Kolo Wamba:Music, Science, and Social Change

Dylan: Hey everyone, welcome to the second episode of Jazz for Equity’s interview series, where I talk with musicians, advocates, and educators about topics at the intersection of Jazz and social equity. As always, I’m your host, Dylan Rouvier, a sophomore at Leigh High School in San Jose, California and the founder of Jazz For Equity—an organization dedicated to bridging gaps between historically marginalized and underrepresented communities through the transformative power of music.

Kolo Wamba, Bassist, Educator, Nuclear Physicist, and Semiconductor Engineer

For this episode, I’m happy to introduce Dr. Kolo Wamba.

Dr. Kolo Wamba is an educator and technology professional with experience in the semiconductor equipment and radiation detector industries. Dr. Wamba's most recent professional role was that of tenured professor at Skyline College in San Bruno CA, where Dr. Wamba taught undergraduate physics, and on behalf of which participated in experimental nuclear physics research at the SLAC national accelerator laboratory in Menlo Park. Dr. Wamba holds a B.S. in Applied Physics from Columbia University in New York City, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, also in Applied Physics from Stanford University. Besides being an experimental nuclear physicist, Dr. Wamba has keen interests in jazz music and social justice, and is constantly on the lookout for places where these three domains intersect.

Welcome Dr. Kolo Wamba.

Kolo: Thank you, very glad to be here.

Dylan: Of course. One of my mentors and one of your colleagues informed me that the two of you played in a funk-based band at the Stanford COHO back in the late 90s. The group Freekanos, included both "techies" and "fuzzies" and undergraduate students and graduate students. I'll start by asking, what was your contribution to that band and where did your origins in music, and especially Jazz, begin? Childhood? At Columbia University, where you attended undergrad?

Kolo: Yeah, so this Freekanos group that we formed, you know, it's so long ago, you know, we're going back to, gosh, I think it would have been '98, '99, 2000, probably well before you were born, but yeah, so my friend, Tim'm, and I, we met— We actually met because we were both about to enroll in graduate school at Stanford. He was in the modern thought and literature program, I was going there to do applied physics. And what Stanford does, I'm not sure if they still do this, I'm pretty sure they probably do. What they do is when they admit a new cohort of graduate students, they actually invite them to come to the campus and sort of, you know, mix and mingle and meet each other, you know. And this happens, I think, about maybe three or four months before the actual fall quarter starts. And so this is where I first encountered Tim'm, and where we first encountered each other. And we hit it off right away. We were both moving from New York to come here to California for graduate school. We were in very different fields, but, but still, we sort of established early on that we are both interested in music. He is a writer and a poet. I don't do those things, but I appreciate that stuff a lot. And so we kind of hit it off. And so then once we got together, for graduate school, you know, and our we started in our respective graduate programs, you know, we continued to meet and interact and hang out, and then at some point, we had this idea of, hey, what if we formed a band, but, but I don't remember exactly how that that took shape. So my contribution you asked to this group was, I was the bass player, and also co-wrote some of the songs, and Tim'm did vocals, also wrote the songs and lyrics to the original songs. We did some covers and some originals and and we had a few other folks who, as you mentioned, were, some were undergrads, some were other graduate students. And, yeah, we were just this kind of group of diverse people from all around the world really. We had a Swedish guy, we had someone from Zimbabwe/Germany, I think, you know, and all from very different backgrounds, studying different things, but we all came together with this shared appreciation for making music together. So you asked, what were my origins, musically? So I actually, didn't start off on bass. I picked up the upright bass as an undergraduate at Columbia University. Before that, the only instruments I'd ever played were the the viola and, of course, the recorder. I think every kid you know, pretty much has at least a little bit of recorder exposure in middle school or grade school, but it wasn't until I got to Columbia and started off taking bass lessons. What I found in taking upright bass lessons is that a lot of the skills that I had developed playing viola were transferable to to the upright bass, but of course, I had to learn a lot of new things, and that was also when I really first began playing jazz, like, you know, became a student of jazz and tried to start learning how to play jazz. Up to then it had really just been classical music, you know, orchestral type stuff. And, yeah, and so it was really from there that I really took to the instrument. I really enjoyed playing the bass far more than I enjoyed playing the viola. And, you know, I began experimenting with, you know, writing songs, coming up with my own music to play, and that's what I brought with me to Stanford, and continue to develop with Tim'm and others.

Dylan: Thank you so much. And I'm also wondering, like, when did you start playing viola?

Kolo: Oh, that would have been, gosh. I almost don't even remember. I think I might have been around 10 years old. I think I was in in middle school, or beginning of middle school.

