Jazz emerged during the political and social upheaval of world war, communist revolution, Red Scares, and the Black Migration. The tumult bred disagreements about the cultural significance of jazz that concerned both its African American roots and its international appeal. The questions about what was new or even radical about the music initiated debates that writers recapitulated for decades. Jazz Internationalism offers a bold reconsideration of jazz's influence in Afro-modernist literature. Ranging from the New Negro Renaissance through the social movements of the 1960s, John Lowney articulates nothing less than a new history of Afro-modernist jazz writing. Jazz added immeasurably to the vocabulary for discussing radical internationalism and black modernism in leftist African American literature. Lowney examines how Claude McKay, Ann Petry, Langston Hughes, and many other writers employed jazz as both a critical social discourse and mode of artistic expression to explore the possibilities-and challenges-of black internationalism. The result is an expansive understanding of jazz writing sure to spur new debates.

Today, jazz history is dominated by iconic figures who have taken on an almost God-like status. From Satchmo to Duke, Bird to Trane, these legendary jazzmen form the backbone of the jazz tradition. Jazz icons not only provide musicians and audiences with figureheads to revere but have also come to stand for a number of values and beliefs that shape our view of the music itself. Jazz Icons explores the growing significance of icons in jazz and discusses the reasons why the music's history is increasingly dependent on the legacies of 'great men'. Using a series of individual case studies, Whyton examines the influence of jazz icons through different forms of historical mediation, including the recording, language, image and myth. The book encourages readers to take a fresh look at their relationship with iconic figures of the past and challenges many of the dominant narratives in jazz today.

Manikay are the ancestral songs of Arnhem Land, passed down over generations and shaping relationships between people and the country.Singing Bones foregrounds the voices of manikay singers from Ngukurr in southeastern Arnhem Land and charts their critically acclaimed collaboration with jazz musicians from the Australian Art Orchestra, Crossing Roper Bar. It offers an overview of WAgilak manikay narratives and style, including their social, ceremonial and linguistic aspects, and explores the Crossing Roper Bar project as an example of creative intercultural collaboration and a living continuation of the manikay tradition."Through song, the ancestral past animates the present, moving yolAu (people) to dance. In song, community is established. By song, the past enfolds the present. Today, the unique voices of WAgilak resound over the ancestral ground and water, carried by the songs of old." Audio examples are available at: https://open.sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/singing-bones.html.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) is widely considered the jazz tradition's most celebrated composer. This engaging yet scholarly volume explores his long career and his rich cultural legacy from a broad range of in-depth perspectives, from the musical and historical to the political and international. World-renowned scholars and musicians examine Ellington's influence on jazz music, its criticism, and its historiography. The chronological structure of the volume allows a clear understanding of the development of key themes, with chapters surveying his work and his reception in America and abroad. By both expanding and reconsidering the contexts in which Ellington, his orchestra, and his music are discussed, Duke Ellington Studies reflects a wealth of new directions that have emerged in jazz studies, including focuses on music in media, class hierarchy discourse, globalization, cross-cultural reception, and the role of marketing, as well as manuscript score studies and performance studies.

Dave Brubeck's Time Out ranks among the most popular, successful, and influential jazz albums of all time. Released by Columbia in 1959 alongside such other landmark albums as Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and Charles Mingus's Mingus Ah Um, Time Out became the one of the first jazz albums to be certified platinum, while its featured track, "Take Five," became the best-selling jazz single of the twentieth century, surpassing one million copies. In addition to its commercial successes, the album is widely recognized as a pioneering endeavor into the use of odd meters in jazz. With its opening track, "Blue Rondo a la Turk" written in 9/8, its hit single "Take Five" in 5/4, and equally innovative uses of the more common 3/4 and 4/4 meters on other tracks, Time Out has played an important role in the development of modern jazz. In this book, author Stephen A. Crist draws on nearly fifteen years of archival research to offer the most thorough examination to date of this seminal jazz album. Supplementing his research with interviews with key individuals, including Brubeck's widow Iola and daughter Catherine, as well as interviews conducted with Brubeck himself prior to his passing in 2012, Crist paints a complete picture of the album's origins, creation, and legacy. Couching careful analysis of each of the album's seven tracks within historical and cultural contexts, he offers fascinating insights into the composition and development of some of the albums best known tunes. From Brubeck's 1958 State Department-sponsored tour, during which he first encountered the Turkish aksak rhythms that would form the basis of "Blue Rondo a la Turk," to the backstage jam session that planted the seeds for "Take Five," Crist sheds an exciting new light on one of the most significant albums in jazz history.

