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Jazz
by Walter Dean MyersFather and son team Walter Dean Myers, author, and Christopher Myers, illustrator, create a book of rhyming text and illustrations which celebrate the roots of jazz music.
Jazz: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides)
by Stuart NicholsonThis definitive guide includes a unique chapter-by-chapter playlist for the reader. Jazz: A Beginner&’s Guide is a lively and highly accessible introduction to a global musical phenomenon. Award-winning music journalist and author Stuart Nicholson takes the reader on an entertaining journey from jazz's early stirrings in America&’s south through to the present day, when almost every country in the world has its own vibrant jazz scene.En route we meet a host of jazz heroes past and present, from Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis, to Keith Jarrett and Kamasi Washington. Each chapter is accompanied by a playlist designed to provide a stimulating and enjoyable entry point to what has been described as the most exciting art form of all.
Jazz à la Creole: French Creole Music and the Birth of Jazz (American Made Music Series)
by Caroline VézinaWinner of the 2023 Award for Excellence for Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz from the Association for Recorded Sound CollectionsDuring the formative years of jazz (1890–1917), the Creoles of Color—as they were then called—played a significant role in the development of jazz as teachers, bandleaders, instrumentalists, singers, and composers. Indeed, music penetrated all aspects of the life of this tight-knit community, proud of its French heritage and language. They played and/or sang classical, military, and dance music as well as popular songs and cantiques that incorporated African, European, and Caribbean elements decades before early jazz appeared. In Jazz à la Creole: French Creole Music and the Birth of Jazz, the author describes the music played by the Afro-Creole community since the arrival of enslaved Africans in La Louisiane, then a French colony, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, emphasizing the many cultural exchanges that led to the development of jazz. Caroline Vézina has compiled and analyzed a broad scope of primary sources found in diverse locations from New Orleans to Quebec City, Washington, DC, New York City, and Chicago. Two previously unpublished interviews add valuable insider knowledge about the music on French plantations and the danses Créoles held in Congo Square after the Civil War. Musical and textual analyses of cantiques provide new information about the process of their appropriation by the Creole Catholics as the French counterpart of the Negro spirituals. Finally, a closer look at their musical practices indicates that the Creoles sang and improvised music and/or lyrics of Creole songs, and that some were part of their professional repertoire. As such, they belong to the Black American and the Franco-American folk music traditions that reflect the rich cultural heritage of Louisiana.
Jazz Among the Discourses
by Krin GabbardThe study of jazz comes of age with this anthology. One of the first books to consider jazz outside of established critical modes, Jazz Among the Discourses brings together scholars from an array of disciplines to question and revise conventional methods of writing and thinking about jazz.Challenging "official jazz histories," the contributors to this volume view jazz through the lenses of comparative literature; African American studies; music, film, and communication theory; English literature; American studies; history; and philosophy. With uncommon rigor and imagination, their essays probe the influence of various discourses--journalism, scholarship, politics, oral history, and entertainment--on writing about jazz. Employing modes of criticism and theory that have transformed study in the humanities, they address questions seldom if ever raised in jazz writing: What are the implications of building jazz history around the medium of the phonograph record? Why did jazz writers first make the claim that jazz is an art? How is an African American aesthetic articulated through the music? What are the consequences of the interaction between the critic and the jazz artist? How does the improvising artist navigate between chaos and discipline?Along with its companion volume, Representing Jazz, this versatile anthology marks the arrival of jazz studies as a mature, intellectually independent discipline. Its rethinking of conventional jazz discourse will further strengthen the position of jazz studies within the academy.Contributors. John Corbett, Steven B. Elworth, Krin Gabbard, Bernard Gendron, William Howland Kenney, Eric Lott, Nathaniel Mackey, Burton Peretti, Ronald M. Radano, Jed Rasula, Lorenzo Thomas, Robert Walser
Jazz and Blues: Crossroads and Evolution
by Jeremy BrownJazz and Blues: Crossroads and Evolution is meant to address the American musical traditions from a couple of different perspectives. It examines culture--how jazz and blues mirrored the changes and movements of the American people throughout the 20th century. And it takes the purely musical view―valuing the great performers and performances, tracing the development of style from one sub-genre to another, and laying the ground rules for judging and debating the quality of the art form. The book is designed for use in various kinds of courses―History of Jazz and Blues, Jazz Appreciation, or Blues History. It can be both accessible to the non-music major and enlightening for the music major. In its entirety, the book is designed with the general education student of humanities in mind. The appendix on foundational elements of music provides a background for the musical concepts covered in the book, and the body of the book covers the music in depth and tie in important cultural movements. Rhapsody.com playlists give the student easy access to the musical examples discussed in the textbook. Rhapsody has an enormous library of music, which provides the instructor the opportunity to develop supplemental playlists and provides the student a broad landscape of recordings to explore after they have listened to the assigned material.
