As a freshman in high school, years before I came upon Bowdoin's campus of Sufjan and Wilco lovers, I sat in a straight-backed wooden chair before the school jazz band conductor. This was a man who, over the course of his career, had led generations of extraordinarily talented musicians to 30 Downbeat magazine Student Musician Awards. He and the New Trier High School jazz ensemble had been featured on the cover of the March 2001 issue of School Band and Orchestra as well as the Spring 2006 issue of the Jazz Education Journal. And here I sat, before a gentleman who, in the most elite sense of the word, knew how to "boogie." My chest puffed to its capacity, I played a rickety, oxygen-depleted rendition of "Someone To Watch Over Me" on my plastic Yamaha clarinet.
But with the glazed look in the his eyes that said, simply, "Go listen to some Top 40 on Kiss FM, sweetie," my aspirations to become the up-and-coming blonde Benny Goodman came to an end. My short-lived music career amounted to little more than playing a few long, off-key tones in the background of the school's annual winter performance of "Sleigh Ride," and the ability to "sing" along word-for-word to Outkast's "I Like the Way You Move."
Upon arriving at Bowdoin, I gave up the clarinet entirely and dedicated myself solely to the crooning of artists such as Rihanna and Jay-Z. Naturally, on a campus filled with culturally savvy students, my enslavement to rap, pop, hip-hop, and occasionally the "OC" or "Garden State" soundtracks has been looked down upon. But thus far I've stood my ground in the midst of musically curious and intelligent people, and often, in fact, scorned those who try to detach themselves from the intoxicating grasp of "Call on Me" and "Slave 4 U." I actually once had the gall to say in front of the entire women's locker room that "every time I download something like Fiddy, I feel the need to counter it with some pretentious music like Belle & Sebastian." Fingernails and gym shoes flew at my face.
But the era of Eminem and Fall Out Boy, and generally denying the existence of music not played on the radio, had to come to an end at some point. When, this past semester, my roommate put my iTunes library on Our Tunes and labeled it "Annie Monjar's Music," prostituting my musical guilt to the whole of the Bowdoin campus, I knew that I had to change something. Somehow, I would regain the positive musical karma that went out the door with that abysmal jazz audition and my years of radio junkiedom.
Thus determined for musical enlightenment, I trudged over to Bull Moose, where I purchased Louis Armstrong's "100th Birthday Anniversary Anthology," on sale for $11.97. While making friendly conversation with the cashier, who wore a shirt with the word "human" written in Sharpie on it, I pointed out what a nice compilation the album looked like. For here, I thought, was a musical connoisseur who I could relate to.
"Yeah," he said nonchalantly, "but, you know"?and here's the zinger?"liking Louis Armstrong is kind of like liking butterflies."
Ouch. Feeling entirely deflated of musical abandon and independence, I went back to my dorm, laid down on my bed, uploaded the trumpeting butterfly himself onto my computer, and listened to a scratchy recording of "I Want A Big Butter and Egg Man," and debated what to do next. Clearly, I would need help.
Someone I knew who had a lot of experience and knowledge of jazz music lived downstairs from me, and within minutes of the "butterfly" incident, I arrived at her door. For an hour, I hunched over her computer as she put together a playlist for me on iTunes. Trying to sound somewhat adept, I would shout, "Oh! I love that one!" as her mouse passed over Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (at the time, I pronounced it "Vince Ghiradelli"). With admirable patience and restraint, she accepted these outbursts and when it was all over, I had a list of essential artists and albums. And with close to three valuable hours that could have been spent studying for my history final, I scoured the iTunes store and purchased several Christmas presents for myself.
I'm still very much in the midst of this jazz journey. With the a lot of dutiful concentration, I've gradually replaced (some, not all) Cascada with Coltrane, and (some, not all) Beyonce with the Buena Vista Social Club. More frequently, a song on my newly inaugurated "jazz" playlist will come on that is something I really enjoy, and maybe even recognize.
While my old clarinet continues to collect dust in the corner of my bedroom, and I grow further away from having any clue what the time signature is in a given piece (or what a "time signature" is, for that matter), I've managed to regain the appreciation I once had, and the knowledge I never had, for jazz. And though I'll never see how, out of all the bright and creative students like those at Bowdoin, no one can appreciate the genius behind "Toxic," I'm starting to see how exploring other music provides the sense of satisfaction that only comes with looking beyond your horizons and liking the new landscape that you see. Even if that is Belle & Sebastian . . .which I guess is okay . . .
Annie Monjar is a member of the Class of 2009.