Dylan: Yeah, all right, thank you. And um, next I'll address, as someone who built Jazz for Equity as an attempt to address systemic barriers to students having access to jazz music in my own community, I’m also aware that inequity exists in a variety of areas: The Silicon Valley, known as perhaps American’s premier tech hub is also known for the digital divide and STEM gap, plagued with disparities in regards to education and resources. As someone who studied and taught Physics in the Bay area after your Ph.D. studies, what efforts have you made to address these inequities?

Kolo: Yeah, so that's a really great question. So you know, my whole sort of angle, if you will, as I approached teaching physics was, well, for starters, when I once I decided I want to be an educator, you know, and I want to get into physics teaching, I intentionally, sort of tried to steer clear of, you know, going to like, you know, teaching at a private school, or going to like, you know, some, oh, tier one or not tier one, but you know, these, these private universities that are on the US News ranking, right? I intentionally wanted to go to, like a community college, and, and that's, that's where I ended up. And the reason is because, you know, community college at least if it's done right, it is a way, it can be a vehicle to address some of these equity gaps, you know, like the... For better or worse, it's turned out that at least in California, community college is- now that many of them are becoming free of charge, they are able to bring access to a higher education to segments of society that might not otherwise have that opportunity. And so once I was in the college, one thing I did was I set about trying to bring about different initiatives that would help to bring, you know, some of this very high level physics research into communities that have historically been excluded from it. So I was hired as a full time tenure track faculty in 2020, Fall 2020 and then Spring of 2021, I actually applied for and and secured a grant from the US Department of Energy, so new program that they had come up with that was called, I think it was called research traineeships to broaden and diversify nuclear physics. And the idea was that they wanted to have these grants, make available these funds to faculty, at, you know, not necessarily at community colleges, but at minority serving institutions of which Skyline College is one. And the idea is to help build research capacity, right capacity to engage in nuclear physics research in places where historically it hasn't been. And so what I did with these this grant was I set up a training program. A partnership program, what we call it a traineeship program, and the idea is that students from Skyline and from the San Mateo Community College District, I would basically hire these students into a paid internship experience. And what we would do is I would bring them over to SLACK; it used to be called Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Now it's just called SLACK for legal reasons, they they had to stop using the name Stanford in there. And of course, this is a, this is a linear accelerator national lab that you know, does various types of research, including nuclear physics research. And so these students, I would take them on and bring them over to SLACK, and then we would participate together in various nuclear physics research activities so that these students could get training in nuclear physics, and then maybe, hopefully go on to graduate school, or even, if not, they're able to form a connection now between this type of research activity and their own communities, which have, historically, you know, not had access to that. And so that's one thing that we did. You also raised the issue of jazz music. So, sort of, kind of by accident, you know this activity with, with the research, and connecting the students with with SLACK, it kind of in an exposure to, among other things, to Jazz music, because this was at a time when the American Physical Society was sort of changing its approach and trying to, you know, even as the Department of Energy was saying, Hey, we're giving out money to broaden and diversify nuclear physics, the American Physical Society was kind of trying to do the same thing. And so that year, they held their annual meeting in New Orleans, in part because they wanted the this Physics conference to take place in a location where there can be some exposure to the culture, you Know, the New Orleans Jazz culture, and part of and so I took some students to this conference in New Orleans. And this was, I think, in 2022 if I'm not mistaken, and part of the conference program agenda actually included a, it was a jazz performance and lecture about the history of jazz, you know. So this was a group of nuclear physicists, it was the nuclear physics conference, you know, getting many of them getting exposed to this for the first time. So yeah, so I think I would say that this entire experience, I think, was a successful means by which I was able to address some of these equity gaps and also form a kind of a nexus between, you know, Nuclear Physics, Jazz music and Social Justice.

Dylan: Yeah. thank you so much. That was really inspiring. I think your work in, I guess helping, like, bridge gaps between typically marginalized communities is really admirable.

Kolo: Oh, thank you so much.

Dylan: Yes, of course. And, all right, next, I'd like to, I guess, speak on the topic of jazz, and I guess, guess culture. And I'll start by saying jazz, born out of the African American experience has grown into a global language, resonating deeply in places as far as China and Japan, where entire scenes have emerged around the art form. From your perspective as both a both a physicist and a Congolese upright bass player, what do you think makes jazz a medium that has such a powerful cross cultural influence, and how do you see Africa's historical and spiritual ties to jazz playing into that global story?

