As someone who could care less about jazz, I really enjoyed this class. The lectures were two hours which would drag on but being honest, I never attended class and just reviewed the slides which provided the lectures WORD FOR WORD. Prior to the TA strike, I must have just been unlucky but my TA would not really help us in any way, and for every assignment she graded, she would give me a 4.9/5, which felt a tad dramatic. The midterm and final were easy considering each question was based on the SLIDES. Although for a GE, the work and tested material were tedious considering you are expected to memorize artists from a selected list including a song, and significant fact but the exams being online made it less stressful. The final project was on anything jazz-related, I did a research paper that got an A+ since it was graded by Bolin himself due to the TA strike, which I was fortunate in that sense.

Although I am just listing downfalls, the class was not difficult considering I got an A. LOTS OF EXTRA CREDIT WAS PROVIDED ... but, it was a lot of work for one point which felt not worth the time. As someone who put in the bare minimum, I still landed an A. Bolin is also a very understanding man, I missed a quiz due to being out of town but because I communicated with him about my absence, he allowed me to take it from home which was a relief. Following that, he then sent me a link to the recorded lecture and that saved me a lot of stress. Overall, I enjoyed the class because of Professor Bolin, As a freshman in my first quarter, it was nice to take a class that was stress-free and engaging.

For a GE, this class was so unnecessarily difficult and time-consuming. Two hour-long lectures with no break, which would be fine if it was packed with memorable information but the professor mostly goes on tangents with his own personal jazz knowledge. If your grade didn't depend on understanding the lectures, it would be a cool class but the slides were somehow vague and also packed with randomly useless information. There are 40-50 artists named in just the second half of the class that if you aren't really (REALLY) into jazz, will all be completely new to you. I thought I liked jazz enough to know some artists, I genuinely only recognized three. Each week has a discussion post, a weekly reading ranging between 20-50 pages, and each midterm/final is three parts: a listening portion where you identify 10-12 songs by title and artist, a ~50 choice multiple choice on material alone, and an ADDITIONAL short answer portion that's take home. Even though this is a GE as in general education (as in EVERYBODY) this class seems to be for people who are either musicians or deeply into jazz. The professor is a nice guy who is genuinely really interested in jazz, but there is no reason for a three-part midterm/final AND a concert observation AND a creative project.

Decent GE. If you already enjoy jazz and/or understand music, definitely a plus, but not necessary.

I wanted to like this course, I really did. But the problems with it really drag it down.

Firstly, I am genuinely astonished as to how Prof. Bolin makes lectures about jazz boring. Two hours long, twice a week. And the lectures aren't even recorded, you HAVE to come in person. Personal thing but I hate when professors think they're too good to record their lectures and put them online. He can make 15 minutes feel like an hour. This is due to the fundamental problem with this course's contents, which would be much more obvious if this class was harder.

The course is almost entirely memorization. Just hours and hours of memorizing essentially trivia facts about jazz figures. The big picture trends in jazz history take a genuine backseat. The big picture things are essentially the only things on the take home short answer questions, which was jarring and essentially led me scrambling for information, as there's obviously not a lot to work with in his lectures. He asks these specific things about artists during the exams. Still, I got by fine. After both exams he has take home short answer questions, which are not bad, except he expects you to do like 3 or 4 citations from the lectures and readings per answer. These are unnecessary and time consuming. I spent way more time looking for citations than I did actually answering the questions. And the grader doesn't care, I got a perfect score plus extra credit on the first one despite having cited like 3 or 4 things total.

The final project is a fun, choose-your-own-adventure type thing. It can be tempting to be stressed out about it because there's no rubric obviously, but I had fun with it and got a perfect score. For some reason he also expects online assignments to be handed in by 5 pm and not 11:59 which is annoying and unnecessary. You also have to go to a jazz concert at some point and write a reflection on it. Writing the reflection was tedious. You have to get all these details about each musician, the composers, and the name of each piece, which is often not anywhere on the internet. So you have to jot them down, I guess? If I hadn't recorded the concert I went to with voicememos I wouldn't have had any information.

