“Why Do You Do What You Do?”
It was an exciting morning for me. I was going to be Interviewed by two jazz professors, and one might take Interviewed by two jazz professors, and one might take me on as a grad student. This was the moment I had been working towards ever since I had started lessons with Dr. Norden – to get some college degrees under my belt so I could teach community college, and no longer have to rely on gigs for a (bare) living.
I grabbed all the most interesting compositions I had done for Charley Banacos – or that he liked the best – and a fugue I had written for Dr. Norden; and stuffed them into a brown cardboard portfolio I had bought the day before in a five-and-dime store in my home town.
This cardboard portfolio was closed by having a big flap that, when pulled down, would push both sides together, and then sealed by tying a reddish-brown ribbon that ran over both sides. I tied the ribbon and pulled it tight, but then realized I had left out two important compositions, so I tried to untie the knot. The knot I had made was like the knot you make tying your shoe, and – disaster! Just as sometimes the shoelace knot will collapse into an impossible to open clump, so happened here. I tried to pry the knot open, with fingers, with a scissors – no go! So I said, “Okay, I will carry the scissors in my jacket pocket, and when the prof wants to look at my work, I will explain what happened before taking the scissors out of my pocket to cut the knot and scaring him to death. The only problem would be that once the knot was cut, there was no way to keep the portfolio closed. Well, I was sure I could figure something ... anyway if I waited any longer I would be late.
So off I drove to my morning appointment, a community college near my hometown. I excitedly walked up to Prof. A’s office, “African American Music” = knocked on the door, heard “Come in!” and entered – only to be almost knocked off my feet by the intense hate beams glaring at me from Prof. A’s eyes. Around 10 years later I come to recognize this as the “Jew glare” – the intense death-ray that Jew haters project when meeting someone they perceive to be Jewish. But I had never run across it before – my encounters with anti-Semitism until then had been rare and lame “Jew jokes”, so I didn’t have a clue why this guy was so down on me at first sight.
So I just went ahead with talking about my background – some childhood Classical lessons, playing in rock, R&B, and country bands, and usually playing thumb piano … “Stop right there! How dare you use that colonialist term in my office! You’re lucky I don’t knock you down!
Get out!”
So out I went, mumbling under my breath “but all the Black guys I played with called it a ‘thumb piano’ – “Lee, you play the thumb piano ….” He had barely given me a chance to speak, let alone look at my music. I was disappointed, but I still had one professor left, so I was determined to make a good impression on him.
So that afternoon I drove into the East Long Island part of New York city to meet with Prof. B. A tall White man with reddish hair, he greeted me enthusiastically. “CRONBACH, eh? You must have a pretty good background. And you studied with Banacos in Boston? Great, you will be just what our seminar needs!” Then he led me to the elevator going to the faculty offices. Waiting there was another young Jewish-looking man with a beard. “Lee, I want you to meet Ben Shapiro. Ben, Lee here has studied with Banacos in Boston, so I think this will be an excellent seminar
We walked into the elevator and as Prof. B was about to press the ‘UP’ button, a young Black student ran up. Unlike the rest of us, dressed in the blue jeans casual look of the time, this young man was wearing a full-dress three-piece suit, complete with waistcoat, tie, the works. And he was carrying in his hand, not a cardboard portfolio, but a shining black leather briefcase.
As we went, I became very aware of my cardboard briefcase, still unopened, with the knot still untied. One professor had denounced me as a racist fool, the other had praised me to the skies, but neither had looked at even one note of my compositions. The scissors, still unused, lay dormant in my jacket.
What the heck? I had been playing music around ten years now, in all types of bands with all types of personnel, more often mixed than not, often with Jews and Blacks or other ‘People of Color’ all in the band – from the Cosmic Pimps with E.J. and Joe Friedman to both the Berkeley drum circle and Tribal Rhythms, Smoke, Kelly St. John, Ben Petrucci’s combos – and I have never experienced the hatred which these two professors felt for “the other race.”
I thought, “This must be a New York thing – so I will get the courses I need passed to be able to apply for a Master’s in California, and then run to Michael Gullage in Los Angeles.”
But then I had a sudden frightening thought. “When we get to his office and Prof. B looks at my work, he will see the amount of Black influence in my writing and get really pissed off and flunk me, so I better be ready to work around whatever he’s going to throw at me.”