Jazz and Death: Medical Profiles of Jazz Greats
by Frederick J. SpencerWhen a jazz hero dies, rumors, speculation, gossip, and legend can muddle the real cause of death. In this book, Frederick J. Spencer, M.D., conducts an inquest on how jazz greats lived and died pursuing their art. Forensics, medical histories, death certificates, and biographies divulge the way many musical virtuosos really died. An essential reference source, Jazz and Death strives to correct misinformation and set the story straight. Reviewing the medical records of such jazz icons as Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe, Bennie Moten, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray, and Ronnie Scott, the book spans decades, styles, and causes of death. Divided into disease categories, it covers such illnesses as ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), which killed Charlie Mingus, and tuberculosis, which caused the deaths of Chick Webb, Charlie Christian, Bubber Miley, Jimmy Blanton, and Fats Navarro. It notes the significance of dental disease in affecting a musician's embouchure and livelihood, as happened with Joe “King” Oliver. A discussion of Art Tatum's visual impairment leads to discoveries in the pathology of what blinded Lennie Tristano. Heavy drinking, even during Prohibition, was the norm in the clubs of New Orleans and Kansas City and in the ballrooms of Chicago and New York. Too often, the musical scene demanded that those who play jazz be “jazzed.” After World War II, as heroin addiction became the hallmark of revolution, talented bebop artists suffered long absences from the bandstand. Many did jail time, and others succumbed to the ravages of “horse.” With Jazz and Death, the causes behind the great jazz funerals may no longer be misconstrued. Its clinical and morbidly entertaining approach creates an invaluable compendium for jazz fans and scholars alike.
Jazz and Death: Reception, Rituals, and Representations
by Walter van de LeurJazz and Death: Reception, Rituals, and Representations critically examines the myriad and complex interactions between jazz and death, from the New Orleans "jazz funeral" to jazz in heaven or hell, final recordings, jazz monuments, and the music’s own presumed death. It looks at how fans, critics, journalists, historians, writers, the media, and musicians have narrated, mythologized, and relayed those stories. What causes the fascination of the jazz world with its deaths? What does it say about how our culture views jazz and its practitioners? Is jazz somehow a fatal culture? The narratives surrounding jazz and death cast a light on how the music and its creators are perceived. Stories of jazz musicians typically bring up different tropes, ranging from the tragic, misunderstood genius to the notion that virtuosity somehow comes at a price. Many of these narratives tend to perpetuate the gendered and racialized stereotypes that have been part of jazz’s history. In the end, the ideas that encompass jazz and death help audiences find meaning in a complex musical practice and come to grips with the passing of their revered musical heroes -- and possibly with their own mortality.
