{"id":17102,"date":"2010-07-12T13:45:40","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T17:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=17102"},"modified":"2012-02-29T14:49:50","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T19:49:50","slug":"the-joys-of-jamming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/07\/the-joys-of-jamming\/","title":{"rendered":"The Joys of Jamming"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Jeremy<\/a>
Jeremy Teitelbaum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An amateur musician extols the joy of playing music for the pleasure of the participants, not the audience.<\/h3>\n

By Jeremy Teitelbaum, Dean<\/a>
\nCollege of Liberal Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/p>\n

This summer, I spent a week at Steve Kaufman\u2019s guitar camp<\/a> in Maryville, Tenn. Each day, for five straight days, I spent four hours a day in classes, three hours in concerts, and many hours into the night in jam sessions. By the end of the week, my hands were completely exhausted, my head was ringing with music, and I was filled with the drive to practice, practice, practice.<\/p>\n

I picked up the guitar about six or seven years ago, when my brother-in-law bought a fancy Taylor and turned over his childhood Yamaha to me during a \u201cSecret Maccabee\u201d Hanukkah gift-giving session. (I\u2019ve since upgraded.)<\/p>\n

I began by trying to play the classic folk and folk-rock songs that my parents listened to while I was growing up, like \u201cDon\u2019t Think Twice It\u2019s All Right<\/a>\u201d by Dylan and \u201cRamblin\u2019 Boy<\/a>\u201d by Tom Paxton.<\/p>\n

However, I was truly hooked on the instrument when I was introduced to the social world of old-time and bluegrass music. Keith Mellinger<\/a>, a mathematician colleague of mine in Chicago, brought me along to a jam session with the Oak Park Farmers Market Band<\/a> in Oak Park, Ill., where I lived before coming to UConn. The OPFMB<\/a> is a group of people who meet weekly throughout the year, outdoors at the Oak Park Farmer\u2019s Market during the summer and at a coffee shop for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

\"<p>CLAS<\/p>\n

Thanks to the OPFMB<\/a>, which consists of a core group of very talented, and remarkably tolerant, musicians, and a wider circle of less-talented but dedicated hangers-on like me, I had the weekly chance to sit in, sing along, and try desperately to keep up my end of the guitar playing. There\u2019s no better incentive to improve than playing with people much, much better than you are.<\/p>\n

That experience reminded me over and over again that there\u2019s nothing more satisfying than making music with other people just for the fun of it. Old-time music and bluegrass are particularly well-suited to this, because so many songs in those traditions are fundamentally simple in harmonic and lyrical structure, yet are part of a rich improvisational tradition that offers great opportunities for instrumental and vocal virtuosity by people who can really <\/em>play and sing.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the repertoire are the fiddle tunes of Appalachia<\/a>, like \u201cSoldier\u2019s Joy<\/a>\u201d and \u201cSaint Anne\u2019s Reel<\/a>,\u201d and the songs of the Carter Family<\/a>, like \u201cWorried Man Blues<\/a>\u201d and \u201cKeep on the Sunny Side of Life<\/a>.\u201d Sit down with any group of people connected to this music, and odds are everyone knows these tunes by heart.<\/p>\n

When I came to UConn, finding people willing to make music with me was one of my first priorities. What amazes me is how easy it was! It isn\u2019t necessary to travel to Tennessee to find people who love traditional music. The UConn community, faculty, staff, and students, along with the surrounding towns, has more than its share of banjo players, fiddle players, mandolin players, guitar players, bass players, and whatever else. I know of at least one faculty member with a hit country song in his past.<\/p>\n

This summer, at the Benton Museum coffee shop<\/a>, I heard a group including chemistry professor Jim Rusling<\/a> do an Irish session, and another local group (\u201cSeldom Heard,\u201d with Howard Drescher and Lee Terry and emeritus biology professor Tom Terry) perform folk tunes like \u201cCity of New Orleans<\/a>\u201d on guitar, mandolin, and upright bass.<\/p>\n

During the school year, I\u2019ve been running the Dean\u2019s Acoustic Jam Session and Sing-Along<\/a>, with a highly variable turnout of students and faculty. Some of the attendees put my solidly mediocre guitar playing and singing to shame. A group of students has split off from that session to meet weekly as the UConn Folk Music Society.<\/p>\n

When the players of the Oak Park Farmer\u2019s Market Band ran off the rails \u2013 keeping tempo is a major challenge with a large group of people of widely varying skill ranges and no conductor, so songs sometimes speeded up a lot <\/em>\u2013 people would remind each other that \u201cit\u2019s a jam, not a performance.\u201d In other words, the music is for the pleasure of the participants, not the audience. That\u2019s the approach to music that means the most to me.<\/p>\n

Oh, and if you are in the area, want to pick a little, and can put up with someone whose enthusiasm exceeds his talent, drop me a line<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Comments? Send them to: dean@clas.uconn.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has 23 departments in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, ranging from physics to philosophy, and more than 15,000 students, 600 faculty, and 83,000 alumni. Check out our three initiatives: Health and Human Behavior<\/a>, the Environment<\/a>, and <\/em>Culture and Society<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other CLAS Blog posts:<\/h4>\n

On Not Buying an iPad<\/a><\/p>\n

A Step Closer to Science Fiction?<\/a><\/p>\n

Academic Freedom Meets Freedom of Information<\/a><\/p>\n

Ambition and Intrigue in the Court of Henry VIII<\/a><\/p>\n

A Civil Conversation on Contentious Issues<\/a><\/p>\n

Academically Anchored<\/a><\/p>\n

Meditations on A(nother) Snow Day<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming to Grips with Climate Change<\/a><\/p>\n

Ideas — The Psychological Currency of the University<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Just Hire the Best’?<\/a><\/p>\n

Will ‘Crowdsourcing’ Revolutionize Scholarship?<\/a><\/p>\n

Hidden Symmetries<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Spectacular Storrs<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Citizenship, Marriage, and Mosques: Problems in the Applied Humanities<\/a><\/p>\n

Of Deans and English Professors<\/a><\/p>\n

Slick Calculations<\/a><\/p>\n

The Road to Agra<\/a><\/p>\n

UConn Over Yale and Other Tales from Jim Draper \u201941<\/a><\/p>\n

The Amazon, Avatar, and Smallpox<\/a><\/p>\n

The Value of Curiosity<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s nothing more satisfying than making music with others just for fun, says Dean Teitelbaum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[66],"class_list":["post-17102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 15:59:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17102"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55738,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102\/revisions\/55738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17102"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=17102"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}