Category: Burnett Family

The Paola where I grew up was a place that was well ahead of its time in the USA socially. I think most of the northwest Kansas City metro area can still be considered to be what is termed progressive in this regard. People here generally treat you accordingly to what you do and those who don’t want to associate with you simply don’t. Secure and hearty people. We live on the land of the original peoples and most generations still respect that fact.

I’m a proud fifth generation Kansan.

My great great maternal grandfather Solomon Jackson moved there from Kentucky. He was well respected by everyone in the town. Although there were ethnic neighborhoods, his children, including my great maternal grandfather Edward George Jackson actually attended the integrated Paola public school system over a century ago.

ABOVE PHOTO: Christopher pictured with some of his Burnett cousins from the McKinley Burnett line of the family who visited the jazz museum in Kansas City back in 2015.

This was well before the landmark 1954 US Supreme Court case, known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, that struck down a Kansas statute permitting racial segregation in some of the state’s elementary schools. A distant cousin on my paternal side of our family named McKinley Burnett was instrumental in helping win the case.

My maternal grandfather George Jackson was regularly featured during his Paola high school years in their ORIOLE yearbook as one of the star football players in the early 1920s. My maternal side of our family was fractured during my mother Violet’s childhood so I didn’t know much about these three elder generations until very recently.

Kansas history is documented as us having been admitted to the Union as a “Free State” during the period of USA slavery and our Civil War. The abolitionist John Brown has a significant historical connection to a small Miami County city that’s located just seven miles from Paola.

This factor obviously seems to have positively contributed to Paola’s documented cultural and societal attitudes for well over a century. That’s all very cool indeed but no place with human beings is perfect. Paola still had some instances of typical American racism back then.

Families fragment and disconnect over generations for myriad reasons. I’m finding this to be true regardless of any prevailing social, ethnic, and economic paradigms.

The primary blessings that I have taken away from my parents bringing all of us siblings home to Kansas after my father’s active duty Air Force career is my ultimately learning of these aspects of our rich family historical legacy.

Roots and branches are connected and don’t necessarily have to be immediately aware of each other’s existence. I continue to learn a great deal from my ancestors while living in my own time and despite having never met most of them due to being displaced by generations.

American racism has been and is going to be with us. The pendulum of it is always. I’m fortunate to have had elders who modeled the type of character that positively transcends these type of limitations inherent to humanity.

I have since literally traveled extensively in our nation and throughout most of the countries of mainly Western Europe and the greater Mediterranean.

Some places I lived and worked are actually more stifling than the USA and most of the people often look alike. Paola was special.

The family environments that I grew up in as a kid provided a way up for every generation and every ethnicity. The key seems to have been centered upon each one finding then pursuing our own unique life path.

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Musings In Cb: “Roots and Branches”

PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)

Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.

As a kid, I was a self-starter and generally kept busy with mostly constructive and productive things. Notice that I said mostly because I was like most kids and could be a typical knucklehead at times. Never with malicious intentions, but still a kid. I’m not too much different now. We don’t change much as adults.

Later as a grown man with a family of my own and nearing the end of my active duty military music career, we were seated at the kitchen table drinking coffee while talking with mom Burnett.

During the conversation, I recall mom telling us that she “never worried about” me as a kid because I was always “busy with good things.” And I felt her trust and confidence in me as a kid.

Mom had come to live with me and Terri Anderson Burnett immediately upon retirement after working several decades in a career at the Osawatomie State Hospital (now defunct) culminating in her professional position as an Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor. She was a year older then than I am now.

Mom lived at our home with T and our children when I was hand-selected for assignment to the multi-service and multi-national NATO Band that was once based in a burrow of Naples, Italy. I was scheduled to return after two years but another great thing happened and I got promoted out of my former position. 

I then got chosen for the First Sergeant position with the Student Company at the Armed Forces School of Music during the era when there were 400 basic, intermediate, and advance course students learning there. The school is still located in Virginia.

That’s how mom ended up staying with T and our children while I was away. And I was at the school for just over a year before I was released to fill the First Sergeant and Enlisted Bandleader positions that had come open with the same band where my family had stayed.

I would come home at every opportunity during the separation, usually in 6-month intervals. T, our children, and mom also came to visit me at the school assignment. We had a great time and stayed at the home of a friend in Virginia Beach. I recall mom saying on one of our day excursions that she never thought she “would ever visit Washington D.C.” in her lifetime.

I have been retired from military music since 1996 and I continue to work in the at-large music industry. All of that to say that me and my family have always been busy with mostly good things.

