By Eszter Molnár, Hungary
I was excited about Wednesday, 12 June and was looking forward to both the morning sessions and the afternoon community service. To start our day about jazz, I woke and searched on Youtube for some jazz music, and I also posted the link to it on our WhatsApp group. Some people liked it while others said it was more like a supermarket background music.
In the first session we met Prof. Jason Robinson, Associate Professor of Music, Black Studies, Film and Media, Amherst College. Professor Robinson started his speech by emphasizing that we should only trust about half of what we hear from a jazz musician and that no music is innocent, that it in fact it all comes from our ancestors. In his case he explained that it was not his own family he wanted to refer to but the number of professors and great teachers he learned from.
We learned that jazz music is America’s classical music, and it really goes alongside the blues in which people are able to express all their emotions, fears, dreams and inspirations. Historians say jazz originates from New Orleans from the 1900 but became the popular music in America from the 1920s. Its history dates back to much earlier and is tied to African-American roots. The 1930s and 40s are referred to as the swing era when jazz was still popular and still continued to be present. With the immigration of people within the country and the appearance of record studios the Southern black culture and music spread through the country.
As Mr. Paterson said, time goes quick when we sing; we realized that as our session came to its end. Asking some of my friends in the group we all agreed that we really liked listening to him playing music on his saxophone, an original instrument from the 30s and the short video clips from the internet. Before leaving the room I realized that there were some Hungarian sentences on the slide, so I asked him about that. I found out his band, Growler, is going to visit Budapest in late July for a concert and a recording in a studio.
After a short break, our second lecturer, Prof. Martha Umphrey, Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Political Thought, Amherst College, gave a lecture on The Court and Social Context in Civil Rights History. This evening when I was talking to my colleagues, we agreed that Prof. Martha Unpherey’s lecture was where we felt that what we had learned about the US Constitution during the SUSI program was starting to become clear now. Her lecture was very well structured as she pointed out the importance of a limited government, the importance and differences of the state and the federal government. She also showed that rights are attached to individuals and not to groups as she explained how the Supreme Court operates. I gained a better understanding of what equality law and privacy law mean and how complicated law is in general. I wish we had more time to look into more cases to see what rights LGBTQ people have.
After a quick lunch we did voluntary work at Not Bread Alone, a soup kitchen. I was looking forward to experiencing voluntary work, as this kind of work is a rare phenomena in my own country. Passing on the meaning of it to my students is only possible once I experience it. Community work, as it happens, is common in the US. At Not Bread Alone we were welcomed by Bob who assigned us our tasks for the afternoon. To my surprise, he held two Hungarian recipes in his hand and asked me to prepare those with 3 people from our group. I was both happy and shocked when I heard the tasks, but not because I did not know how to do it, rather, I was just not well prepared to bake one of the most difficult cookies from my home country, and I think the other recipe was really complicated.
Aziz, Jean-Luc and Magdalena helped me follow the instructions of the recipes. Both the soup and the cookie were tasty. The people who served them were grateful for our efforts, which made all of us very happy. It was a great team building opportunity as well. It is not only the Amherst community that gained from our work, but we all did as well, slowly growing into a little community ourselves. I would like to thank you for the opportunity and I am looking forward to my next task and opportunity.
All opinions expressed by the program participants are their own and do not represent nor reflect official views from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, or of the Institute for Training and Development, Inc.