Dylan Holmes

300501066
MUSC125
Journal 6

Fitting the Part

A Transcendent Issue

The temptation to view all experience through a social justice leans is a tempting choice
today. Despite this, I found reading Monson’s “Fitting the part” a very enlightening and enjoyable
read that poignantly brought to light social issues of lived experience that would be... frustrating to say
the least. I particularly liked the ‘matter-of-fact’ tone that didn’t belabour the point. In relation to an
experience that I have had at a jazz performance in Wellington, maybe it is my sceptical nature, but I
didn’t seem to find gender or sexuality a frontline issue or even much of a subordinate one. I watched
a Third Eye presents: “Arthur Street Loft Orchestra” performance of works by jazz performance
students. The ensemble was comprised of men and women with people of heterogeneous sexuality.
While I can’t speak to the ‘hang chats’ or ‘locker-room talk’ to borrow a phrase, the outward
perception of the ensemble was one where the music came first and everything else didn’t matter.
Monson talks about how the stereotyped instruments of her gender meant that she was
imposing on a man’s world in trying to become a successful trumpeter. That had she become a singer,
she may have been fawned over as one of the character’s in her recount were. While the recollection
of Monson’s lived experience is truthful and eye-opening, it is done in almost soliloquist style.
Meaning that my interpretation of events at a concert is not going to capture the resolution of detail
that is captured in her story. I can only see the world through my own eyes and while cognizant of the
issues heretofore discussed, I fail to see its rearing head loom.
I feel also that the jazz environment in Wellington is enigmatic in ways. It is a product of a
liberalised city where jazz has been a recent bootstrapped addition to the city’s culture. This means
that jazz could turn over a new leaf, so to speak, and the rules could be moulded to whatever the city’s
culture demanded. In making this assertion, my view of jazz in Wellington is that music does come
first, and everything else doesn’t matter. I am prepared to accept naivety, potentially even ignorance,
on this interpretation of events and concede that people will have had discriminatory experiences on
their journey. My personal take is that everyone has something to be discriminated over and that while
it seems gender and sexuality are easy targets, the point of discrimination is to be exclusive for
exclusion’s sake and not because of the flavour of discrimination being used. My more nihilistic
premonition is that, while discrimination based on gender and sexuality will die out as times move
forward, that unfortunately: the King is dead, long live the King. Once the hydra’s head is cut, seven
more grow in its place and resultantly the future stories of the Monson’s of the world will still be
entitled “Fitting the Part”, but for some other reason.