But on the bright side, Prof Bolin seems like a genuinely good guy and is passionate about the subject. It's pretty charming and manages to keep me engaged for about 20 minutes each class period despite the actual content. He does this thing where he goes around the lecture hall and tries to make students, often individual students, answer questions, which was uncomfortable.
The discussions seem disoriented and are essentially the TA trying to help students be able to recognize pieces and their composers for when they're on the exams. The readings have nothing to do with the lectures or the discussions, and ~2% of the information in them is useful for the take home short answer questions.

Overall, I would recommend this class. It's not a lot of work and you can get a lot out of it, despite the class's structure, and if you self-study.

Professor Bolin makes jazz come alive. Anyone can see that he is passionate about jazz, and it pours through his lectures, teaching, etc. If you like history and easy classes, this is the class for you.

Being a band kid through high school, I took this class as a possibly interesting GE. I definitely found some of the material interesting, but lot of it got boring, especially with the 2 hour long lectures twice a week. The only incentive to really go to lectures was random pop quizzes, but there was only one that was unannounced. I tended to just read the slides by myself.

Section Grades: (assigned by your TA): 10%
Concert Observation/Analysis: 10% (5% ea. x2).
Quizzes: 10%; 5 of them
Exams: 50%; 25% ea.
Final project: 20%

Discussions were mandatory and honestly pretty useless, but my TA was chill and the TA strike basically gave a free 100 to everyone. The concert observations are just busywork, I got mine done at the end of quarter by watching two UCLA livestreamed concerts. Quizzes as well were straightforward, there were definitely not 5 in total, so we just got free points for the missing ones. Midterm and final were online on Canvas and relatively straightforward, the listening lists were pretty easy to memorize if you put some time into it. The final project was really flexible, with a lot of options given to us, I chose to do a simple paper supplemented by a diorama and got a 100, the professor graded everyone's because of the strike. Overall, if you have some interest for music/jazz and history, I would recommend this class for a straightforward, low intensity GE.

Alright so the class is very easy. The class starts great and super interesting but after lecture 3 it basically becomes a two hour-long slideshow introducing jazz artist after jazz artist. It gets extremely boring at times but the class is interesting if you want to have more than a surface level understanding of jazz music. In regards to grading 10% of it is based on participation in your TA section, this can be hit or miss depending on how strict your TA is. Mine seemed like she didn’t want to be a TA for the class was kinda rude tbh lol. But every TA is. The rest of your grade depends on two concert observations, which are very easy so do them early! And the midterm and final as well as a final project. For the tests Professor Bolin will make sure that you know everything that will be on them. We usually had a review day before the exam and basically everything that was on the notes that day would be on the test. For the final project you have complete liberty to do what you want, so you don’t have to do a research paper and can do things like album reviews or even write a song. Overall this is a great and easy class, just boring af.

Let me start with-- this class was easy. Its been said, that's why I took it. Marc is very passionate about jazz and it is clear through his lectures, however, this class is BORING AF. Two hour lectures at 9 am are not it for me, but if that is for you, have at it! There was one midterm that was online and I got 100%. There was a final that was also online, but it was harder-- probably because I studied 0 hours. The final paper was a drag and 6-9 PAGES LONG, but he only looked at the formatting and I got 100%. There were also some TA assignments, but going to the discussions were pointless in my opinion. The listening list is given for midterm and final, but there was NO NEED to listen to them because our midterm and final were online (if in person, I would recommend listening). Just know you will be bored and will not want to go to the lectures (that he doesn't even record), but if you need an easy GE, take this class!

This class is very easy as a GE, but I found a lot of the assignments to be kind of tedious. You are given much creative freedom on the final project, but most will likely pursue a research paper style thing. Professor Bolin is a really cool guy, but the two hour lectures can tend to drag on. If you're interested in jazz or music at all, I would recommend this class as an easy GE. However, if you have substantial knowledge of jazz music, you'd be better off spending your time elsewhere. That being said, much of the history taught is quite interesting.