ABSTRACT
Inspired by the intersection of autoethnographic reflexivity and music found in the volume Music Autoethnographies, we present this chapter in the form of a collaborative autoethnographic narrative using a melange of Lưu Quang Minh's life stories, self-reflection, and contextualized interventions to lay out the personal experiences and analytical revisits behind the materialization of jazz at the conservatoire. This autoethnographical account, we hope, translates the “intimate involvement, engagement, and embodied participation” of extraordinary individuals who ardently planned and fought for jazz to be taught in the conservatoire. We show how Vietnamese jazz educators navigated between an entrenched conception at the conservatoire of Western classical music as the only worthy, proper mainstream art form and perception of light music—which included jazz—as mere entertainment music for the masses. We suggest that by virtue of being formally included as a music discipline in the conservatoire, jazz acquired the status of a respected musical high art form in socialist Vietnam. By being a part of the conservatoire, jazz in Vietnam is ultimately expected to develop its own distinct sound amid the foundation of Vietnam's diverse indigenous soundscape.
