1 Introduction

Justin plays the bass line from the Wayne Shorter composition “Footprints” as part of his warm up, then quickly joins Chris for an impromptu jam session. Manuel enters the room and walks over to the rhythm section as Justin lays down a bass line over some modal song. Manuel starts playing the “head” or melody, and I realize that they are playing Miles Davis’ “Milestones.” As Mark, on piano, plays the changes, David walks over with his trumpet and plays the head with Manuel. The ad hoc combo begins soloing and I am quite impressed, thinking that many college programs would be lucky to have such talented students playing at such a high level. If it were not so early in the morning, this could almost be a scene in a jazz club late at night (Goodrich 2005, p. 73).

In the historic jazz culture musicians learned to play from listening to each other live and from recordings, mentoring each other, and performing (Goodrich 2008). As jazz musicians developed their individual voices (instrumental, vocal), they honed their craft with performances that occurred in venues including bars, dance halls, and bordellos (Gottleib 1996). Voices in jazz entailed aural spaces with the sounds produced when performing, and oral spaces with historical anecdotes that helped to situate stories of the jazz musicians, particularly with improvisations that provide context for the learner. Voices in jazz also included nonmusical elements, such as the interactions and physical movements between musicians as portrayed in the example above.

When jazz entered the schools, listening in jazz became diminished as many of the voices for learning in jazz disappeared. Learning to play jazz became relegated to reading printed transcriptions, lead sheets, and charts, the latter of which involved directors rehearsing and conducting jazz ensembles similar to concert bands (e.g., Goodrich 2005; Kelly 2013; Leavell 1996). Jazz education, then, moved almost entirely into the realm of formal music learning in school music programs and these voices in jazz became seldom heard. However, mythologies around learning jazz persist. Clashing ideas and images of learning in jazz’s past that continue to hold sway do not match the realities of contemporary learning practices in school music programs (Ake 2010).

Yet, not all of these voices in jazz disappeared, and exemplary examples of learning jazz music via aural, oral, and physical voices still occur in school music programs. As jazz musicians and narrative researchers, we explore how narrative inquiry can aid with portraying the varied dimensions of learning in jazz. Using Lefebvre’s (2004) theoretical framework of sociological and historical orientation of human spatial experience, we define how we use the term narrative inquiry followed by an exploration into how the processes of narrative inquiry and learning in jazz share many parallels. We then provide examples from our research to demonstrate how narrative inquiry can help bring to the forefront all voices embedded in the spaces where learning jazz music occurs.

2 Space, Place, and Jazz

Jazz is a spatial practice, where the listener engages with musicians and their musical voices as they navigate through form, melody, harmony, and rhythm (Berish 2012). When jazz is performed, whether in a rehearsal or a performance, an engagement occurs in a space occupied by the listener and musicians. Lefebvre (2004) posited that space is produced by the people who inhabit that space and space is in a constant state of flux (Berish 2012). Jazz, therefore, can inhabit the space of both the performer and the learner as they navigate their way through culturally determined expectations of sound and practice.

Not only does an engagement occur between people who listen to jazz and the performers, but an engagement also occurs between those who read about learning jazz and the written text, especially when narrative inquiry is utilized. According to Lefebvre (1991), space is comprised of three interrelated components: (1) Perceived space (spatial practices) where students engage in learning jazz; (2) Conceived space (representations of space) that includes what students are learning and how they go about doing so; and (3) Lived space (representational space) with how students perceive and interpret what they are learning in the context of where it occurred. Within these different types of spaces, jazz music serves as a conduit for learning, and with narrative inquiry researchers can portray these moments. As Bresler (2006) stated, “Drawing on music’s ability to create a field, performances unify performers and listeners in a shared experience” (p. 27).

When learning jazz, though, much of the learning takes place in decontextualized settings, typically in a big band jazz ensemble rehearsal. This may include lead sheets (that do not include improvised jazz solos and thus do not account for all of the voices in jazz) or transcriptions (solos or complete charts) that can include a focus solely on the improvised solo notated without the interactions of the members of the rhythm section included, nor the nonmusical interactions between the performers. Thus, context is paramount when learning jazz. Lefebvre (2004) stated, “Perhaps music presupposes a unity of time and space and an alliance in and through rhythm” (p. 60). Without portraying all voices that occur during learning in jazz within the context of perceived space, conceived space, and lived space, a jazz performance has little meaning for the learner. Yet, jazz musicians occupy these spaces when they construct aural narratives with their improvised solos and their musical and nonmusical interactions with fellow musicians. Understanding these elements associated with the creation of jazz, according to Lefebvre, aids the listener to create perceptual and cognitive experiences of space (Lefebvre 1991). Nevertheless, jazz does not exist in a static space. Tuan (1977) wrote, “‘Space’ is more abstract than ‘place.’ What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value” (p. 4).

