http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/Haas_Diversity.mp3
UPDATE: 10/12/2011 Musician Jeff Haas believes a jazz combo can be a little like society. All the elements have to work together. This week, his program Building Bridges with Music is expected to be featured in a national story on CNN. Listen back to our story on the program here. It was first published in May 2010.
Musician Jeff Haas believes a jazz combo can be a little like society. All the elements have to work together. This week, Jeff and his quintet have been visiting area schools to demonstrate his theory, where he compared the instruments in his band to the parts of a car.
"So, let's see if you can answer this question: What part of a car gives you a feel for the road? So, if you're driving down a bumpy road this part of the car transfers that bumpy feeling into the car..."
Several children answer back.
"The wheels, you got it. In the jazz band, there's one particular instrument that's responsible for giving you a feel for the pulse of the music. It's called a bass and without any other instruments playing, you guys are going to feel the pulse of the music. Check it out."
The bassist starts to play a slow jazz rhythm.
Haas then compared the car's engine to a set of drums, the body to the piano, and the driver and passenger to the trumpet and sax - so, as Jeff said, we all know where we're going.
Like the diverse elements required to drive a car, Haas believes the same diversity must exist in society.
"Music is a good place for you to practice open-mindedness. If you're mind is closed about music, or if you take everyone else's opinions about music and say, 'Well, that's my opinion too,' your music world is going to get small.
"And if you keep an open mind and listen to all different kinds of music, and decide for yourself whether you like that music or not, your world gets ..."
Haas waits the children to finish his thought: "Bigger!"
"Bigger," Haas repeats. "And when your world is bigger, you get to experience more."
Haas' program is called Building Bridges with Music. Since the program began in 1994, Jeff and his quintet have presented it more than 500 times. More than 50,000 grade school students have participated. And Haas isn't afraid to be rigorously personal and brutally honest. So much so, in fact, that he can quiet a room of 3rd through 5th graders.
"Jewish is a religion," he explains. "Now, how many people here have met someone who's Jewish? Good. Well, guess what? You can all raise your hand now because I'm Jewish and you know me.
"Everybody's met someone who's Jewish. Now, this is the bad news: Because of Hitler, a whole country, Germany, decided that Jewish people were bad. And guess what? My grandparents, they got killed by the Nazis in concentration camps because they were Jewish. For no other reason than they were Jewish."
Haas uses music as an illustration of how global intolerance can grow into tragic proportions. Blair Elementary student Ian Moore got the message.
"Like, if a new kid comes and he dresses different, if someone makes fun of him - if my friend makes fun of him - I might say, like, 'If you make fun of that person I might not be your friend.'"
To prove that each and every student present has heard jazz before, Jeff's quintet played the theme to "The Flintstones." They even played it in diverse ways - including a Brazilian version in which the main melody was played by the drums alone. To listen, play the audio version of this story, posted above.