Sure enough, ten minutes later, Prof. B was seated at his desk, with a deep frown, staring at my composition as it was a dead rat. “You write here that ‘’this is to be played in ‘reggae style.” What is a “reggae style?” I tried to explain who Bob Marley was, the influence reggae music, how the rhythm identified a piece as reggae by emphasizing two 8th note hits on the second beat … Prof B just looked at me and went on to my next composition – another dead rodent in his eyes,
It was all downhill from there. After five minutes Prof B appeared to be a tired rat exterminator after a hard day’s work.
Our class was to write a piece for a big jazz band. My piece was an original, “Why Do You Do What You Do?”, and the band never was able to get past the second manuscript page without breaking down or Prof. B stopping it for corrections.
In the last month of classes Prof. B. told me that he could not pass me, that I just had no natural musical aptitude and hadn’t learned anything in his course.
I was desperate, so I made him this proposal. “You tell me what the most important rules of music composition are, and if I write some lead sheets, each one incorporating all your rules without a single mistake, you will pass me with at least a “B” for the course. (In grad school a C means an F!). Prof. B agreed, and dictated to me a list of 21 rules that always had to be followed in any composition. I was assigned to write 4 32 bar pieces, harmonized melodies, with each piece demonstrating all 21 rules were demonstrated and without one mistake.
So I went home and wrote my 4 melodies – making sure that a) each rule was followed to the letter, b) the resultant sound was as ugly as possible, and c) the emotions expressed were anguish, hatred and contempt. I handed in my 4 pieces, titled “A, B, C, D” (but titled in my mind ‘Four Pieces of Demonic Hatred”) and sure enough, he loved them. “Lee, I am glad you finally learned something!” and he gave me my B.
‘Why Do You Do What You Do?” was a reaction, my question to these two racist fools, why are you acting like this? It is a fairly difficult piece to play, with several key changes and abrupt metrical shifts, but has a nice groove. I was never able to get Prof. B’s jazz workshop band to play it – he would always stop it halfway through and explain why it wasn’t working. The piece was too difficult to make it part of my standard playing repertory, but luckily, three years later, Creation City recorded it at Leigh Garner’s house on her little cassette player, with me, Leigh on flute, Mel Wiggins on congas, and bassist Cleo Monago joining us (we had just finished recording “Wah Wah Ko” with Cleo in my big recording band). Mel smoothed out the rhythm, Leigh was in top form on flute, and Cleo picked up the bass part –the hardest part of the tune – instantly. This recording is one of my favorites, and I have it on my YouTube site at this link:
In the last month of classes Prof. B. told me that he could not pass me, that I just had no natural musical aptitude and hadn’t learned anything in his course.
I was desperate, so I made him this proposal. “You tell me what the most important rules of music composition are, and if I write some lead sheets, each one incorporating all your rules without a single mistake, you will pass me with at least a “B” for the course. (In grad school a C means an F!). Prof. B agreed, and dictated to me a list of 21 rules that always had to be followed in any composition. I was assigned to write 4 32 bar pieces, harmonized melodies, with each piece demonstrating all 21 rules were demonstrated and without one mistake.
So I went home and wrote my 4 melodies – making sure that a) each rule was followed to the letter, b) the resultant sound was as ugly as possible, and c) the emotions expressed were anguish, hatred and contempt. I handed in my 4 pieces, titled “A, B, C, D” (but titled in my mind ‘Four Pieces of Demonic Hatred”) and sure enough, he loved them. “Lee, I am glad you finally learned something!” and he gave me my B.
‘Why Do You Do What You Do?” was a reaction, my question to these two racist fools, why are you acting like this? It is a fairly difficult piece to play, with several key changes and abrupt metrical shifts, but has a nice groove. I was never able to get Prof. B’s jazz workshop band to play it – he would always stop it halfway through and explain why it wasn’t working. The piece was too difficult to make it part of my standard playing repertory, but luckily, three years later, Creation City recorded it at Leigh Garner’s house on her little cassette player, with me, Leigh on flute, Mel Wiggins on congas, and bassist Cleo Monago joining us (we had just finished recording “Wah Wah Ko” with Cleo in my big recording band). Mel smoothed out the rhythm, Leigh was in top form on flute, and Cleo picked up the bass part –the hardest part of the tune – instantly. This recording is one of my favorites, and I have it on my YouTube site at this link:
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