For the purposes of this chapter, we approach the term space as the place in school music classrooms where learning jazz occurs. Ake (2010) described the need to investigate jazz learning in schools and posited “this is where jazz musicians, good and not-so-good, now gather to learn from and play with one another; where audiences listen; where individual and communal identities are formed, where jazz matters most today, at least in this country” (p. 119). Jazz music, then, is primarily learned and performed in the spaces of school music programs, instead of in venues such as dance halls. Considering jazz music in school music programs, the voices seldom heard in jazz takes on additional meanings. For example, aural voices now include greater emphasis on students listening to each other as they read printed big band charts (as opposed to playing solely by ear), oral aspects that include teachers rehearsing the jazz ensemble and student interactions with each other, and the physical aspects of how students interact with each other. Yet, these voices, especially within the context of exemplary programs—are seldom heard in that an audience often hears the product of these voices, not the process of how these voices developed.

Narrative researchers can help portray the spaces in school settings where learning jazz occurs, which in turn can aid the learner with becoming better acquainted with what they listen to when learning jazz. As the listener engages with the lived spaces of jazz, new, even more creative spaces are created when they learn to improvise.

Through narrative inquiry, telling these stories within lived spaces is a way to learn jazz music so that students can more deeply embed what they learn into their own aural and oral repertoire of jazz skills. Narrative inquiry is based on sharing oral stories and we argue that it is a natural fit, including writing about the aural elements of jazz improvisation, for expanding how jazz music can be taught. Clandinin (2006) addressed the concept of space in narrative inquiry and stated, “The three dimensions of the metaphoric narrative inquiry space are “the personal and social (interaction) along one dimension; past, present, and future (continuity) along a second dimension; place (situation) along a third dimension” (p. 47).

3 Narrative Inquiry

With the diminishing practice of listening while learning jazz, it can be challenging to portray how students in school music programs effectively learn jazz. Narrative inquiry, though, “provides a means to re-conceptualize the ways in which we think about music engagement, music education, and inquiry in music education” (Barrett and Stauffer 2009, p. 1). To situate how narrative inquiry can help portray spaces in jazz with regards to learning, it is important to establish what narrative inquiry means. Bowman (2006) stated that “Narratives are sequential, up close, and personal” (p. 7) and through this intimacy between text and reader, one might also come to understand the spaces where jazz learning can be enhanced.

According to Clandinin (2006), “narrative inquirers study experience” (p. 45). When writing about the experience as it occurs in some type of space, Bowman posited that “Narrative lends itself especially well to conveying the shape and character of human experience, and should therefore be regarded as one of the basic ways humans create and share meanings” (2006, p. 7). We draw upon the human experience of performing jazz and subsequent learning of jazz, and argue that narrative inquiry similarly “draws on our ability to connect with others to achieve empathic understanding and can illuminate the fluid, embodied nature of lived experience” (Bresler 2006, p. 21). Through narrative inquiry, researchers can portray lived experiences, many of which occur daily throughout spaces occupied by students learning jazz. When doing so, researchers often become embedded in a particular learning situation where “Narrative inquirers live and work alongside research participants in order to understand the ways in which individuals and communities story a life and live their stories” (Barrett and Stauffer 2009, p. 2). Bresler (2006) stated, “To work in a paradigm of embodied narrative is not to study anything new or different, but to address familiar events and topics – including stories voiced by teachers and students” (p. 21). Although research into learning jazz is not anything new or different, using narrative inquiry to explore and share stories of learning in jazz is a relatively rare occurrence.

Although “all people tell stories” (Littlewood 2003, p. 257) and Clandinin (2006) noted “It is a commonplace to note that human beings both live and tell stories about their living” (p. 44), narrative researchers do more than merely tell stories. As Barrett and Stauffer (2009) pointed out, narrative researchers “are engaged in ‘living’ with and through stories in the research context” (p. 11). Narrative researchers live with stories through a systematic inquiry that includes interrogation of one’s beliefs and practices. This systematic inquiry includes arranging data chronologically to help share these stories for the reader (Bresler 2006), and the stories are told by the researcher to help “satisfy some tension generated by their beginnings” (Bresler 2006, p. 21). As Clandinin and Connelly (1990) stated:

Narrative is both phenomenon and method. Narrative names the structured quality of experience to be studied, and it names the pattern of inquiry for its study … Thus, we say that people by nature lead storied lives and tell stories of those lives, whereas narrative researchers describe such lives, collect and tell stories of them, and write narratives of experience” (Clandinin 2006, p. 2).

