In 1957, Duke Ellington released the influential album A Drum Is a Woman. This musical allegory revealed the implicit truth about the role of women in jazz discourse-jilted by the musician and replaced by the drum. Further, the album's cover displays an image of a woman sitting atop a drum, depicting the way in which the drum literally obscures the female body, turning the subject into an object. This objectification of women leads to a critical reading of the role of women in jazz music: If the drum can take the place of a woman, then a woman can also take the place of a drum. The Drum Is a Wild Woman: Jazz and Gender in African Diaspora Literature challenges that image but also defines a counter-tradition within women's writing that involves the reinvention and reclamation of a modern jazz discourse. Despite their alienation from bebop, women have found jazz music empowering and have demonstrated this power in various ways. The Drum Is a Wild Woman explores the complex relationship between women and jazz music in recent African diasporic literature. The book examines how women writers from the African diaspora have challenged and revised major tropes and concerns of jazz literature since the bebop era in the mid-1940s. Black women writers create dissonant sounds that broaden our understanding of jazz literature. By underscoring the extent to which gender is already embedded in jazz discourse, author Patricia G. Lespinasse responds to and corrects narratives that tell the story of jazz through a male-centered lens. She concentrates on how the Wild Woman, the female vocalist in classic blues, used blues and jazz to push the boundaries of Black womanhood outside of the confines of respectability. In texts that refer to jazz in form or content, the Wild Woman constitutes a figure of resistance who uses language, image, and improvisation to refashion herself from object to subject. This book breaks new ground by comparing the politics of resistance alongside moments of improvisation by examining recurring literary motifs-cry-and-response, the Wild Woman, and the jazz moment-in jazz novels, short stories, and poetry, comparing works by Ann Petry, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Edwidge Danticat, and Maya Angelou with pieces by Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Ellington. Within an interdisciplinary and transnational context, Lespinasse foregrounds the vexed negotiations around gender and jazz discourse.

"David Yaffe's "Fascinating Rhythm" is a marvelously evocative celebration of the interrelationships between modern American writing and jazz, which is in itself the outstanding American contribution to the arts, at least since Walt Whitman. I find particularly poignant the understanding that Ralph Ellison's true sequel to his "Invisible Man" was his poetics of jazz."--Harold Bloom

"This is a fascinating and formidable response to Ralph Ellison's famous call for a 'jazz-shaped' reading of American literature. Yaffe's bold and often brilliant treatments of black-Jewish relations in twentieth-century U.S. culture, Ellison's own seminal works, poetry and jazz influences, and the autobiographies of Mingus, Holiday, and Miles Davis are major contributions to American and Afro-American studies."--Cornel West, Princeton University

""Fascinating Rhythm" is an extremely absorbing and compelling demonstration of the key part jazz played in the construction of literary modernism. The book demonstrates an unusually mature intellectual self-possession and great analytic insight into U.S. cultural history, particularly the area of race and music. Yaffe is on his way to becoming one of the most notable public and scholarly writers of his generation."--Eric Lott, University of Virginia, author of "Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class"

"David Yaffe's "Fascinating Rhythm" does not simply fill a gaping vacuum in contemporary literary studies. It is likely to become the canonical text on jazz and literature, radically influencing all future writing on the subject. Each chapter is unique in its approach and sheds new light on books and poems we thought we knew."--KrinGabbard, State University of New York

"Written with a combination of vigor and shrewdness that is rare in jazz studies, "Fascinating Rhythm" possesses a clarity of argument that is both inviting and provocative. Yaffe captures the flavor of the jazz musicians and writers he covers--something of the elegance of Ralph Ellison, the saltiness of Miles Davis, and the bristle and energy of Charles Mingus."--Scott Saul, University of California, Berkeley

"Yaffe is one of the best informed--probably the best--of the younger scholars working in the relationship of jazz and the arts. His writing is clear, his descriptions evocative, and his comments judicious and shrewd. This is a book that should be read by serious students of America's arts, including the jazz scholars, and those in literature, American history, and American studies."--John Szwed, Yale University

Beginning with the African musical heritage and its fusion with European forms in the New World, Marshall Stearns's history of jazz guides the reader through work songs, spirituls, ragtime, and the blues, to the birth of jazz in New Orleans and its adoption by St Louis, Chicago, Kansas City, and New York. From swing and bop to the early days of rock, this lively book introduces us to the great musicians and singers and examines jazz's cultural effects on American and the world.

