,” noted Haas. "It's easy to fall into a fearful kind of vibe, not a loving vibe.”
The taunting drove Haas into his music and he spent hours listening to music or practicing the piano before and after school. He also began writing music as a teenager as another way to cope with his feelings.
"I felt like there were a lot of difficult and dark things in the world and music was my way of expressing those things,” Haas said, adding later: "Music is a good way to learn about different cultures and different religions.”
His writing also provided an avenue to connect with his grandparents and ancestors who had been killed by Adolph Hitler during the Holocaust.
"One person decided he was scared of people who were Jewish, a very troubled person and it all started with one person calling someone a name,” said Haas. "Have you ever heard of prejudice, when a person of one race hates a person of another race for no particular reason.”
"A closed mind is closing yourself from the world,” he said.
For more information on Jeff Haas or the Diversity Workshops, e-mail Haas at info@jeffhaasmusic.com.