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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music > Jazz
Miles Davis, supremely cool behind his shades. Billie Holiday, eyes
closed and head tilted back in full cry. Blue Notes in Black and
White charts the development of jazz photography from the swing era
of the 1930s to the rise of black nationalism in the '60s. Through
text and photographs, Benjamin Cawthra provides a fascinating
account of the partnership between two of the twentieth century's
most innovative art forms.
Laura Nyro (1947-1997) was one of the most significant figures to
emerge from the singer-songwriter boom of the 1960s. She first came
to attention when her songs were hits for Barbra Streisand, The
Fifth Dimension, Peter, Paul and Mary, and others. But it was on
her own recordings that she imprinted her vibrant personality. With
albums like Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York
Tendaberry she mixed the sounds of soul, pop, jazz and Broadway to
fashion autobiographical songs that earned her a fanatical
following and influenced a generation of music-makers. In later
life her preoccupations shifted from the self to embrace public
causes such as feminism, animal rights and ecology - the music grew
mellower, but her genius was undimmed. This book examines her
entire studio career from 1967's More than a New Discovery to the
posthumous Angel in the Dark release of 2001. Also surveyed are the
many live albums that preserve her charismatic stage presence. With
analysis of her teasing, poetic lyrics and unique vocal and
harmonic style, this is the first-ever study to concentrate on
Laura Nyro's music and how she created it. Elton John idolised her;
Joni Mitchell declared her 'a true original'. Here's why.
For over two decades Julian Joseph has been a towering figure in
contemporary jazz. A prodigious composer, a phenomenal pianist, a
respected bandleader, an inspirational educator and a
highly-engaging broadcaster, he is a true champion of the music. In
Music of Initiative Julian Joseph shares his insight into the
philosophy and practice of jazz and jazz performance. With incisive
text, stunning imagery, and downloadable exercises and videos, this
unique guide teaches the listener of jazz how to immerse themselves
in the music, and the performer how to approach learning repertoire
and improvisation. Bold, provocative, thoughtful and deeply
inspiring, Music of Initiative will provide life-long stimulation
and inspiration to fans, and performers, of jazz.
'Any book on my life would start with my basic philosophy of
fighting racial prejudice. I loved jazz, and jazz was my way of
doing that,' Norman Granz told Tad Hershorn during the final
interviews given for this book. Granz, who died in 2001, was
iconoclastic, independent, immensely influential, often thoroughly
unpleasant - and one of jazz's true giants. Granz played an
essential part in bringing jazz to audiences around the world,
defying racial and social prejudice as he did so, and demanding
that African-American performers be treated equally everywhere they
toured. In this definitive biography, Hershorn recounts Granz's
story: creator of the legendary jam session concerts known as Jazz
at the Philharmonic; founder of the Verve record label; pioneer of
live recordings and worldwide jazz concert tours; manager and
recording producer for numerous stars, including Ella Fitzgerald
and Oscar Peterson.
(Piano Solo Songbook). Piano solo arrangements of 24 jazz
favorites, including: Almost like Being in Love * Angel Eyes *
Autumn Leaves * Bewitched * God Bless' the Child * If You Go Away *
It Might as Well Be Spring * Love Me or Leave Me * On Green Dolphin
Street * Smoke Gets in Your Eyes * That Old Black Magic * What's
New? * Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (And Dream Your Troubles Away)
* and more.
Thelonius Monk, Billy Taylor, and Maceo Parker--famous jazz artists
who have shared the unique sounds of North Carolina with the
world--are but a few of the dynamic African American artists from
eastern North Carolina featured in The African American Music
Trails of Eastern North Carolina. This first-of-its-kind travel
guide will take you on a fascinating journey to music venues,
events, and museums that illuminate the lives of the musicians and
reveal the deep ties between music and community. Interviews with
more than 90 artists open doors to a world of music, especially
jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, gospel and church music, blues, rap,
marching band music, and beach music. New and historical
photographs enliven the narrative, and maps and travel information
help you plan your trip. Included is a CD with 17 recordings
performed by some of the region's outstanding artists.
Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on earth for his inventive
music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form
improvisation in an ensemble setting with the devoted band he
called the "Arkestra." Sun Ra took jazz from the inner city to
outer space, infusing traditional swing with far-out harmonies,
rhythms, and sounds. Described as the father of Afrofuturism, Sun
Ra created "space music" as a means of building a better future for
American blacks here on earth. A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the
Birth of Afrofuturism offers a spirited introduction to the life
and work of this legendary but underappreciated musician, composer,
and poet. Paul Youngquist explores and assesses Sun Ra's
wide-ranging creative output-music, public preaching, graphic
design, film and stage performance, and poetry-and connects his
diverse undertakings to the culture and politics of his times,
including the space race, the rise of technocracy, the civil rights
movement, and even space-age bachelor-pad music. By thoroughly
examining the astro-black mythology that Sun Ra espoused,
Youngquist masterfully demonstrates that he offered both a holistic
response to a planet desperately in need of new visions and
vibrations and a new kind of political activism that used popular
culture to advance social change. In a nation obsessed with space
and confused about race, Sun Ra aimed not just at assimilation for
the socially disfranchised but even more at a wholesale
transformation of American society and a more creative, egalitarian
world.
From Queen Latifah to Count Basie, Madonna to Monk, "Hole in our
soul: the loss of beauty and meaning in American popular music"
traces popular music back to its roots in jazz, blues, country, and
gospel through the rise in rock'n'roll and the emergence of heavy
metal, punk, and rap. Yet despite the vigour and balance of these
musical origins, Martha Bayles argues, something has gone seriously
wrong, both with the sound of popular music and the sensibility it
expresses. Bayles defended the tough, affirmative spirit of
Afro-American music against the strain of artistic modernism she
calls"perverse". She describes how perverse modernism was grafted
onto popular music in the late 1960s, and argues that the result
has been a cult of brutality and obscenity that is profoundly
anti-musical. Unlike other recent critics of popular music, Bayles
does not blame the problem on commerce. She argues that culture
shapes the market and not the other way around. Finding censorship
of popular music "both a practical and a constitutional
impossibility", Bayles insists that "an informed shift in public
tastes may be our only hope of reversing the current malignant
moods".
"New Musical Figurations" exemplifies a dramatically new
way of configuring jazz music and history. By relating
biography to the cultural and musical contours of contemporary
American life, Ronald M. Radano observes jazz practice as part
of the complex interweaving of postmodern culture--a
culture that has eroded conventional categories defining jazz
and the jazz musician. Radano accomplishes all this by
analyzing the creative life of Anthony Braxton, one of the
most emblematic figures of this cultural crisis.
Born in 1945, Braxton is not only a virtuoso jazz
saxophonist but an innovative theoretician and composer of
experimental art music. His refusal to conform to the
conventions of official musical culture has helped unhinge
the very ideologies on which definitions of "jazz,"
"black music," "popular music," and "art music" are founded.
"New Musical Figurations" gives the richest view
available of this many-sided artist. