All the jazz about Owens
By Julie Rausch
 Craig Owens, left, with Brazilian musician Rapael Campanile. The two played together in Brazil this summer; Campanile will study bass at WSU this spring. |
Craig Owens, longtime WSU instructor of jazz guitar, has as many facets as the colors in the African hats he occasionally wears.
He sometimes wears a kufi and other ethnic styles not only because he likes the look, but also to oppose prejudicial stereotypes.
His decision to come to work in African attire happened a few years ago when there were three instances in one semester in which students used racist humor in his class.
"Previously I had thought it was pretty obvious to people where I was coming from by my attitude and interests that I was an advocate for the black culture, " says Owens.
"Dressing differently sent an outward signal, and it worked immediately."
Owens bonded with jazz while he was in his early teens, although he didn’t start playing guitar until he was in college.
"I had fallen in love with jazz early on in middle school," says Owens, who grew up in Hutchinson. "I had friends who played in stage bands and that music really captivated me."
Equally comfortable performing standard tunes, blues or fusion, it’s free jazz that gets Owens’ creative juices flowing.
"But it’s not free, not totally," Owens explains. "It’s just guided. But you don’t practice it either. It is free of some of the structures like chords or rhythms. You’re working for texture instead of some linear development."
Owens says the concepts are very modern and challenging.
"The music may not always be pretty, but the creative stuff carries all kinds of information," says Owens, "like the struggle for humanity, finding identities or establishing world peace and equality."
During a trip this summer to Rio Grande Do Sul in southern Brazil where Owens conducted three workshops, he had the opportunity to introduce improvisation through his impressions of street life in Brazil. Owens and bassist Rapael Campanile, whom he stayed with in Brazil, and two percussionists from the University of Passo Fundo recorded jazz spontaneously. Owens found his Brazilian musical partners to be enthusiastic absorbers of jazz.
"We live much more in a global culture than any of us realize, and we absorb these influences from other cultures to a much higher degree than we are often aware," Owens says. "Down there they would tell me ‘Oh, you play sort of like a Brazilian.’ Well, I’ve been listening to bossa nova for 30 years, since high school, and my dad listened to it and it’s been part of our environment. I didn’t think of it as Brazilian."
Campanile, 25, who teaches bass and guitar at a private music school in Passo Fundo, is now living in Wichita and preparing to study bass at WSU this spring. Already he’s bonding with the School of Music by sharing his Brazilian musical influence and playing with WSU’s salsa band LaBanda Hispanica.
Owens says this kind of interaction with students feeds his musical dimension.
"The students have always been a resource for me. A musician deals with things differently than a teacher, and, man, the things I have learned through teaching have been wonderful."
Owens has made five CDs with the Bodo Ensemble, which has included students and professionals evolving as players have come and gone. Owens and his ensemble are well known on Wichita’s music scene.
Another thing that inspires Owens’ music as well as influences the way he approaches life is his Baha’i faith. Baha’i teaches humanity is one single race and unification in one global society.
He and his wife Elizabeth met in a Baha’i group. They moved to Montserrat for several years where Owens made a living as a musician before moving to Wichita in 1984 to teach at WSU, earning a more steady living for his growing family. They have a daughter and three sons, who are musical, Owens says, but better rounded than he is.
Although Owens wishes more people appreciated the provocative music he likes to make, he can understand that general audiences prefer standard jazz tunes.
"Sure, they like it, and I get my money and go home," he says. "That’s the dichotomy between those two things. You’ve got to pick your battles, see your opening, and if it’s not there you wait and try to create opportunities for what you have a passion for."
In addition to teaching jazz guitar, jazz improvisation and styles of jazz, Owens teaches two courses on the history of American pop music.
"I’m very grateful for the opportunity to teach," says Owens. "I appreciate what the university setting has allowed me to do. I have the privilege of coming here every morning without any reservations or feeling of ‘Oh, what a drag this is going to be.’ Instead I get to come here and talk about Louis Armstrong.
"I get to come and listen to these young people learning to play jazz guitar. I’m grateful, man, there’s one job like this in the whole state, one person teaching jazz guitar at a university in Kansas, that’s me."