Kolo: Yeah, so that's really great question. And, you know, I actually, I don't feel all that well qualified to answer it, you know, because I'm not really a, you know, a cultural historian, right? But I can sort of tell you the way it looks from my point of view. So, I will, I'll take you back to my time at Columbia University, where I took a course. One of my electives that I took was a course in hip hop culture, and it was taught by Michael, Eric Dyson. You might have heard of him. He's a he's a well known, I think his formerly his, his field is a theology, perhaps, or history, but he's a cultural critic, and he was teaching at Columbia University at the time, and he was teaching this Hip-Hop culture class where you dive into The you know, the music and the history, and, you know, the cultural aspects of hip hop. And he taught other courses, but I took this Hip-Hop course of his and and one of the things that we discussed in this course at length was this idea that Hip-Hop music and other adjacent or, you know, or perhaps precursor forms of music, like jazz, an important part of them is that they are developed by black people, right? You know, in here, in the Americas, in the US, as a response to their oppression. So when you, when you think of it in those terms, at least the way I think of it now, this is now my own sort of thinking, if you, if you allow that music, an entire music tradition, entire musical idiom, right, an entire piece of culture can emerge from oppression as a response to oppression. Well, then there's oppressed people everywhere, right? And I think that that oppression, that that folks are experiencing in Japan, in China, and wherever else, is something that connects these, these various groups. And so, I think that that's sort of the kind of the the seed of where it starts, and then it kind of goes from there. Now, of course, today, you know Jazz is a little bit different, perhaps, than how it was at its origins, right? Now it's taught in Ivy League schools, right? And it's taught to people who don't descend from enslaved, you know, oppressed, marginalized folks, right? And lots of really great music is coming out of these quarters. So, I think, yeah, we're now in an era where it's no longer can be sort of tied directly to, well, this is a direct response to so and so's oppression. But I think if you go back far enough, then you can see that you can see that common thread, and I think that's kind of where it launches from.

Dylan: Yeah. All right, thank you. Your path as a physicist and upright basis is a rare inspired... inspiring blend of analytical rigor and artistic expression. Research has increasingly shown that access to music, especially learning an instrument can positively influence academic performance, cognitive development and discipline from your own journey. Do you see a connection between your musical training and your academic success? Or might a program like Jazz for Equity, which ties access to instruments and lessons to maintaining a certain GPA do for students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds? Do you see value in using music as not just enrichment, but as a driver of educational equity?

Kolo: Yeah, that, that's, that's a really great question. And, and I definitely hear you on what you're saying. So, and I'll, I'll say a couple of things in, in response. So first off, yes, there is absolutely, I think a, a connection between getting exposure to music and a music appreciation and a musicianship, musicality. If you can get, get that to, to kids and have that in as part of their curriculum alongside everything else they're doing—not just kids. Even in grad, as a graduate student, right. I, I felt as if having this as part of my experience, playing bass, being part of the Freekanos, when I, it was at graduate school where I got to meet Marcus Shelby, who you might have heard of. He's a, prominent jazz composer, based outta San Francisco, and I got to meet him at Stanford because he was actually teaching a jazz composition class at Stanford. I didn't take his class, but I kind of got to meet him and, sort of nerd out with him about Jazz; he's also a bass player. And so we, we got to kind of nerd out about that. And Stanford is also where I encountered Stefan Alexander, who is a theoretical physicist who's also a saxophone player. And I think these encounters with these folks was, was very formative for me. Not just because they are who they are, but because it sort of allowed me to see that, wow, you can have this type of thing be a part of your graduate school experience and it really enhances it and can set you on a path to be a better physicist. Right? So let's see... That, that was one thing I was gonna say. And now, okay. And about this, yeah, this, this GPA requirement. So something that I struggled massively with when I was a professor at Skyline is that I hated having to give grades to my students. The reason is because the way I saw it, grades by and large have become a way to kind of rank students and put them in competition with each other. And it sort of takes the focus away from actually gaining learning into, well, "can I meet this threshold to get this particular score to advance," or whatever it is, right? And it's also become a way to kind of gatekeep further academic opportunities or jobs for people and, I just felt like there has to be a better way, other, other than, than giving, giving grades, and, in all honesty, I wasn't alone in this. Early on in my Skyline College career, I got hooked in with these other faculty who consider themselves to be—well, I consider them, I don't know if they would describe themselves this way—but I consider them anti-grading activists. And they shared with me their struggles with, well, how can I give a grade to someone if it's just going to end up being a way to gatekeep them and limit them and force them to compete with each other, which is not the idea of what learning is supposed to be about. And one thing they said was that they tried various experimentation with grading. Right. In one case, he tried—this one guy told me that he just gave them all A's, right. He said, in fact in the beginning of the course, he says, okay, you're all getting A's. Alright. Now that's out of the way. Okay, now let's actually sit down and do some actual learning now. And he found that that was okay, but there's also, It wasn't perfect because there's still gonna be the occasional student who actually isn't that interested in learning and they'll take the A and then not do any of the work. I've tried that myself and yeah, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the outcome. I've tried to make it where the students are sort of graded together in the sense that nobody passes the course unless everybody passes. So in other words, the students have to be sort of reaching out to each other and helping to support one another so that they can all succeed together. Like if any one of them fails, they all fail. Right? That was also not entirely satisfactory. So, long story short. Yeah. It makes me nervous when you tie a person's GPA to access to something. But I think a good compromise is to make it relatively low, like 2.0. 'Cause yeah, I don't think you want to tie the GPA to access to things because you want there to be some kind of incentive to actually want to incorporate the music, right? And realize all the benefits. So yeah, it's a complicated question, and I actually don't know what the right answer is.

