Music as an art form evokes a powerful and immediate emotional response in the brain.
Music organizes memory and interpersonal relationships as structural tools for
creating and comprehending meaning from human experience.
Roy Tietze, Ph. D, always loved music, and in 2002, he created a course at Marymount Manhattan College that combines his interests in psychology and music, called, “The Blues, Jazz and American Identity”, which he has been teaching ever since.
He has published articles on the topic over the years, and recently had a book published in January 2020, entitled “Blues, Jazz and American Identity: A Workbook in Listening and Dialogue.”
A major goal of his course has been to attract new listeners to our wonderful music, and include the mostly unacknowledged contributions of African-Americans and other people of color.
He has also been struck by the spread and growing importance of individual identity in our multicultural world.
He would now like to share the ideas in his course with a broader audience and give everyone the opportunity to purchase his workbook.
Barbara, November, 2020:
“Dr. Tietze’s scholarly but easy-to-read book is especially relevant today as we stop and reflect on our society and what it means to be American. Jazz and the Blues form an integral part of our collective American past and our overall national identity. They speak on behalf of social justice and fair treatment. Today as institutions and organizations vow to “do better” in diversifying their workforces and examining their roles in perpetuating white privilege, this insightful book deepens our understanding of the forces at work in our society both past and present. I highly recommend it for anyone seeking to “do better.“