Thus, we define narrative inquiry as narrative = portraying events in chronological order to present “the structured quality of experience” (Clandinin and Connelly 1990, p. 2), and inquiry = through the process of engaging with participants in a systematic, methodological way (Barrett and Stauffer 2009) to establish personal connections with the reader. Narrative inquirers can help the reader to more fully understand the intricacies and subtle (and not so subtle) contexts of how jazz learning occurs. This helps with the “generative power” of these personal connections embodied in research to aid the reader with understanding how learning (should) occur (Bresler 2006, p. 21). Because an emphasis is currently placed upon reading music as the primary way to learn jazz in school ensembles and is thus presented in a two dimensional manner, we argue that the stories of exemplary learning in jazz in school music programs are neglected.

4 Parallels Between Narrative Inquiry and Learning Jazz

Bresler (2006) posited that “multi-sensory aspects of narrative and the role that musical ways of knowing can play in the generation and understanding of narrative” (p. 23). It is important to portray the learning that occurs in spaces in school music classrooms to aid with providing greater depth to how learning jazz occurs. Bresler (2006) noted that, as narrative researchers, “our interactions with musical narratives within musical languages and their visceral, temporal qualities sensitize us to important aspects of experiences that are not prominent in verbal and visual languages” (p. 24). Yet, making connections between text and music can be problematic. When addressing this issue, Bresler (2006) argued that Armstrong’s five components of processing artwork can aid with portraying musical events to the reader:

  1. 1.

    Noticing detail.

  2. 2.

    Seeing relations between parts.

  3. 3.

    Seizing the whole as the whole.

  4. 4.

    The lingering caress.

  5. 5.

    Mutual absorption.

Bresler added a sixth component to this list: communicating musical ideas to the reader that “are central to narrative inquiry” (p. 27). Through quality of writing and subsequent engagement with the reader, narrative researchers can portray aural and oral aspects of learning in jazz. Bresler noted that “As musicians conducting narrative inquiry we bring multi-sensory sensitivities in the process of listening to (and helping generate) the creation of narratives, and, as performers, to communicate research” (Bresler 2006, p. 24). It is the multi-sensory sensitivities used by narrative researchers that forms the basis for the similarities with these two approaches—narrative inquiry and learning jazz—where researchers can effectively portray learning in a three-dimensional manner. That is, engaging in narrative inquiry and learning jazz are both nonlinear processes. Rhizomatically, novices begin wherever they are and move in any direction; the novice narrative researcher or the novice jazz learner may have already been actively “doing”—just not aware of the nomenclature. As these two novice groups gather more experiences it is necessary to organize these experiences into what Barrett and Stauffer (2009) described as “resonant work” (p. 19).

5 In Search of Resonant Work

When students learn jazz similar to how they learn to perform in other music ensembles (e.g., concert band), an emphasis is placed on visual learning (Goodrich 2008). Without the context of all the musical elements that occur with learning jazz (e.g., groove, learning by ear) and the spaces where learning occurs (e.g., classrooms) learning in jazz is two-dimensional. Using narrative inquiry to portray the spaces where students learn jazz helps present learning in a more three-dimensional manner. The essential pedagogy of jazz is that of engaging in the process of transcription—hearing, processing, digesting someone else’s work, and incorporating an understanding of it into one’s own creative production.

To us, this process looks like narrative inquiry, where one investigates learning out of time, place, and space and synthesizes this information for the reader to understand how learning occurred in a particular context. A parallel with learning includes transcribing solos, such as a Miles Davis solo from 1959: When performing the solo the learner does not share with an audience a note-for-note re-enactment, but rather a synthesized version that values both the original voice (e.g., Miles Davis) and the modern voice (e.g., the learner). Through performing jazz, the learner wants to bring to life the ideas and richness of this other time—this one time—in the present. There is a certain amount of trustworthiness that comes out of a jazz musician who constructs their own individual voice steeped in the voices of the past—although being too faithful can result in a experience that feels flat to both the music maker and the audience. When portraying voices in jazz, there is also the risk of trying to use someone else’s voice as one’s own, one that both silences the present (and all the time between then and the present) and gives over totally creativity to some distant time and place.