Dylan: Thank you so much for the insight and I definitely think I'll be reevaluating, I guess, how to incentivize academic performance because yeah, I agree with what you said and I think grades might possibly in some cases be more of a limiting factor instead of actively boosting their, I guess, performance and development.

Is there anything else you'd like to share about the topic of Equity or Jazz, and what's next for you?

Kolo: Yeah, oh, let me just say one final thing about grading. So, like I said, I have my struggles. The thing I finally settled in on as the way I kept grading and I sort of stayed that way for the rest of the time that I was doing it was, I adopted this technique called minimum grading. You might have heard of it. There's research about it. And the way it works is that the grade that you give to a student can't fall below the equivalent of 20%, right? So out of a scale of zero to a hundred, they can't go below 20, right? 20 is the minimum you can give. And so what this means is that if a student, let's say, fails to turn in an assignment or they leave a question blank on an exam, instead of getting a zero for that assignment or that question, they get a 20 out of a hundred. And so, I mean, this may not seem like a big difference. But actually it is an enormous difference. And the reason is because under traditional grading where they just get a zero for a non-turned-in assignment, this zero now is gonna get averaged in with all their other scores. And then one zero can really bring down—or a couple of zeros can really bring down—your grade. They can have a very outsized effect. So by setting the floor to 20, you dull that effect, right? And so a student doesn't have to turn in everything and they can still end up with a decent grade in the class. And now why does this address equity? The reason is because research has shown that students who represent marginalized, socially marginalized groups, who are taking the class—these students will have a tendency, the ones that do have a tendency to not turn something in or to leave an answer blank, they will often do that for very complicated reasons, and it's very rarely that they actually don't know how to answer it or that they haven't received the learning that they need to be able to answer the question or turn in the assignment, right? Often that is not the case. It's often the case that they do know and they have got the learning, but, I'll give you an example. Like for instance, students who identify as female, right? Female-identifying students—because of how folks like that are socialized—they're socialized not to want to ever guess, right? They're not encouraged to take a guess, and so they may know the answer, but they don't feel confident enough to just write it down and to turn it in and get the grade. And so they leave it blank, right? So when you give a 20% instead of zero, what you're doing is you're saying, okay, you didn't turn in the assignment. But I don't have the information as to whether or not you could complete it. I don't know, because you didn't turn it in. And so instead of giving a zero, which will bring down your average, I'll give you 20%, which will bring it down much, much less. Right? And you can recover from it relatively easily. So in this way, you find that it ends up having—if faculty that incorporate this grading technique—research has shown that actually it helps students from marginalized communities achieve more success in their academics.

So yeah, that's my final point about grading.

What's next for me? I've accepted a job to go and teach physics at an international secondary school that is near Shanghai, China. And so I've never lived in Chi—I've never even actually been to mainland China. I've been to Taiwan. Of course, having worked in semiconductors, you tend to go to Taiwan a lot. You actually tend to go to mainland China, but I somehow never managed to make it to mainland China before. So I'm very excited for this opportunity. I'm taking Chinese lessons. I don't have to know Chinese to do the job. It's an international school. I'll be teaching in English. But I like languages. And so I'm taking lessons in Chinese and it's going pretty well so far.

Dylan: Thank you so much for that. I'd like to thank you for joining us and sharing the importance of equity and your experience with this, your experiences with Jazz, and, for anyone watching, if you're interested in donating or volunteering, you can find out how to do so at jazzforequity.com