Quyen Van Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the most preeminent jazz musicians in Vietnam. Considered a pioneer in the country, Minh is often publicly recognized as the "godfather of Vietnamese jazz." Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam tells the story of the music as it intertwined with Minh's own narrative. Stan BH Tan-Tangbau details Minh's life story, telling how Minh pioneered jazz as an original genre even while navigating the trials and tribulations of a fervent socialist revolution, of the ideological battle that was the Cold War, of Vietnam's war against the United States, and of the political changes during the Doi Moi period between the mid-1980s and the 1990s. Minh worked tirelessly and delivered two breakthrough solo recitals in 1988 and 1989, marking the first time jazz was performed in the public sphere in the socialist state. To gain jazz acceptance as a mainstream musical art form, Minh founded Minh Jazz Club. With the release of his debut album of original compositions in 2000, Minh shaped the nascent genre of Vietnamese jazz. Minh's endeavors kickstarted the momentum, from his performing jazz in public, teaching jazz both formally and informally, and contributing to the shaping of an original Vietnamese voice to stand out among the many styles in the jazz world. Most importantly, Minh generated a public space for musicians to play and for the Vietnamese to listen. His work eventually helped to gain jazz the credibility necessary at the national conservatoire to offer instruction in a professional music education program.

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.

Sing 16 of the world's most beloved jazz standards in the style of legendary vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Etta James, Eileen Rodgers, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan, and more This deluxe package (songbook plus two enhanced CDs) provides everything you need to arrive at auditions and performances completely prepared, whether your accompaniment will be live or pre-recorded. If a pianist is present, hand them the complete piano/vocal sheet music. (Chord fingering grids are also provided for optional guitar accompaniment.) If recorded accompaniment is required, the fully-orchestrated audio tracks will lend a professional touch to your performance. Vocal demonstration tracks are also included for each song. Titles: Anything Goes * At Last * Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered * Cry Me a River * Don't Rain on My Parade * Dream a Little Dream of Me * Embraceable You * I Get a Kick out of You * Misty * My Funny Valentine * Over the Rainbow * Someone to Watch Over Me * Summertime * They Can't Take That Away From Me * Whatever Lola Wants * When I Fall in Love.
With Vocal Complete, the sheet music matches the original key and form of the backing tracks, so if you practice singing with one, you won't encounter unexpected variations with the other. Upload the tracks to your portable music player for practice, performances, auditions, parties, or even singing for fun in the car There are two versions of every song on the CDs: a full-performance track with sound-alike vocals for listening and learning, and a professional-quality backing track for singing along. When the CDs are played on a Mac or Windows-based computer, the TNT (Tone 'N' Tempo) Changer lets you customize the key and tempo of each track to suit your voice and style. (The key changer modifies audio playback via computer only. The sheet music remains in its original key.)
"If you love performing classic jazz standards, you need to have this book in your music bag. I know I'll be using i

Lennie Tristano was one of jazz's most extraordinary innovators, possessing a superb piano technique and an awesome musical imagination. Unheralded by the general public, the blind pianist's work was revered by many jazz greats including the legendary Charlie Parker. Tristano's persuasive personality made him an ideal teacher, and he proved that (against the accepted theory of the time) jazz improvisation could be taught. His guidance played a big part in the development of many instrumentalists including saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh and double-bassist Peter Ind. It is Ind's long, direct involvement with his subject that makes this such a revealing book: the story of an English musician going to New York to study with a neglected Jazz giant. In the process, Tristano's genius is examined and his reputation revalued, with Ind making a persuasive case for the pianist to be placed at the centre of jazz developments in the mid-20th century.

Should we talk of European jazz or jazz in Europe? What kinds of networks link those who make it happen 'on the ground'? What challenges do they have to face? Jazz is a part of the cultural fabric of many of the European countries. Jazz in Europe: Networking and Negotiating Identities presents jazz in Europe as a complex arena, where the very notions of cultural identity, jazz practices and Europe are continually being negotiated against an ever changing social, cultural, political and economic environment. The book gives voice to musicians, promoters, festival directors, educators and researchers regarding the challenges they are faced with in their everyday practices. Jazz identities in Europe result from the negotiation between discourse and practice and in the interstices between the formal and informal networks that support them, as if 'Jazz' and 'Europe' were blank canvases where diversified notions of what jazz and Europe should or could be are projected.