In narrative inquiry, then, this idea is truthfulness. Does the story ring true? Does it present information beyond a direct transcription? When investigating something that happened, a primary goal is to not present a transcript (two dimensional) but a synthesized original story that becomes something new and meaningful and engaging (three dimensional).

One way narrative inquirers can help to portray three-dimensional learning in jazz is with the concept of resonance. Barrett and Stauffer (2009) maintained that “Narrative seeks communication beyond the immediate or surface meanings” and these meanings include resonant work that they identify as having “four qualities” that include “respectful, responsible, rigorous, and resilient” (p. 20). However, when reading this quote again and replacing the term narrative with jazz, the parallel becomes clear—that meaningful work in both narrative inquiry and jazz share similar characteristics. For example:

Respectful

In narrative inquiry, researchers need to respect the participants and their experiences and stories, and through systematic investigation portray these experiences to the reader. In jazz, learners need to respect the traditions and the artists they learn from and through a systematic approach to learning they can learn how to create musical improvisations in a manner that respects the voices of those they learn from.

Responsible

In narrative inquiry, researchers maintain a level of ownership to one’s work, that includes its processes and outcomes. With learning in jazz, learners also maintain a level of ownership when performing the music, whether it is in concert with bandmates and audiences or when they are practicing the music on their own.

Rigorous

With both narrative inquiry and learning jazz, how can audiences trust the work? The intention of the work matters that includes the process used to generate the work, and the recursiveness of the person who creates the work all matter with the outcome, whether it is literary or musical.

Resilient

How does work respond to pressure? The pressures of elapsed time, the impact of others engaging with the music or research? In a community of practitioners, in either jazz or narrative inquiry, resonant work is that which can continue to be of value, in a variety of forms.

In being mindful of resonance, researchers can highlight jazz learning that occurs in the spaces of school music classrooms. Bresler (2006) drew an analogy between jazz improvisation and narrative inquiry to highlight the importance of being open to all possibilities when studying participants in their natural setting. Although Bresler used the main tenets of improvisation, or the “disciplined, knowledgeable, and highly attentive response to an emerging reality” (p. 32) as an analogy for conducting narrative inquiry, narrative researchers can literally aid with portraying the voices in jazz to help more fully present how jazz is learned in lived spaces. This, in turn, can help music teachers with providing a more holistic way of teaching students how to play jazz.

6 Bringing the Reader into the Spaces Where Learning Jazz Occurs

Narrative inquirers explore multiple perspectives about the various experiences of what occurs with the aural, oral, and physical voices underrepresented with the processes of learning in the space of jazz rehearsals. These can also include nonmusical elements that help to present a three dimensional portrait of how learning occurs in jazz. These less desirable elements may include reading how the teacher struggles with classroom management, peer pressure and sarcasm when students mentor each other, or the pressures for preparing the jazz ensemble for an upcoming performance (Goodrich 2007; Kelly 2013). As narrative researchers, it is important to tell these types of stories about learning jazz, including the less desirable aspects, to provide a holistic portrayal of how students can learn to develop various jazz voices. To illustrate how narrative inquiry can provide insights into the various ways of learning in jazz, we present examples from our own research to portray how learning jazz goes beyond merely reading music, or what we refer to as two-dimensional learning.

The reader can learn about nonmusical voices with learning including tense interactions and classroom management:

In a fall rehearsal, Kayla and a couple of the saxophone players discussed articulations with each other and Huggins shouted out, “All right, you win! I can’t compete with your voices!” Kayla responded, “We’re trying to fix stuff’ to which Huggins replied, “So am I. If I have to keep competing with you, I’ll leave.” Huggins was adamant about silence in the rehearsals, but still allowed some talking for peer mentoring purposes. Band members, including Julia, also helped to keep talking to a minimum, a form of social mentoring, by saying, “Shut up!” if people were talking during rehearsal. (Goodrich 2007, p. 104)

This example illustrates verbal mentoring among the students, and the reader is brought into a particular snapshot of learning. Narrative inquiry provides a heightened sense of truthfulness, and can help connect the reader to learning in such a way that they are more empathetic to what Bresler (2006) referred to as lived experience. Lived experiences in school music programs are not always positive, and this example provides a conduit for helping the reader to become immersed in a more three dimensional portrait of the interactions between these students and their teacher.

