Liner Notes: Dr. Angela Wellman and Music Of The Highest Order

In 2005, Dr. Angela Wellman, an acclaimed trombonist, founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music. For nearly 20 years, the institution has provided musical lessons for people of all backgrounds, with a specific aim at teaching young African American students.

Earlier this year, Dr. Wellman earned her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation focused on the work of the institution she founded two decades ago, diving deep into the ways racism impedes music education for Black students.

Dr. Wellman, a “music education activist,” has a highly decorated resume. She’s a former recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship. She’s been honored with the Cultural Key to the City of Oakland, and earlier this year she was inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame.

But before all of that, she was a 6th grader in Kansas City, Missouri, learning about an instrument called a trombone. The seeds planted during grade school sprouted while she was a junior college student, as she got paid opportunities to play music in her community through the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA).

Reflecting on what she has accomplished and how she got to where she is today, she can clearly see how it all started with access. This week on Rightnowish, Dr. Wellman shares with us some wisdom from her travels as a musician, a touch of family history and her definition of  jazz– music of the highest order. 

Read the transcript

Lightly edited excerpts of my conversation with Dr. Angela Wellman

HARSHAW: As an activist and music educator, you founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music. Can you talk to me about what it is?

WELLMAN: People have thought that the Public Conservatory is a jazz school, but it isn’t. It is a school of music of the people. When I founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, it was really to lift up the musical practices and traditions that are eons old that exist here in the Bay Area.

This thing called jazz is an important tradition in the Bay Area. I also saw a real lack of opportunities for young people, particularly to study with master musicians. So that’s what I was interested in and continue to be interested in, really just supplying an access to music to underserved people, particularly Black and brown people.

HARSHAW: You threw something out there and I’m gonna follow up on it. You said, “this thing we call jazz” and I need to know your definition of the word. What do you define as jazz ?

WELLMAN: I really don’t like to use that term and I only use it because that’s the term of the marketplace. It’s just another way of saying a certain kind of, you know, Black music.

Jazz is a particular kind of groove. If I’m going to think about it in terms of how we understand it, it is a very high order music. It’s not for the faint of heart, if you’re going to really be a jazz musician. It is to me the highest musical form that exists in our country.

To really excel and master this thing called jazz, one has to go into very deep study, the same kind of years and deep study as a doctor or surgeon. A surgeon has to really be precise and clear and careful, same way with a jazz musician who’s up on stage.

Your technique has to be solid. You also have to have really well developed knowledge and understanding of harmony and theory in order to be able to, in the moment, communicate effectively, clearly, beautifully, melodically, lyrically, rhythmically, and democratically with all of the musicians that you are playing with. Jazz to me is a very high order, scientific almost, methodology of expression of blackness in music.

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