We have started our own businesses since those military music days. Have had ups and downs like everyone does in life but are fortunate to be very resilient people. 

We, as a family, have maintained the mindset of a student. Mom used to tell me that I was always curious and a good student. I understand more fully what she meant in saying that.

Some people have to always be “right.” I learned to simply try to find what’s “right” and everything will usually work out best.

Some people want well beyond what they can practically use and truly need. It’s a race to get more stuff, titles, positions, money. 

I was blessed with a vision for my life that tells me the purpose of everything that sustains my family and my calling in life. 

It took me a lifetime to state this but I’ve always had more than enough at each stage.

My family has been with me all of the way from the beginning. She caught my vision when we both wore Army boots most of the day and rode around to strange towns together playing music.

We have been a family for decades now but we are still growing and learning together, just as we always have.

We are teaching and helping younger musicians, creating our own art, and serving our community as well.

We didn’t realize that we would be just as busy now as we ever have been in our lives. But we are and it is truly perfect for us.

I just finished a couple of commissions, our youth jazz program is in full swing, and I am on a board that is producing a major event in August. Fourth of July week was a little bit of a break for us and the time gave us a chance to be alone together and grow. 

Thanks for your patience everyone because we had to regroup.

Sometimes you just need to stop. Yes, I need a haircut and I need to trim up my beard. I have been just puttering around our home doing the odds and ends that I was too busy to get to. Washing and detailing our vehicles. Cleaning up the stain on the garage floor that’s been there for a year. Spending time with my family.

We did lots of talking, growing individually, and just being together again. I think that we have also truly learned how to be a better family. We were also able to literally get caught up on everything. And we’ll be back to the other cool things we do in life for the rest of the month before our actual vacation in August.

I’m truly a blessed man and musician. 

#artistlife #musician #prayerworks

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Musings In Cb: “Busy with good things…”

PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)

Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.

The “best” jazz bandleaders and conductors I’ve encountered have not only been great players but have also been superb composers or arrangers.

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I first formally studied music composition, ensemble arranging, and orchestration techniques as a professional military woodwind musician. I took all of the basic and advanced music courses offered at the Armed Forces School of Music during my era of service.

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These courses were actually conservatory-level instruction and the school of music faculty were typically alumni of the top civilian schools as well.

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I also constantly took college courses by correspondence or at the schools near the military posts wherever I was stationed every year during the 22 years of my career. And I’m still studying.

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Yay, the 200+ undergraduate credit hours I earned during that period resulted in lots of useful knowledge and skills but not necessarily a DMA. 🤷🏽

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And having a DMA wasn’t the point – gaining useful knowledge and professional experience was always the purpose and goal. Applied competence.

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The military is focused on its members having high levels of competency that can be applied in a variety of high profile professional performance situations. I appreciate that fact more fully now.

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As a Jazz artist who improvises coherently, I have always found having a composer’s knowledge and understanding of music to be advantageous for creating original music spontaneously. 

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Naturally, I still have some “Jazz language” memorized but I understand that the advanced ultimate goal of improvising isn’t stringing together a bunch of “licks” I learned as a solo.

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Being a professional composer and arranger positively impacts directing and conducting an ensemble. 

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You also immediately know what the music should sound like in total. And being versed in the orchestration techniques being applied can help direct performers to serve the music as intended.

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The beauty of the gift of music is that you can do it for yourself and for your entire life, privately or publicly, and still learn something new every day.

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Music makes us better. Jazz can make us smarter.

🔗 https://BurnettPublishing.com 

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Musings In Cb: “Scales ARE Chords”

PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)

Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.

I still really enjoy golf. I used to play other sports when I was younger and my knees (and other joints) could take the rigors of sprinting and jumping.

I now do the low impact activities and sports like bowling, swimming, and golf. I’m not very good at it but golf has become my favorite.

Sports are like playing a musical instrument in lots of ways. And to be successful or “good” at either requires “Hand-Eye Coordination” and “Mind-Body Control.” 🏌🏽‍♂️🎵🎶

The objectivity of both music and sports is proven in the results. The musicians and athletes who practice to refine their skills are inherently successful.

The adversities inherent with living can impact our minds, bodies, and spirits. And these are the times when the objective things built into our lives like music and sports can also help us heal our emotional wounds and even grow stronger.

Music, although it is often used to express emotions and opinions, in and of itself – music is what it is. You can either do it or you can’t do it. With either of those conditions not being permanent but based upon whether you practice or not.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:” Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬ ‭NIV‬‬

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Musings In Cb: “ADAPTING TO CHANGE”

PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)

Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.