Through narrative inquiry, the role of the teacher in guiding jazz learning can also be explored. In this next example, the teacher established connections to the aural ways of learning in the historic jazz culture via guided listening:

Hutchinson continues, “Get out ‘88 Basie Street.’ I am going to play the recording for you. We’re going to listen to the Basie band play this again. Listen for where they place their eighth notes in the groove. They swing better than anyone else.” Students quickly pull the song out of their folders and listen to the recording. While the music pipes through the sound system the drummer “air drums” to the song. Within a few measures the entire band is fingering along, mimicking the Basie band. (Goodrich 2008, p. 175)

In this example, the reader is acquainted with a more holistic understanding of the process of shared musical experiences between the participants as they are brought into the world of the lived experiences of these participants as the teacher guides them through the process of developing their voices via listening to historical voices.

Recently, narrative inquiry in jazz has evolved from portraying lived experiences in a particular setting(s) to include a mosaic of observations, interviews, and personal experiences from different learning situations to create fictionalized accounts based upon real experiences. The following vignette portrays a rehearsal from the point of view of the reader watching an unprepared student and how the teacher responds to this student:

But as the first concert approached, the tone of the rehearsals changed. They were more intense. There was less talking in between songs, less chatter. Rosa stopped the band often, correcting an ending here or a specific attack there. Ben practiced his music outside of rehearsal. But he also had his lesson material from Paul, school band music, Spanish homework, Honors English assignments, and midterms. Two weeks before the concerts he just had not had the time (he told himself) to get around to working on the second tenor part for this version of “Caravan.”

Rosa started the tune at the listed tempo, way faster than Ben had practiced. It had some fast parts, it shifted time feels, and this super-fast bebop lick at the beginning and end. The first time through the chart he miscounted a quarter note on beat two and came in late. The second time, he corrected the quarter note, but missed the articulations in the second measure. Rosa looked at him. He could feel it. Just out of the corner of her eyes, not really acknowledging his mistake, but letting him know she was listening.

“Okay cats, one more time. Focus! Move your air! Get those ears big!”

In the sixth measure, in the middle of bebop run, Ben miscounted again. Rosa stopped the group. She breathed in slowly and loudly through her nose.

“Benjamin, what the hell?”

Nobody called him “Benjamin.” Not his mom. Nobody. Ever. It was his name, but the only person to ever call him that, EVER, was Rosa.

Seriously, dude, what the hell are you doing?”

It was silent.

Ben imagined the curly mop of hair on top of his slowly shrinking head. He could do nothing but clench his jaw. And sweat.

She looked through him and the rest of the band looked away. The moment would not un-stick. Rosa walked over to the rhythm section. She pulled her gaze from Ben and shot it at the faces of the rhythm section. They looked at her, drawn in, now accomplices in this massacre.

“You know that Benjamin over there thinks he’s better than you?” she said to the rhythm section, with lilt of sarcasm. The drummer smirked.

“No really, Joseph. Benjamin, sitting right there,” she pointed, turning her head to the side, “right over there. He thinks he is better than you.” She moved her finger and jabbed it into the direction of the drummer.

NO I DON’T – NO I DON’T – NO I DON’T please please please just move on move on please please please this sucks come on please please please I don’t …

“No really. ALL OF YOU. Benjamin just thinks he can ‘wing it’ in rehearsal.

That he can go home and play Farmville or whatever and not practice. That he is so much better than all of you that he can just have the music flow right out of him.”

She was just getting wound up, walking around the band. When she got behind the trumpets she called out, “Benjamin thinks he is soooooooooooooo good that he can ‘fake it.’ While you all are working your asses off, he can just slouch in here and play it down.”

Instead of looking away, all of the band now followed her as she paced. She finally got back around to the front of the group. “Benjamin, you MUST think you are better than everyone. Your time is sooooooooooo important that you can’t bother to learn your part. That YOUR time is sooooooooo important that you can WASTE ALL OF OURS with your awful playing!”

Now everyone was looking down, the volume having pushed all of their eyes to the floor. She let seconds tick by, each beat moving her closer to the grand finale.

And in a sweet whisper, leaning over Ben’s stand, “You are not better than anyone in this room. You are not more important than anyone in this room. This is rehearsal time, not practice time. Rehearse here. Practice at home. Or stay home.”

He could not unclench his jaw. But he locked her eyes. I am busy. I do not think I am better. I am better than this. I know it. I KNOW IT. IT WAS JUST SOME MISTAKES.

JUST A FEW. WHY ARE YOU BEING SO AWFUL!?

