BLOOMFIELD, NJ – Throughout history music and culture have intertwined with one another to create the backdrop for our understanding of the world. For the past 31 years, Bloomfield resident Hans Schuman has tried to teach that phenomenon to the country’s youth through his nonprofit organization, JazzReach.
Started in 1994, JazzReach is a national organization dedicated to educating school-aged children across the United States about how art can play a role in shaping civic life.
“Each distinct production aims to promote a different facet of the music and its history,” Schuman explained. “We will have biographical programs on John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Duke Ellington and other programs that are more jazz history oriented, like the history of women in jazz, the history of Latin jazz or Afro Caribbean jazz.”
JazzReach performs a variety of genres within the structure of jazz music. Schuman blends legendary artist jazz artist with some of the genre’s earliest influences as a way to connect with students who are otherwise unfamiliar with the art form. For a lot of the students that JazzReach performs in front of it is a groundbreaking experience. Schuman and the JazzReach musicians have held events in over 200 communities nationwide, granting access to different types of music and culture to more than one million students who are listening to jazz music for the first time.
“Our emphasis really is on fostering new audiences and introducing young audiences to the art form,” said Schuman. “Most students, no matter where they are, really have not had an opportunity to learn about the music. I would say in most cases their experiences with us are not only the first time they are hearing jazz, but it is usually the first time they are hearing live music.”
It is extremely important, Schuman says, to expose younger audiences to not only jazz music but live performances of music as a concept. If a student does not know something exists then they can never explore the possibility of trying it out for themself.
“What we are trying to do is just pique their curiosities and spark their imaginations and try to get them thinking about their own personal potential in whether it is in the arts or any other endeavor,” Schuman added.
As Schuman notes, JazzReach’s mission goes beyond performing live music in front of first-time listeners. The nonprofit has always tried to provide the proper context to their music, using jazz as a model for the American experience. Jazz as a concept has always been uniquely placed alongside some of the country’s most groundbreaking moments.
“Most of the programs are contextualized in a way that uses American history as a backdrop,” noted Schuman. “The students are able to experience the music through the lens of American history and things like that, so it is not just a vacuum. We really go to great lengths to make sure that the programs are well contextualized in that sense.”
Schuman acknowledged that it can be difficult at times to break through to students and get them to fully understand the concepts JazzReach is trying to teach. The group uses a plethora of analogies to try and bridge the generational divide that exists with the current generation of school-aged students. JazzReach performs with the goal being to show how musicians can share space and bounce ideas off one another during a performance like how citizens learn to coexist.
“There are a lot of metaphors that we use,” Schman said. “This idea of jazz being a very democratic and being very representative of our highest democratic aspirations. It is about the mission, and we have to work together. If each individual member of the ensemble is not pulling their own weight and fulfilling their specific role and responsibility, you will have a breakdown.”
The importance of the program goes beyond the live performance aspect of JazzReach. The mission that Schuman and his fellow musicians believe in is about becoming more well-rounded as a society. Young students should be exposed to a variety of activities outside of a school environment, akin to a proper diet that introduces a diverse selection of food choices.
“I often feel that it is important to have a well-balanced experience with the arts as it is to have an awareness of nutrition,” Schuman explained. “Any organization that is committed to ensuring that young people have exposure and access to the arts I think it part of a well-balanced education.”
Many people may overlook what JazzReach has been doing since 1994, but the nonprofit’s staying power says otherwise. Schuman has been able to adopt and change with the times, in an era in which a lot of the concepts being taught by JazzReach, such as the representation of various cultures, are being challenged. Like with history, music is often just as much about the past than it is about the future and Schuman wants to make it clear the American creativity and diversity are the engines of our culture.
“There is this idea that you look back before you look ahead,” said Schuman. “You have an awareness of the history at the same time you are looking forward. How can we take what has already been done and build upon it? We are really trying to demonstrate through every one of our programs the living breathing vitality of the music and this notion that it is not something that is dying, it is not something we are trying to save, it is something that as long as our musicians are playing, particularly because you are improvising, there is no denying the fact that you are in the moment.”
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