By Carla Carlton

Saxophonist Dave Clark started teaching at Bellarmine part-time in 2001 and became a fulltime member of the Music Department in 2008. Now head of the Jazz Studies program, he teaches saxophone, jazz harmony, jazz history, and improvisation and directs the university’s Nouveau Gumbo ensemble. He is a native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who earned degrees in music and jazz performance from the University of Louisville after transferring from  Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas and is currently working on a Ph.D. in Leadership in Higher Education at Bellarmine, focusing on jazz as a vehicle for teaching social justice issues. “Music is twofold,” he says. “It's truth. And the truth can sometimes be difficult. But it's also healing. And that's the beautiful part.” 

How did you get involved in music? 

The first musical experience that I really can remember was at New Hope CME Church in Pine Bluff. The choir was singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus. And I never will forget—I don't know if I just had not been paying attention before, or if I was finally at the age where I could really be aware—how the music was making me feel. And it wasn't just the way it made me feel, it was the way it made everybody in the room feel. And I thought that feeling was the greatest thing that I had ever experienced in my entire life.  

Do you know how old you were? 

I had to be maybe first grade. I remember I teared up, and I looked up at my mom because the feeling was just so deeply compelling, and I didn't really know what to do with it. And my mom just held me close and said, “It’s OK, baby, it’s OK.” So even when I play now, I'm still trying to make it feel like it felt that day in New Hope CME Church. 

How does jazz relate to social justice? 

The way we look at jazz now is kind of this very elegant, sophisticated music where people sit around in ascots with pipes and clink glasses as they discuss the high philosophical things of the of the day. But it started out as this very kind of communal dance, social music. And the thing that's important is that when jazz really kind of starts to get developed in the early 1900s, we're coming at a time where minstrelsy has been the main form of American entertainment for so long. So part of what jazz is doing is refuting this minstrel idea that that's what it's like to be a Black American. You had great players like Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bichet and Jelly Roll Morton, who were really geniuses and virtuosos on the instrument and carried themselves in a certain kind of way. And then jazz becomes the social dance music of the day. The people dancing to it were the young people who were trying to rebel against “the establishment,” so to speak. Jazz has a long history of that. And jazz musicians really have always looked at jazz as a vehicle not only to entertain, but to really kind of speak truth and find a certain sense of their identity.  

Has that been your experience?  

Besides my parents, studying jazz has been the greatest teacher of my life. It teaches you so many things. I mean, the whole idea of jazz also is like this great idea of what it is to really be an American, right? As Americans, we of course, love our individual rights. But we live in a democracy. And the thing about jazz is, everything that I'm playing in the ensemble depends on what somebody else is playing. And regardless of what their background is, or what their views are, when we’re playing that music, we have to make it work together. When it’s my time to solo, I get to be “Mr. Great Individual.” But when I'm not soloing, my job is to make everybody else that I'm playing with sound fantastic. That is a perfect picture in many respects to me of democracy. Because that's what democracy is supposed to be. Yeah, we can do everything that we want to do. But we also still have to have deep care for our brothers and our sisters. And if we don't do that, then the music can never get to the place it wants to be. And if we don't do that as people, our society certainly will not get to that place.

What’s your response to students who say, “I don’t get jazz”? 

When I talk about it in my classes, they’re like, ‘Oh, jazz—fuddy-duddy music.’ And then I play some Charlie Parker and they go, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool stuff.’  The important thing we do is try to introduce people, especially in the liberal arts environment, to the beauty and the message and the truth that is spoken in music, particularly jazz, and how it peels back the layers and helps us really understand and contextualize. So much of what I find with students now is that they don't have any context to really understand things and why things are so difficult now. We start talking about the beginnings of the blues. Jazz is an offshoot in many ways of the blues, but the blues are a result of sharecropping. They don't realize that stuff happened. Sharecropping leads to Black Code laws, which leads to Jim Crow laws. Music gives us the gateway into the way a lot of things were structured. And even if you don't think you like the blues, you love the blues, because so many songs are blues-related, either through form or through the vernacular. And once we meet at the place that we all have some love, then we can say, “Well, let's look at some places where we haven't been so lucky. And  let's try to get more love in those places.” Music is such a fantastic vehicle to look at some of these issues that are difficult to talk about, at a place that we have some common ground and some goodwill. 

"The important thing we do is try to introduce people, especially in the liberal arts environment, to the beauty and the message and the truth that is spoken in music, particularly jazz"

Dave Clark’s Top 3 Jazz Artists 

Charlie Parker. My first experience with jazz was not good. I was walking in the hall at Ouachita Baptist University and the band director said, “You need to be in jazz band.” And I had never played jazz in my life. So I showed up to jazz band, and it came to the spot for a solo in the song, and I had no idea what to do. I said, “I'm gonna quit if you don’t give me some kind of help.” He gave me a recording of Charlie Parker. And I remember going back to my dorm room and sticking that record on, and it was like it was a balm for my entire soul. Charlie Parker's music just went straight to my bone marrow. And I was like, OK, I want to figure out how to do this. 

Duke Ellington. I read something once that said, “Duke Ellington didn't just demand respect; he commanded it.” It was how he decided to carry himself and live his life. And while he may not have always come directly from a kind of social-justice framework, when they used to ask him, “What kind of music do you play,” he would always simply say, “The music of my people.”  

Mahalia Jackson. That's gonna sound crazy because she’s not really even a jazz musician. But in the same way that the church service at Pine Bluff made me feel, I am immensely influenced by Mahalia Jackson because there's such deep authenticity in the way that she sings. Alto saxophone is my main instrument, and her voice is an alto voice. And so much of my time has been spent trying to get the kind of timbre and feeling inside of Mahalia Jackson’s voice because it is a healing balm, right? There’s truth in it, but it makes us better. I mean, you know, sometimes healing is like, you have drastic surgery. Right? And other times you get an IV—it’s a little stick and a slow drip. But after a few hours, you all of a sudden start to feel better. And sometimes I think that that's how justice works, too. Sometimes it's a slow drip, and you may not see it immediately. But you look back five years later and go, we are in a much better place now. And we need all of them. We need a drastic surgery. But we also need a slow drip.