You do not wasteourtime. Learn your shit. Pretty please. Learn it.” She turned around. Grabbed her water bottle off the chair and took a long gulp. She breathed in slowly and loudly through her nose (Kelly 2013, pp. 136–138).

In this vignette Ben and Rosa are fictional characters created from several participants, based upon extensive data collection with interviews and observations. This view represents aural, oral, physical, and interactive voices and includes moments of tension; those explosive times when a student might have a musical and personal break-through or might quit. Through narrative inquiry, the frenzied pace with concert preparation at a hectic time of year is presented for the reader, who gains a sense of the frantic nature and frustrations within this rehearsal. Kelly (2013) also portrays the balance a student tries to achieve between the pulling of different responsibilities, the vocabulary of a jazz rehearsal, the tactics employed in jazz rehearsals, and the feelings of someone under pressure to perform. The reader is brought into the classroom as if present at the rehearsal. This vignette is a fictional account, but through multiple lenses a composite emerges, where spaces and ideas take root.

7 Looking Forward

With narrative inquiry, researchers can offer the reader the varied three dimensional aspects of the spaces where learning jazz occurs. Portraying learning in these spaces provides insights into learning jazz that involves aural, oral, and physical interactions to provide a more in-depth portrait, or what Bresler (2006) referred to as communication of musical ideas of how students learn jazz. Although researchers in jazz, including ourselves, have argued for more studies in which researchers investigate exemplary practices with how learning occurs (e.g., Ake 2010; Goodrich 2016; Kelly 2013; Leavell 1996), we urge caution with our ideas in this chapter. We argued that with narrative inquiry researchers can present more holistic stories of spaces of learning that go beyond current jazz learning practices that are two-dimensional. Yet, our argument presents a few issues, which if not taken under consideration may become problematic as more researchers study the spaces where learning jazz occurs.

One of the first issues to consider includes the qualifications of a narrative researcher in jazz. Does a researcher have to be at the same level of musicianship or performance level, or possibly at a higher level, than the participants in the study to understand and portray jazz learning?

Another question that arises is, who will read jazz narratives and how can the stories ultimately be of use in the spaces where learning jazz occurs? Bowman (2006) asked whether the music education profession is really “capable of absorbing what narrative inquiry has to offer” (p. 12). We believe that narrative inquiry can provide an accessible medium for elevating the level of learning in jazz. For example, music teacher educators who disseminate research based in narrative inquiry can use these stories to inform their teaching of preservice music teachers. Researchers who use narrative inquiry could also publish stories from their research in practitioner journals. The learning of jazz in the spaces of school music classrooms could be presented in an accessible format so teachers become more engaged with perceived space, conceived space, and lived space portrayed in writing (Lefebvre 1991). In turn, this can provide a more in-depth and holistic portrayal of how jazz learning occurs.

Although we argued that presenting stories of how learning jazz occurs presents a more three-dimensional approach to jazz education, we urge researchers to maintain the individuality of each story presented within the context of the space of each learning situation. Otherwise, the portrayal of spaces of learning in jazz could become static or commercialized when generalizations are made. Or, as Bowman (2006) stated, “reduce narrative to a recipe in order to … make it fit into our prevailing notions of professional knowledge” (p. 12). Yet, exploring the spaces where learning in jazz occurs with narrative inquiry can “open up new possibilities for action. Hearing and telling new stories” and can contribute to “changing habits” in the profession (Bowman 2006, p. 14). We argue that the current two-dimensional habits of jazz education need to be changed and narrative inquiry is a platform for accomplishing this endeavor.

As we ponder narrative inquiry, we consider Bowman’s (2006) claim that “narrative inquiry is not … the answer to all questions asked and unasked” (p. 14). We realize it is but one of the ways to elevate understanding of how jazz learning occurs, yet given the parallels between learning in jazz and narrative inquiry we feel that it is one of the most systematic and informative ways for a researcher to convey the multiple spaces where jazz learning occurs. Particularly when writing about the lived moments in learning such as classroom interactions, the three-dimensional nature of narrative inquiry provides a platform for readers to ponder what else can be achieved with jazz learning. This pondering not only includes oral stories, but in-depth telling of how aural learning occurs in jazz. The reader can then use these stories and continue to share them, digest them, and even evolve them to work in their own spaces where they teach. Stories of learning in jazz via the medium of narrative inquiry become a platform for the process of learning, not the product that is present in the published (visual) jazz materials. Thus, through this process not only will voices that are seldom heard in learning jazz be brought to the forefront, but can now be heard loud and clear.