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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Jazz
In Crossing Bar Lines: The Politics and Practices of Black Musical
Space James Gordon Williams reframes the nature and purpose of jazz
improvisation to illuminate the cultural work being done by five
creative musicians between 2005 and 2019. The political thought of
five African American improvisers-trumpeters Terence Blanchard and
Ambrose Akinmusire, drummers Billy Higgins and Terri Lyne
Carrington, and pianist Andrew Hill-is documented through
insightful, multilayered case studies that make explicit how these
musicians articulate their positionality in broader society.
Informed by Black feminist thought, these case studies unite around
the theory of Black musical space that comes from the lived
experiences of African Americans as they improvise through daily
life. The central argument builds upon the idea of space-making and
the geographic imagination in Black Geographies theory. Williams
considers how these musicians interface with contemporary social
movements like Black Lives Matter, build alternative institutional
models that challenge gender imbalance in improvisation culture,
and practice improvisation as joyful affirmation of Black value and
mobility. Both Terence Blanchard and Ambrose Akinmusire innovate
musical strategies to address systemic violence. Billy Higgins's
performance is discussed through the framework of breath to
understand his politics of inclusive space. Terri Lyne Carrington
confronts patriarchy in jazz culture through her Social Science
music project. The work of Andrew Hill is examined through the
context of his street theory, revealing his political stance on
performance and pedagogy. All readers will be elevated by this
innovative and timely book that speaks to issues that continue to
shape the lives of African Americans today.
The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight features twenty-one
conversations with musicians who have had at least fifty years of
professional experience, and several as many as seventy-five. In
all, these voices reflect some seventeen hundred years' worth of
paying dues. Appealing to casual fans and jazz aficionados alike,
these interviews have been carefully, but minimally edited by Peter
Zimmerman for sense and clarity, without changing any of the
musicians' actual words. Five of the interviewees-Dick Hyman, Jimmy
Owens, Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, and Yusef Lateef-have received
the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious Jazz Masters
Fellowship, attesting to their importance and ability. While not
official masters, the rest are veteran performers willing to share
their experiences and knowledge. Artists such as David Amram,
Charles Davis, Clifford Jordan, Valery Ponomarev, and Sandy
Stewart, to name a few, open their hearts and memories and reveal
who they are as people. The musicians interviewed for the book
range in age from their early seventies to mid-nineties. Older
musicians started their careers during the segregation of the Jim
Crow era, while the youngest came up during the struggle for civil
rights. All grapple with issues of race, performance, and jazz's
rich legacies. In addition to performing, touring, and recording,
many have composed and arranged, and others have contributed as
teachers, historians, studio musicians, session players, producers,
musicians' advocates, authors, columnists, poets, and artists. The
interviews in The Jazz Masters are invaluable primary material for
scholars and will appeal to musicians inspired by these veterans'
stories and their different approaches to music.
This year marks the golden anniversary of the Art Ensemble of
Chicago, the flagship band of the Association for the Advancement
of Creative Musicians. Formed in 1966 and flourishing until 2010,
the Art Ensemble distinguished itself by its unique performance
practices members played hundreds of instruments on stage, recited
poetry, performed theatrical sketches, and wore face paint, masks,
lab coats, and traditional African and Asian dress. The group,
which built a global audience and toured across six continents,
presented their work as experimental performance art, in opposition
to the jazz industry's traditionalist aesthetics. In Message to Our
Folks, Paul Steinbeck combines musical analysis and historical
inquiry to give us the definitive study of the Art Ensemble. In the
book, he proposes a new theory of group improvisation that explains
how the band members were able to improvise together in so many
different styles while also drawing on an extensive repertoire of
notated compositions. Steinbeck examines the multimedia dimensions
of the Art Ensemble's performances and the ways in which their
distinctive model of social relations kept the group performing
together for four decades. Message to Our Folks is a striking and
valuable contribution to our understanding of one of the world's
premier musical groups.
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