Jazz and Its Discontents: A Francis Davis Reader
by Francis DavisFrom Frank Sinatra to Sun Ra, from the jazz age to middle age, with thoughts on everything in-between, Francis Davis has been writing about American music and American culture for more than twenty years. His essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and the Village Voice among countless other publications from coast to coast. And now, for the first time, here are his most important writings of his impressive career-the quintessential Davis on everything from why Rent set musicals back two decades, to what Ken Burns should have filmed. And Davis's writing is as enjoyable as the music of which he writes. The New York Times Book Review has compared Davis's work to "a well-blown solo. "
Jazz and Literature: An Introduction
by Maria Antónia Lima Mia FunkJazz and Literature: An Introduction presents an original collection of essays from leading international scholars, examining an array of musical and literary interconnections including improvisation, multicultural influences, poetry, modernism, the Beat movement, jazz forms, noir, solo and collective expression, global perspectives on jazz and literature, etc. This volume sheds light on the critical and creative discussions of music and literature, showing the evolving relevance of jazz in the twenty-first century. The book also includes a special section dedicated to interviews with writers, musicians, and creatives such as U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, Anthony Joseph, Geoff Dyer, Paul Hirsch, Dickie Landry, and Dwandalyn R. Reece. This volume is an ideal resource for students of music and literature and for academics interested in the creative dialogues between jazz and literature.
Jazz and Machine-Age Imperialism: Music, "Race," and Intellectuals in France, 1918-1945
by Lane Jeremy F.Jeremy F. Lane’s Jazz and Machine-Age Imperialism is a bold challenge to the existing homogenous picture of the reception of American jazz in world-war era France. Lane’s book closely examines the reception of jazz among French-speaking intellectuals between 1918 and 1945 and is the first study to consider the relationships, sometimes symbiotic, sometimes antagonistic, between early white French jazz critics and those French-speaking intellectuals of color whose first encounters with the music in those years played a catalytic role in their emerging black or Creole consciousness. Jazz’s first arrival in France in 1918 coincided with a series of profound shocks to received notions of French national identity and cultural and moral superiority. These shocks, characteristic of the era of machine-age imperialism, had been provoked by the first total mechanized war, the accelerated introduction of Taylorist and Fordist production techniques into European factories, and the more frequent encounters with primitive “Others” in the imperial metropolis engendered by interwar imperialism. Through close readings of the work of early white French jazz critics, alongside the essays and poems of intellectuals of color such as the Nardal sisters, Léon-Gontran Damas, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and René Ménil, Jazz and Machine-Age Imperialism highlights the ways in which the French reception of jazz was bound up with a series of urgent contemporary debates about primitivism, imperialism, anti-imperialism, black and Creole consciousness, and the effects of American machine-age technologies on the minds and bodies of French citizens.
Jazz and Psychotherapy: Perspectives on the Complexity of Improvisation (SEMPRE Studies in The Psychology of Music)
by Simeon AlevBlending the insights of musicians and psychologists from D.W. Winnicott to Gregory Bateson to Ornette Coleman, Jazz and Psychotherapy is a groundbreaking exploration of improvisation that reveals its potential to transform our experience of ourselves and the challenges we face as a species. What we all share with the professional improvisers known as "psychotherapists" and "jazz musicians" is the reality of not knowing what those around us—or even we ourselves—are going to do next. Rather than avoiding it, however, these practitioners have learned to revere our inherent unpredictability as precisely the feature of human living that makes transformative change possible, fully incorporating it into the theories and practices that constitute their disciplines. Jazz and Psychotherapy provides a sophisticated but accessible overview of the revolutionary approaches to human development and creative expression embodied in these two seemingly disparate twentieth-century cultural traditions. Readers interested in music, psychotherapy, social psychology and contemporary theories of complexity will find Jazz and Psychotherapy engaging and useful. Its colorful synthesis of perspectives and multidimensional scope make it an essential contribution to our understanding of improvisation in music and in life.