Sophisticated Giant presents the life and legacy of tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon (1923-1990), one of the major innovators of modern jazz. In a context of biography, history, and memoir, Maxine Gordon has completed the book that her late husband began, weaving his "solo" turns with her voice and a chorus of voices from past and present. Reading like a jazz composition, the blend of research, anecdote, and a selection of Dexter's personal letters reflects his colorful life and legendary times. It is clear why the celebrated trumpet genius Dizzy Gillespie said to Dexter, "Man, you ought to leave your karma to science." Dexter Gordon the icon is the Dexter beloved and celebrated on albums, on film, and in jazz lore--even in a street named for him in Copenhagen. But this image of the cool jazzman fails to come to terms with the multidimensional man full of humor and wisdom, a figure who struggled to reconcile being both a creative outsider who broke the rules and a comforting insider who was a son, father, husband, and world citizen. This essential book is an attempt to fill in the gaps created by our misperceptions as well as the gaps left by Dexter himself.

This text reveals how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. It aims to illuminate the distinctive creative processes that comprise improvisation. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner demonstrates that a lifetime of preparation lies behind the skilled improviser's every note. Berliner's integration of data concerning musical development, the rigorous practice and thought artists devote to jazz outside performance, and the complexities of composing in the moment leads to a new understanding of jazz improvisation as a language, an aesthetic and a tradition. The product of more than 15 years of immersion in the jazz world, "Thinking in Jazz" combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's own experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than 50 professional musicians. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. "Thinking in Jazz" features musical examples from the 1920s to the present, including transcriptions (keyed to commercial recordings) of collective improvisations by Miles Davis's and John Coltrane's groups.

The drum kit has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. Kick It, a provocative social history of the instrument, looks closely at key innovators in the development of the drum kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, author Matt Brennan makes the case for the drum kit's role as one of the most transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Kick It shows how the drum kit and drummers helped change modern music-and society as a whole-from the bottom up.

Keith Jarrett ranks among the most accomplished and influential pianists in jazz history. His TheKoln Concert stands among the most important jazz recordings of the past four decades, not only because of the music on the record, but also because of the remarkable reception it has received from musicians and lay-listeners alike. Since the album's 1975 release, it has sold over three million copies: a remarkable achievement for any jazz record, but an unprecedented feat for a two-disc set of solo piano performances featuring no well-known songs.
In Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert, author Peter Elsdon seeks to uncover what it is about this recording, about Keith Jarrett's performance, that elicits such success. Recognizing The Koln Concert as a multi-faceted text, Elsdon engages with it musically, culturally, aesthetically, and historically in order to understand the concert and album as a means through which Jarrett articulated his own cultural and musical outlook, and establish himself as a serious artist. Through these explorations of the concert as text, of the recording and of the live performance, Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert fills a major hole in jazz scholarship, and is essential reading for jazz scholars and musicians alike, as well as Keith Jarrett's many fans."

(Instrumental Folio). 14 songs for clarinet, complete with a play-along CD. Includes: Bernie's Tune * Cry Me a River * Fever * Fly Me to the Moon * God Bless' the Child * Harlem Nocturne * Moonglow * A Night in Tunisia * One Note Samba * Opus One * Satin Doll * Slightly Out of Tune (Desafinado) * Take the "A" Train * Yardbird Suite.

Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/Film actress and author, Norma Miller shares her touching historical memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance craze that \u0022spread the power of swing across the world like Wildfire.\u0022 A dance contest winner by 14, Norma Miller became a member of Herbert White's Lindy Hoppers and a celebrated Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hop champion. Swingin' at the Savoy chronicles a significant period in American cultural history and race relations, as it glorifies the home of the Lindy Hop and he birthplace of memorable dance hall fads. Miller shares fascinating anecdotes about her youthful encounters with many of the greatest jazz legends in music history, including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, and even boxer Joe Louis. Readers will experience the legend of the celebrated Harlem ballroom and the phenomenal Swing generation that changed music and dance history forever.

Antipodean Riffs is a collection of essays on Australian jazz and jazz in Australia. Chronologically they range from what could be called the 'prehistory' of the music - the tradition of US-sourced African-American music that predated the arrival of music billed as 'jazz' - to the present. Thematically they include studies of framing infrastructural mechanisms including the media. The volume also incorporates case studies of particular musicians or groups that reflect distinctive aspects of the Australian jazz tradition.

Easy Jazzin' About Standards Piano presents 15 favourite jazz songs especially arranged by Pam Wedgwood for elementary level pianists. Online audio of performances are available for an enhanced learning experience. The selection includes fun original pieces written by Pam, as well as beloved classics such as The Entertainer, Anything Goes, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and more!

(Signature Licks Guitar). Explore the groundbreaking style of one of the most unique and influential guitarists in jazz This book/CD pack explores 16 of his signature tunes: Ain't Misbehavin' * Belleville * Daphne * Dinah * Djangology * Honeysuckle Rose * Limehouse Blues * Marie * Minor Swing * Nuages * Old Folks at Home (Swanee River) * Rose Room * Stardust * Swing 42 * Swing Guitar * Tiger Rag (Hold That Tiger). The CD includes full demos of each.

Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy came from Kansas City to find nationwide fame in the later 1930s. The many records they made between 1929 and 1949 came to exemplify the Kansas City style of jazz, but they were also criticized for their populism and inauthenticity. In The Recordings of Andy Kirk' and his Clouds of Joy, George Burrows considers these records as representing negotiations over racialized styles between black jazz musicians and the racist music industry during a vital period of popularity and change for American jazz. The book explores the way that these reformative negotiations shaped and can be heard in the recorded music. By comparing the band's appropriation of musical styles to the manipulation of masks in black forms of blackface performance-both signifying and subverting racist conceptions of black authenticity-it reveals how the dynamic between black musicians, their audiences and critics impacted upon jazz as a practice and conception.

Featuring more than seventy thought-provoking selections drawn from contemporary journalism, reviews, program notes, memoirs, interviews, and other sources, Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History, Second Edition, brings to life the controversies and critical issues that have accompanied more than 100 years of jazz history. This unique volume gives voice to a wide range of perspectives which stress different reactions to and uses of jazz, both within and across communities, enabling readers to see that jazz is not just about names, dates, and chords, but rather about issues and ideas, cultural activities, and experiences that have affected people deeply in a great variety of ways. Selections include contributions from well-known figures such as Jelly Roll Morton, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis; from renowned writers including Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer, and Ralph Ellison; and from critics and historians ranging from Gunther Schuller and Christopher Small to Sherrie Tucker and George Lipsitz. Filled with insightful writing, Keeping Time aims to increase historical awareness, to provoke critical thinking, and to encourage lively classroom discussion as students relive the intriguing story of jazz.

A group of resourceful kids start "solution-seekers.com," a website where "cybervisitors" can get answers to questions that trouble them. But when one questioner asks the true meaning of Christmas, the kids seek to unravel the mystery by journeying back through the prophecies of the Old Testament. What they find is a series of "S" words that reveal a "spectacular story!" With creative characters, humorous dialogue and great music, The "S" Files is a children's Christmas musical your kids will love performing.

