Profile of John Calloway, professional Latin jazz musician by night, dedicated teacher at one of San Francisco's low-income schools by day

San Francisco native John Calloway is a nationally recognized jazz flutist, Latin percussionist and music arranger. He has bachelors and masters degrees in music, and is currently working on a PH.D in education from the University of San Francisco. In June he released his new CD, "The Code," a sparkling collection of original Afro-Cuban and salsa jazz featuring the hottest Latin players in the Bay Area, many of whom Calloway has gigged with for decades.

He copes with the tough economics of today’s professional jazz musician by teaching music in the City’s elementary schools, and at San Francisco State. His elementary students are among San Francisco’s poorest, and he sees the reality of a system in which they will try to function, and perhaps fail.

BM: In the liner notes to your new CD you say "I dedicate this to the children of Daniel Webster Elementary School. Your perseverance and dignity inspires us all."

JC: Yeah, that’s one of my schools. Daniel Webster is a school that’s on that hill over there – Potrero Hill. It is pretty much an all-black school, with some Hispanic bilingual and Asian bilingual, and no white kids. In a neighborhood that’s predominantly white. It’s one of the better neighborhoods in San Francisco - the public school at the center of two-million-dollar homes. Everybody who has kids there either sends them to a private school called Live Oak or they put ‘em on a bus to an alternative school, an open enrollment school somewhere in the district. Well, why aren’t the African-American parents doing that?

BM: You mean the private schools?

JC: No, the better public schools. Most of them could probably walk into any of the schools on the eastern side of town, based on previous formulas of getting a racial balance. The African-American students live in the projects over there [on the south side of Potrero Hill], but a lot of them choose not to do it because the parents themselves aren’t educated. There’s issues with not buying into the system.

There’s an area outside the fence with a bus zone for the kids going to the better schools. I used to be appalled that the parents of those kids would just look the other way, they wouldn’t even look through the fence. I mean, this is apartheid.

BM: How does knowing what you know affect you?

JC: I’ve been there sixteen years and I just realized - my stance is: I’m not leaving. It just hit me. There’s two or three other teachers who have been there that long.

We don’t seem to understand how other people feel. For me that school is a symbol of us not wanting to wake up that there’s a whole other world and that there’s another generation of children that’s essentially lost.

BM: What’s your role at the school?

JC: I’m just a straight music teacher – I teach grades three, four, and five. I teach beginning woodwinds, and I teach general music.

BM: You do other teaching, for example at San Francisco State?

JC: Yeah, I teach a class at State, sometimes two, Latin ensemble. We kick butt. And I taught at Laney in Oakland for awhile, that was a sweet gig. I do workshops here and there, like JazzSchool or Stanford Workshop.

But I’m pretty much burned… I’m busy from early morning ‘til late at night, every day.

BM: Do you need the teaching jobs to make ends meet, and supplement the music gigs? I would think the teaching gives you health insurance, for example.

JC: The teaching gigs get you much more money… I kid you not, I make about two thirds less playing music.

BM: How do you balance the teaching with playing in your music sandbox?

JC: They kind of go hand-in-hand, and I don’t think I could be just one or the other. I think I’d be really stifled being just a teacher without any other outlet – a lot of music teachers will tell you that. By the same token, there’s also that sense of community doing gigs. That’s why I like Jazz Camp, I mean it’s only once a year but it has a sense of community.

That’s one of things I try to show at Daniel Webster, that I’m not the kind to just walk in and walk out. We’re not really vested in that community.

BM: It’s surprising how little community we really have nowadays - how alienating the basic physical structures of our society are, the way the suburbs are spread out, how few people get together anymore.

JC: That’s what I think is great about small towns, that they have a sense of community. What we’ve seen more and more since the end of the war is gated communities, communities with fences...

BM: …and invisible barriers of the dollar signs. You have to have the money for a car to even get to a gated community, and now with the gentrification of San Francisco you can’t be here if you’re poor.

JC: The sense of community of teaching, and being part of seeing kids grow up, being more than a teacher… We don’t have enough people of color who are teachers, but that could make a difference. It becomes more of an issue of community.

BM: The community garden across the street from your apartment has a nice vibe, like sacred space. You quote Luis Rodriguez in your liner notes: "Art opens up a sacred space." Have you been into spirituality and has it affected your music?

JC: Not really, I kind of just went from being a Catholic to pretty much being an agnostic or atheist. But I think what music does is open up a way for me to share some kind of deeper connection with people. Because for somebody who can’t really make a leap of faith, that’s the closest I can get.

BM: The liner notes call your title tune ["The Code"] a comment on the brotherhood and humanity shared by musicians. What is it like to be at the center of that?

JC: I was really struggling with what that CD is all about, and I’m still struggling. You know, I’ve seen a lot of my friends pass on. I mean you’ve been playing with these guys for thirty years… and what could be bigger than self-expression? Music brings out all this emotion in us. What else can bring out emotion like that? That’s why they used to think it was the language of the gods.

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John Calloway appears Sunday July 29th with the John Santos Quintet at the North Beach Jazz Festival, and Saturday August 11th at 3pm with his own band at the San Jose Jazz Festival. More information about John Calloway’s bio, recordings and performances can be found at www.johncalloway.com.