Jazz and the Philosophy of Art
by Lee B. Brown David Goldblatt Theodore GracykCo-authored by three prominent philosophers of art, Jazz and the Philosophy of Art is the first book in English to be exclusively devoted to philosophical issues in jazz. It covers such diverse topics as minstrelsy, bebop, Voodoo, social and tap dancing, parades, phonography, musical forgeries, and jazz singing, as well as Goodman’s allographic/autographic distinction, Adorno’s critique of popular music, and what improvisation is and is not. The book is organized into three parts. Drawing on innovative strategies adopted to address challenges that arise for the project of defining art, Part I shows how historical definitions of art provide a blueprint for a historical definition of jazz. Part II extends the book’s commitment to social-historical contextualism by exploring distinctive ways that jazz has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. It uses the lens of jazz vocals to provide perspective on racial issues previously unaddressed in the work. It then examines the broader premise that jazz was a socially progressive force in American popular culture. Part III concentrates on a topic that has entered into the arguments of each of the previous chapters: what is jazz improvisation? It outlines a pluralistic framework in which distinctive performance intentions distinguish distinctive kinds of jazz improvisation. This book is a comprehensive and valuable resource for any reader interested in the intersections between jazz and philosophy.
Jazz and Totalitarianism
by Bruce JohnsonJazz and Totalitarianism examines jazz in a range of regimes that in significant ways may be described as totalitarian, historically covering the period from the Franco regime in Spain beginning in the 1930s to present day Iran and China. The book presents an overview of the two central terms and their development since their contemporaneous appearance in cultural and historiographical discourses in the early twentieth century, comprising fifteen essays written by specialists on particular regimes situated in a wide variety of time periods and places. Interdisciplinary in nature, this compelling work will appeal to students from Music and Jazz Studies to Political Science, Sociology, and Cultural Theory.
Jazz Baby, First Edition
by Carole Boston WeatherfordA group of toddlers move and play, hum and sleep to a jazz beat.
Jazz & Blues (Routledge Library Editions: Popular Music #4)
by Graham VulliamyThis book, first published in 1982, shows that jazz and blues are music forms that are about individualism, experiment, expression and feeling. From their origin in the work songs and spirituals of America’s southern slaves, through to their adaptation to the urban adaptation to the urban environment in Chicago and New Orleans, the author details the social and economic background that saw the birth of the blues and jazz, and introduces and appraises their leading exponents. He shows how African rhythms were combined with an American musical tradition to produce a distinctive style which was to revitalise Western music.
The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to the 21st Century
by Günther Huesmann Joachim-Ernst BerendtConsidered the most encyclopedic interpretive history of jazz available in one volume for more than 50 years, this reference has been completely revised and expanded to incorporate the dominant styles and musicians since the book's last publication in 1992, as well as the fruits of current research about earlier periods in the history of jazz. In addition, new chapters have been added on John Zorn, jazz in the 1990s and beyond, samplers, the tuba, the harmonica, non-Western instruments, postmodernist and repertory big bands, how the avant-garde has explored tradition, and many other subjects. This survey of past and current styles, elements, instruments, musicians, singers, and big bands of jazz continues to showcase an art form widely regarded as America's greatest contribution to the world's musical culture.
The Jazz Bubble: Neoclassical Jazz In Neoliberal Culture
by Dale ChapmanHailed by corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations as a metaphor for democratic interaction and business dynamics, contemporary jazz culture has a story to tell about the relationship between political economy and social practice in the era of neoliberal capitalism. The Jazz Bubble approaches the emergence of the neoclassical jazz aesthetic since the 1980s as a powerful, if unexpected, point of departure for a wide-ranging investigation of important social trends during this period, extending from the effects of financialization in the music industry to the structural upheaval created by urban redevelopment in major American cities. Dale Chapman draws from political and critical theory, oral history, and the public and trade press, making this a persuasive and compelling work for scholars across music, industry, and cultural studies.
