By now, Rodney Whitaker has had a few weeks to ponder his late-September induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He joins the ranks of artists, scholars, leaders and scientists like Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein.
But even for Michigan State University’s Jazz Studies director, a life-changing mentor for hundreds of young people and one of the top bassists in the world, it’s a lot to digest.
“I don’t think of myself as someone on that level,” he mused. “My passions are music and mentorship. If someone thinks those things are important, I’m really humbled by it. I’m just trying to do what I was put here to do.”
Whitaker not only joined one of the nation’s oldest learned societies; he performed at the ceremonies with his trio. The induction weekend in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Sept. 20 to 22 was a heady whirl, but it started with a setback.
The music Whitaker chose to play for the occasion is full of deeply expressive arco playing, or bowing, on the bass. However, shortly after arriving in Cambridge on Sept. 19 to rehearse with his trio, he found, to his dismay, that he’d lost one of his best bows in transit. He rushed to Studio Pangaro, an instrument repair shop on Prospect Street.
“I found a really good bow for $115,” he said.
This was no ordinary gig. Goodwin Liu, associate justice of the California Supreme Court and chair of the AAAS’ board of directors, invited Whitaker to perform at the Legacy Recognition Program induction ceremony on Sept. 20, the eve of his induction day. The ceremony recognized 40 outstanding Americans who didn’t become members during their lifetimes — most of them women or members of ethnic minorities — going all the way back to the academy’s founding in 1780.
The legacy honorees included author James Baldwin, environmentalist Rachel Carson and one of Whitaker’s lifelong heroes, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
“When I was 7, I read a book about Thurgood Marshall and decided I wanted to be a law professor,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker performed his own composition, “John Lewis.”
He named the yearning, soulful piece after the pianist of the Modern Jazz Quartet, but it turned out to be heavy enough for two John Lewises. Whitaker told attendees that after the murder of George Floyd, many listeners heard a deeper strain in the music, a cry for justice and reconciliation, and assumed it was written in honor of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon. He now considers the title to be a double dedication. Whitaker and his new bow, joined by drummer Neal Smith and pianist Kevin Harris of the Berklee College of Music, brought the house to a reverent hush.
“The audience went on the journey with us,” Whitaker said.
The academy’s Legacy Recognition Program parallels the nation’s larger reckoning with its long history of excluding minorities and women from the halls of power.
At the legacy ceremony, writer, historian and civil rights activist Paula J. Giddings enlisted Whitaker in helping the AAAS broaden its scope and diversity.
Whitaker said the academy impressed him with its commitment to “not just racial and cultural diversity but diversity of thought and vocation.”
This year’s regular class of inductees was larger than usual, 250 in all, including new members from 2021, 2022 and 2023 who hadn’t been able to attend in person because of the pandemic. Like most new inductees, Whitaker was nominated by two anonymous members last spring and admitted by a general vote. The class of 2024 stretches across 31 disciplines and categories, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, actor George Clooney, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and General Motors CEO Mary Barra.
Just sitting down for a Saturday morning breakfast prior to the induction ceremony was a heady experience.
“First of all, you go in and you see the names on the wall, all these people we know about through history, and you start to realize what this is,” Whitaker said. “I’m still just a kid from the east side of Detroit.”
The names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, poet Gwendolyn Brooks and composer Aaron Copland all caught his eye as he looked for his seat.
Whitaker was seated at a table loaded with scientists, including a molecular biologist and a specialist in RNA vaccines.
“We talked about heavy things like climate change and vaccines. They wanted to know my opinion as a non-scientist so they could communicate better with non-scientists,” he said. “And they’re listening to everything you say.”
He was surprised at how many of his fellow inductees either play or love music.
“Whatever they did, whether they were scientists or other things, they were all musicians,” he said. As he fielded dozens of questions on his background, musical education and career, he got very good at delivering a nutshell autobiography.
Most frequently, he was asked whether he ever foresaw receiving such an honor when he was young.
“The answer is no,” he said with a laugh. It’s not that young Whitaker wasn’t a lofty thinker. After his phase of wanting to be a lawyer, he joined every science club he could and imagined himself a future scientist.
When he was 13, he discovered jazz, and everything fell into place.
“That was it,” he said. “I always felt like I was walking around without my soundtrack before jazz. That was the missing thing. Music provided everything I needed. I could even be a professor.”
The AAAS is dedicated to bridging diverse disciplines, from astrophysics to visual arts, and that’s Whitaker’s sweet spot. He’s a musician first and foremost, but his worldview stretches well beyond music.
The lessons he imparts to his students encompass politics, geography, science, literature and many other disciplines.
As a kid, he would amaze fellow airline passengers by pointing out the geographical features below. He was fascinated by the “chain migration” of musicians like Louis Armstrong from New Orleans to Chicago to New York.
“It seems like I’m a bit insane, talking about all these things at once,” he said. “But I wanted to go all over the planet. In order to be successful at jazz, you have to think at a large level.”
Building the Jazz Studies program at MSU, he looked for teachers with similarly expansive minds.
“If you build a program, you have to get people who are thinking about other things, not just about music, to inspire the students,” he said.
The same thing applies to the students.
“The students from the program who make it big think in a more macro way, a big way,” he said. “They think about what has happened before, they think about being mentors, they know about the history of Detroit.”
After 24 years as director of Jazz Studies, Whitaker’s impact, both direct and through his academic progeny, is incalculable. Former MSU students like CBS “Late Show” bassist Endea Owens, saxophonist Diego Rivera, hip-hop producer Thaddeus Dixon, trumpeter and University of Michigan Assistant Professor Kris Johnson and many other alumni are teaching, performing, running jazz studies programs and otherwise fulfilling their role as force multipliers.
“My goals are simple,” Whitaker said. “To produce 1,000 mentors, each one of whom will in turn produce 1,000, and so on,” he said. “I see that as a simple task, but now, after this, I think it’s more important than I thought it was because I’m trying to use music to change the world.”
A lively dinner
As soon as Rodney Whitaker was elevated to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, City Pulse figured out a way to get him into trouble by asking him to pick five academy members he would invite to a dinner party.
He tried to keep it to five, but it seems that five is not a swinging meter, so he counted out to eight: Grant Hill, Atlanta Hawks co-owner and former pro basketball great; Goodwin Liu, associate justice of the California Supreme Court (“a great listener”); actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith of “The West Wing” (“for her soulfulness”); writer, historian and civil rights activist Paula J. Giddings (“insightful”); actor George Clooney, who was inducted this year along with Whitaker; cellist Yo-Yo Ma (“he pays attention to details”); and two jazz musicians: drummer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington (“she’s passionate”) and trumpeter-composer-educator Wynton Marsalis, whom Whitaker called “a storyteller, our modern-day Mark Twain.”
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