Ramsey came to Penn in 1998, and released his book, Race Music: Black Cultures From Be-Bop to Hip-Hop (University of California Press), a few years later. Finding he fit in well with Philly's musical culture, always very comfortable with the mix of jazz and R B styles, and with the cushion of tenure beneath him, he has now combined the two aspects of his musical life in his band, Dr. Guy's MusiQology, which will close out his American Avant Garde series at Penn on Wednesday.
Listening to Dr. Guy's soon-to-be-released CD, Y the Q?, the "avant-garde" tag seems questionable.
Ramsey's music would sound far more familiar to regular listeners of smooth jazz or R B stations than followers of free jazz or experimental music. But Ramsey recognizes a distinction.
"It's true, people think about avant-garde as a term that correlates with specific musical techniques," he says.
"Atonalism, non-isometric rhythms, free-form music where the listener perhaps doesn't know where the emotional focal point is, what they're supposed to be listening to as the narrative thread of the piece. But then there's this other notion of avant-garde that means 'the new.'"
It's that sense of "the new" that Ramsey targets.
He attempts to keep on top of current trends in the pop music market, picking up the new Justin Timberlake or Christina Aguilera CDs as they're released and promoted in the popular press.
"While I find that music somewhat derivative, in the sense that it sounds like '80s pop and Prince," he explains, "it's being marketed as avant-garde. It's being marketed as new music.
So while I would call the music on the Y the Q? CD very non-avant-garde in the sense of musical techniques, it is a new CD that's coming out, and it does represent my concept of where I am musically right now."
The music he's written for this CD also ties into his Penn classroom in a very direct way: It was while teaching an American music history course that Ramsey made a key discovery.
"The history of American music is as much about the entrepreneurs and the growing infrastructure of the American music industry as it is about specific musicians. So you really can't get the real story if you're just studying musicians and composers. The story of this music is about the P.
T. Barnums and the music publishers and those people who decided that they could create a desire for what it is they had to offer in the hearts of audiences. So I formed a band and I tried to follow the model of some of these 19th-century entrepreneurs with my group.
"
Essentially, Ramsey has attempted to craft music based on his own studies of popular taste. While he says his live performances may lean toward slightly edgier or more jazz-oriented material, the CD was created with mass appeal in mind. "I wanted all of the tunes to be hummable by the time they ended.
I wanted the listener to leave with a concrete idea about what the emotional focal point of each tune was supposed to be. I wanted them to be able to appreciate the craft surrounding simple ideas. I wanted them to feel the soul in it.
I guess the downside of that is that there will be people, especially pure jazzheads, who might think that that's everything they don't like about a piece of music. But I had to be willing to risk that."
Ramsey uses the band as a teaching tool, bringing it literally into the classroom at times and tying themes from his courses into his concert series.
But he credits his students with teaching him as well, especially about the new business model that online distribution and Internet marketing provide.
"My dream once was to walk into Tower Records and see one of my CDs," he laughs. "Looks like I gotta get another dream.
" Dr. Guy's MusiQology plays Wed., Nov.
29, 6:30 p.m., free, Rose Recital Hall (Room 419), Fisher-Bennett Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 34th and Walnut sts.
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