Jazz Cavalcade: The Inside Story of Jazz
by Dave Dexter JrThe inside story of Jazz written by one of America's foremost authorities. The former editor of DOWN BEAT and correspondent for METRONOME takes you behind the scenes in the first book of its kind on modern American music.“Dave Dexter's Jazz Cavalcade is just about the best stuff I have ever read on the subject. Of all the writer-editors, Dexter is the most accurate, unprejudiced, and blessed with background.”—BENNY GOODMANDavid Edwin Dexter Jr. (November 25, 1915 – April 19, 1990) was an American music journalist, record company executive, and producer known primarily for his long association with Capitol Records. He worked with many important figures in jazz and traditional popular music, including Count Basie, Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, and Frank Sinatra.
Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana
by Steven FeldIn this remarkable book, Steven Feld, pioneer of the anthropology of sound, listens to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of jazz players in Ghana. Some have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended the innovations of John Coltrane with local instruments and worldviews. Combining memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, Feld conveys a diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests American nationalist and Afrocentric narratives of jazz history. His stories of Accra's jazz cosmopolitanism feature Ghanaba/Guy Warren (1923-2008), the eccentric drummer who befriended the likes of Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Thelonious Monk in the United States in the 1950s, only to return, embittered, to Ghana, where he became the country's leading experimentalist. Others whose stories figure prominently are Nii Noi Nortey, who fuses the legacies of the black avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s with pan-African philosophy in sculptural shrines to Coltrane and musical improvisations inspired by his work; the percussionist Nii Otoo Annan, a traditional master inspired by Coltrane's drummers Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali; and a union of Accra truck and minibus drivers whose squeeze-bulb honk-horn music for drivers' funerals recalls the jazz funerals of New Orleans. Feld describes these artists' cosmopolitan outlook as an "acoustemology," a way of knowing the world through sound.
Jazz Cultures
by David AkeAke examines the musical identities and styles of several jazz musicians, some canonical and some not, to illuminate how and why identities and styles contribute to the making of the jazz canon.
Jazz Diaspora: Music and Globalism
by Bruce JohnsonJazz Diaspora: Music and Globalism is about the international diaspora of jazz, well underway within a year of the first jazz recordings in 1917. This book studies the processes of the global jazz diaspora and its implications for jazz historiography in general, arguing for its relevance to the fields of sonic studies and cognitive theory. Until the late twentieth century, the historiography and analysis of jazz were centred on the US to the almost complete exclusion of any other region. The driving premise of this book is that jazz was not ‘invented’ and then exported: it was invented in the process of being disseminated. Jazz Diaspora is a sustained argument for an alternative historiography, based on a shift from a US-centric to a diasporic perspective on the music. The rationale is double-edged. It appears that most of the world’s jazz is experienced (performed and consumed) in diasporic sites – that is, outside its agreed geographical point of origin – and to ignore diasporic jazz is thus to ignore most jazz activity. It is also widely felt that the balance has shifted, as jazz in its homeland has become increasingly conservative. There has been an assumption that only the ‘authentic’ version of the music--as represented in its country of origin--was of aesthetic and historical interest in the jazz narrative; that the forms that emerged in other countries were simply rather pallid and enervated echoes of the ‘real thing’. This has been accompanied by challenges to the criterion of place- and race-based authenticity as a way of assessing the value of popular music forms in general. As the prototype for the globalisation of popular music, diasporic jazz provides a richly instructive template for the study of the history of modernity as played out musically.
Jazz Diasporas
by Rashida K. BraggsAt the close of the Second World War, waves of African American musicians migrated to Paris, eager to thrive in its reinvigorated jazz scene. Jazz Diasporas challenges the notion that Paris was a color-blind paradise for African Americans. On the contrary, musicians adopted a variety of strategies to cope with the cultural and social assumptions that confronted them throughout their careers in Paris, particularly as France became embroiled in struggles over race and identity when colonial conflicts like the Algerian War escalated. Using case studies of prominent musicians and thoughtful analysis of interviews, music, film, and literature, Rashida K. Braggs investigates the impact of this postwar musical migration. She examines key figures including musicians Sidney Bechet, Inez Cavanaugh, and Kenny Clarke and writer and social critic James Baldwin to show how they performed both as artists and as African Americans. Their collaborations with French musicians and critics complicated racial and cultural understandings of who could represent "authentic" jazz and created spaces for shifting racial and national identities--what Braggs terms "jazz diasporas."
Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War Era (American Made Music Series)
by Lisa E. DavenportJazz as an instrument of global diplomacy transformed superpower relations in the Cold War era and reshaped democracy's image worldwide. Lisa E. Davenport tells the story of America's program of jazz diplomacy practiced in the Soviet Union and other regions of the world from 1954 to 1968. Jazz music and jazz musicians seemed an ideal card to play in diminishing the credibility and appeal of Soviet communism in the Eastern bloc and beyond. Government-funded musical junkets by such jazz masters as Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Benny Goodman dramatically influenced perceptions of the U.S. and its capitalist brand of democracy while easing political tensions in the midst of critical Cold War crises. This book shows how, when coping with foreign questions about desegregation, the dispute over the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, jazz players and their handlers wrestled with the inequalities of race and the emergence of class conflict while promoting America in a global context. And, as jazz musicians are wont to do, many of these ambassadors riffed off script when the opportunity arose. Jazz Diplomacy argues that this musical method of winning hearts and minds often transcended economic and strategic priorities. Even so, the goal of containing communism remained paramount, and it prevailed over America's policy of redefining relations with emerging new nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Jazz from Detroit
by Mark StrykerJazz from Detroit explores the city’s pivotal role in shaping the course of modern and contemporary jazz. With more than two dozen in-depth profiles of remarkable Detroit-bred musicians, complemented by a generous selection of photographs, Mark Stryker makes Detroit jazz come alive as he draws out significant connections between the players, eras, styles, and Detroit’s distinctive history. Stryker’s story starts in the 1940s and ’50s, when the auto industry created a thriving black working and middle class in Detroit that supported a vibrant nightlife, and exceptional public school music programs and mentors in the community like pianist Barry Harris transformed the city into a jazz juggernaut. This golden age nurtured many legendary musicians—Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones, Gerald Wilson, Milt Jackson, Yusef Lateef, Donald Byrd, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Joe Henderson, and others. As the city’s fortunes change, Stryker turns his spotlight toward often overlooked but prescient musician-run cooperatives and self-determination groups of the 1960s and ’70s, such as the Strata Corporation and Tribe. In more recent decades, the city’s culture of mentorship, embodied by trumpeter and teacher Marcus Belgrave, ensured that Detroit continued to incubate world-class talent; Belgrave protégés like Geri Allen, Kenny Garrett, Robert Hurst, Regina Carter, Gerald Cleaver, and Karriem Riggins helped define contemporary jazz. The resilience of Detroit’s jazz tradition provides a powerful symbol of the city’s lasting cultural influence. Stryker’s 21 years as an arts reporter and critic at the Detroit Free Press are evident in his vivid storytelling and insightful criticism. Jazz from Detroit will appeal to jazz aficionados, casual fans, and anyone interested in the vibrant and complex history of cultural life in Detroit.
Jazz Guitar Licks: 25 Licks from the Harmonic Minor Scale & its Modes with Audio & Video (Jazz Guitar Licks #2)
by Gareth Evans25 original jazz guitar licks from the Harmonic minor scale and its modes in tablature and notation. >> 120 bars of music over 25 licks (average lick length 4.8 bars) >> Video at full speed & Audio at full & half speed (Downloadable) >> Backing tracks at full and slower practise speeds (Downloadable) >> Scale diagrams with theory and technique tips for each lick >> Guitar tablature has picking directions & fretting finger guide numbers Please Note: This eBook has written music and is not suitable for smaller screens.