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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Jazz
From its beginning, jazz has presented a contradictory social
world: jazz musicians have worked diligently to erase old
boundaries, but they have just as resolutely constructed new ones.
David Ake's vibrant and original book considers the diverse musics
and related identities that jazz communities have shaped over the
course of the twentieth century, exploring the many ways in which
jazz musicians and audiences experience and understand themselves,
their music, their communities, and the world at large.
Writing as a professional pianist and composer, the author looks
at evolving meanings, values, and ideals--as well as the
sounds--that musicians, audiences, and critics carry to and from
the various activities they call jazz. Among the compelling topics
he discusses is the "visuality" of music: the relationship between
performance demeanor and musical meaning. Focusing on pianists Bill
Evans and Keith Jarrett, Ake investigates the ways in which
musicians' postures and attitudes influence perceptions of them as
profound and serious artists. In another essay, Ake examines the
musical values and ideals promulgated by college jazz education
programs through a consideration of saxophonist John Coltrane. He
also discusses the concept of the jazz "standard" in the 1990s and
the differing sense of tradition implied in recent recordings by
Wynton Marsalis and Bill Frisell.
"Jazz Cultures" shows how jazz history has not consisted simply of
a smoothly evolving series of musical styles, but rather an array
of individuals and communities engaging with disparate--and
oftentimes conflicting--actions, ideals, and attitudes.
A CHOICE 2018 Outstanding Academic Title.In Jazz Transatlantic,
Volume II, renowned scholar Gerhard Kubik extends and expands the
epic exploration he began in Jazz Transatlantic, Volume I. This
second volume amplifies how musicians influenced by swing, bebop,
and post-bop in Africa from the end of World War II into the 1970s
were interacting with each other and re-creating jazz. Much like
the first volume, Kubik examines musicians who adopted a wide
variety of jazz genres, from the jive and swing of the 1940s to
modern jazz. Drawing on personal encounters with the artists, as
well as his extensive field diaries and engagement with colleagues,
Kubik looks at the individual histories of musicians and composers
within jazz in Africa. He pays tribute to their lives and work in a
wider social context. The influences of European music are also
included in both volumes as it is the constant mixing of sources
and traditions that Kubik seeks to describe. Each of these
groundbreaking volumes explores the international cultural exchange
that shaped and continues to shape jazz. Together, these volumes
culminate an integral recasting of international jazz history.
"From Buddy Collette's brilliant ruminations on Paul Robeson to
Horace Tapscott's extraordinary insights about artistic production
and community life . . . this collection of oral testimony presents
a unique and memorable portrait of the 'Avenue' and of the artists
whose creativity nurtured and sustained its golden age."--George
Lipsitz, author of "Dangerous Crossroads
"If ever the West Coast enjoyed its own equivalent of the Harlem
Renaissance, it was here on Central Avenue. This too-often
forgotten setting was nothing less than a center of cultural
ferment and a showplace for artistic achievement. Finally its story
has been told, with a richness of detail and vitality of
expression, by those who helped make it happen."--Ted Gioia, author
of "West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California
"What a wonderful, comprehensive volume, full of knowledge and
insight about an important time and place in jazz history. This
book is a needed and welcomed addition on the rich African-American
musical heritage of Los Angeles. It is well written and edited by
people who were actually involved in the creation of the music,
along with others who have a deep concern for preserving that
legacy. This work gives the reader a truly in-depth look at the
musicians, the music, and the social and political climate during
that important development in American culture."--Kenny Burrell,
jazz guitarist and Director of the Jazz Studies Program and
Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology at the University of
California, Los Angeles
When Derek Coller decided to pay tribute to his late friend - the
author, biographer, discographer and researcher, Bert Whyatt - he
looked for a common theme under which to group some of the articles
they had written together over the years. He found it in Chicago
where their research activities had gravitated towards the style of
music created by the young white musicians from that city and its
environs - particularly those who rallied around the figurehead of
Eddie Condon - as they listened to and learned from the pioneer
black stylists, many of them the greatest jazz players to emigrate
from New Orleans, including King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Johnny
and Baby Dodds and Jimmy Noone. Two trips to the USA, made by the
authors in 1979 and 1992, led to meetings and correspondence with
some of the musicians in this compilation, and to learning about
many others. There are connections between most of these articles,
interviews and notes, with an over-lapping of jobs, leaders and
clubs. Some of the stories are about pioneers: Elmer Schoebel, Jack
Pettis and Frank Snyder, for example, were in the New Orleans
Rhythm Kings in 1923. Trombonist George Brunis, chronicled here,
was also a member of that band, though his long career - during
which he played with Muggsy Spanier, as did Rod Cless and George
Zack, in the Spanier Ragtime Band of 'Great Sixteen' fame - has
been more widely documented. Floyd Bean and Tut Soper, here too,
were also Spanier alumni. The articles originally appeared
variously under a dual by-line, or by either Whyatt or Coller, but
always with consultation and discussion prior to publication. Here
they become a lively mix of the voices of the authors as well as
the musicians and their families, building a story through
biography, reviews and discography. The book is illustrated with
evocative black and white photographs and images, and there is an
Index of names and places to help the reader keep track of the
musicians, composers, producers, promoters and writers who created
this part of the history of jazz.
""Is there jazz in China?"" This is the question that sent author
Eugene Marlow on his quest to uncover the history of jazz in China.
Marlow traces China's introduction to jazz in the early 1920s, its
interruption by Chinese leadership under Mao in 1949, and its
rejuvenation in the early 1980s with the start of China's opening
to the world under Premier Deng Xiaoping. Covering a span of almost
one hundred years, Marlow focuses on a variety of subjects--the
musicians who initiated jazz performances in China, the means by
which jazz was incorporated into Chinese culture, and the musicians
and venues that now present jazz performances. Featuring unique,
face-to-face interviews with leading indigenous jazz musicians in
Beijing and Shanghai, plus interviews with club owners, promoters,
expatriates, and even diplomats, Marlow marks the evolution of jazz
in China as it parallels China's social, economic, and political
evolution through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
Also featured is an interview with one of the extant members of the
Jimmy King Big Band of the 1940s, one of the first major
all-Chinese jazz big bands in Shanghai. Ultimately, Jazz in China:
From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression is a
cultural history that reveals the inexorable evolution of a
democratic form of music in a Communist state.
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