A rare collection of more than 200 full-color and black-and-white souvenir photographs and memorabilia that bring to life the renowned jazz nightclubs of the 1940s and 1950s, compiled by Grammy Award-winning record executive and music historian Jeff Gold and featuring exclusive interviews with Quincy Jones, Sonny Rollins, Robin Givhan, Jason Moran, and Dan Morgenstern. In the two decades before the Civil Rights movement, jazz nightclubs were among the first places that opened their doors to both Black and white performers and club goers in Jim Crow America. In this extraordinary collection, Jeff Gold looks back at this explosive moment in the history of Jazz and American culture, and the spaces at the center of artistic and social change. Sittin' In is a visual history of jazz clubs during these crucial decades when some of the greatest names in in the genre-Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, and many others-were headlining acts across the country. In many of the clubs, Black and white musicians played together and more significantly, people of all races gathered together to enjoy an evening's entertainment. House photographers roamed the floor and for a dollar, took picture of patrons that were developed on site and could be taken home in a keepsake folder with the club's name and logo. Sittin' In tells the story of the most popular club in these cities through striking images, first-hand anecdotes, true tales about the musicians who performed their unforgettable shows, notes on important music recorded live there, and more. All of this is supplemented by colorful club memorabilia, including posters, handbills, menus, branded matchbooks, and more. Inside you'll also find exclusive, in-depth interviews conducted specifically for this book with the legendary Quincy Jones; jazz great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins; Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan; jazz musician and creative director of the Kennedy Center, Jason Moran; and jazz critic Dan Morgenstern. Gold surveys America's jazz scene and its intersection with racism during segregation, focusing on three crucial regions: the East Coast (New York, Atlantic City, Boston, Washington, D.C.); the Midwest (Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City); and the West Coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco). This collection of ephemeral snapshots tells the story of an era that helped transform American life, beginning the move from traditional Dixieland jazz to bebop, from conservatism to the push for personal freedom.

In 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.

"Birds of Fire" brings overdue critical attention to fusion, a musical idiom that emerged as young musicians blended elements of jazz, rock, and funk in the late 1960s and 1970s. At the time, fusion was disparaged by jazz writers and ignored by rock critics. In the years since, it has come to be seen as a commercially driven jazz substyle. Fusion never did coalesce into a genre. In "Birds of Fire," Kevin Fellezs contends that hybridity was its reason for being. By mixing different musical and cultural traditions, fusion artists sought to disrupt generic boundaries, cultural hierarchies, and critical assumptions. Interpreting the work of four distinctive fusion artists--Tony Williams, John McLaughlin, Joni Mitchell, and Herbie Hancock--Fellezs highlights the ways that they challenged convention in the 1960s and 1970s. He also considers the extent to which a musician can be taken seriously as an artist across divergent musical traditions. "Birds of Fire" concludes with a look at the current activities of McLaughlin, Mitchell, and Hancock; Williams's final recordings; and the legacy of the fusion music made by these four pioneering artists.

When it was first published in 1994, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and his Era was widely heralded not only as the most thorough investigation of Scott Joplin's life and music, but also as a gripping read, almost a detective story. This new and expanded edition-more than a third larger than the first-goes far beyond the original publication in uncovering new details of the composer's life and insights into his music. It explores Joplin's early, pre-ragtime career as a quartet singer, a period of his life that was previously unknown. The book also surveys the nature of ragtime before Joplin entered the ragtime scene and how he changed the style. Author Edward A. Berlin offers insightful commentary on each of all of Joplin's works, showing his influence on other ragtime and non-ragtime composers. He traces too Joplin's continued music studies late in life, and how these reflect his dedication to education and probably account for the radical changes that occur in his last few rags. And he puts new emphasis on Joplin's efforts in musical theater, bringing in early versions of his Ragtime Dance and its precedents. Joplin's wife Freddie is shown to be a major inspiration to his opera Treemonisha, with her family background and values being reflected in that work. Joplin's reputation faded in the 1920s-30s, but interest in his music slowly re-emerged in the 1940s and gradually built toward a spectacular revival in the 1970s, when major battles ensued for possession of rights.