Professor Q&A: Walter Liniger
“Life is random. In blues every verse is a story in its own self”
USC blues and Southern Studies professor Walter Liniger’s experiences are anything but ordinary. He’s been tear-gassed in a protest march, grew up in the ’60s, sings the blues, and brings what he’s learned to his student-praised classes. Professor Liniger was kind enough to sit down and talk about his past, his class and his philosophies.
Garnet & Black: You were born in Switzerland. What was it like growing up there?
Walter Liniger: I was born in Bern in 1949 and really grew up in the Swiss ’60s. Switzerland’s youth was listening to ideas streaming from America. Obviously we did not have the trials and tribulations the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War brought to America. We protested, like so many other European youth movements, our conservative government. We thought it was time for a change.
G&B: You studied at the University of Bern. Do you have any memories you’d like to share from your time there?
WL: I remember the sociology department refused a chair to one of my favorite professors, Jean Ziegler. He was one of the first people in the late ’60s to openly question Switzerland’s neutrality. I liked what the guy said, yet he was refused a position for it. We protest marched and were met by police with fire hoses, tear gas, etc.
G&B: Do you remember the exact moment you realized music and the blues were your passion?
WL: Growing up, I always liked rhythms that seemed to say something -- not the type of untranslatable waltzes and marches inherent to European music at the time. I heard American blues, and every song had a different rhythm, a different voice. The music tantalized. It inspired fantasies. It told complicated stories using simple words. The liberating feeling was so powerful that it’s 40 years later, and I still love it.
G&B: You played at the 40th Anniversary American Folk Blues Festival in Eisenach, Germany in 2002. Could you give a brief explanation of the festival?
WL: Festivals started in 1962 to bring American blues musicians to Europe. The 40th Anniversary was a commemoration in celebration of the introduction of the blues to Europe. A gathering of great blues artists from my era was there to play, reminisce and revel in the ‘way things used to be.
G&B: Do you have a specific experience from that festival that stands out?
WL: I was shocked at how old these people had gotten. I remembered seeing these artists in my 20s as something insanely different. I sat there and looked at these guys and thought that this segment of our lives was over. With these people a period of the blues as musicdies -- a period that’s also a part of me. In a way it was like saying goodbye to a part of myself. Blues as such, however, is a living thing—it keeps growing and will always be changing.
G&B: You came to USC in 1993 from the University of Mississippi. In your 14 years here, what have you come to appreciate the most about South Carolina and this university?
WL: Here I was able to teach the way I like to teach. I developed my own course, and the students still seem to find it relevant. I want to teach students that learning can come from inside themselves, not just from a highlighted textbook or a board of notes.
G&B: Your American blues classes are revered by your students. What’s an overview of your lesson and classroom procedures?
WL: I aim to create an environment for students to take a timeout from their well-honed student roles and focus on being themselves. I want students to explore their minds. We do creative writing, listen to music, read literature and play the harmonica. Expressing and describing yourself in creative ways is essential to finding out who you are.
G&B: What do you use to encourage students to appreciate music?
WL: We play the harmonica so we can feel what music is. Whether they enjoy it or hate it, I want them to have the feeling that the spontaneous music they create is really an outpouring of themselves from which to learn, and when they learn something opposed to memorizing it, they’ll appreciate and remember it forever.
G&B: Is there anything else you would like to say?
WL: I really enjoy what I do, but teaching the way I do is getting harder. I hate the idea of students’ learning to come solely from a textbook, and for at least one semester I want to offer them an alternative. You can learn so much from yourself that no book in the world can tell you.
