One of the amenities provided to students attending the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival is an array of interesting workshops to attend.
Most of the people who run these workshops work for the Lionel Hampton School of Music. However, professors outside of the School of Music — like Director of the Martin Institute Bill Smith — are welcome to present workshops as well.
Smith presented a workshop titled “Protecting the music: jazz and international relations” Friday. He began by explaining UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — and how it aims to protect culture.
“One of the big questions of the modern connected age [is that] something that you guys watch in Seattle is not as easily consumed by us in the Palouse, so too, in a rural place in East Africa,” Smith said. “So, what happens to East African culture when grunge comes out of Seattle and sweeps across the world? Is that a good thing, a bad thing, a neutral thing? Probably neutral, but we need to figure out what it all means together.”
Smith mentioned a few examples of how jazz is connected to UNESCO. International Jazz Day — an official holiday designated by UNESCO — celebrates jazz through sponsored concerts around the world, according to the IJD website. Smith said that the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz — recently renamed the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz — supports IJD and various jazz education programs. He explained that this work by UNESCO protects intangible cultural heritage — using the Seattle Gum Wall as an example for his Seattle-native audience.
“Tangible cultural heritage would be ‘how do you preserve the Gum Wall? How do you protect it?’ Maybe it’s not worth protecting, I don’t know. But let’s say the Gum Wall is important enough to protect,” Smith said. “Intangible heritage would be ‘how do you protect the act of putting gum on the Gum Wall?’ Because that’s not a thing.”
The small group of attendees, which included children participating in the jazz festival, a college student and a few adults, were welcome to interact with Smith throughout the presentation. Toward the end of the hour, Smith organized the attendees into two groups to discuss the difficulties surrounding protecting specific examples of intangible cultural heritage.
Afterward, Smith invited students to the front of the classroom to chat with him about jazz, international relations and UI.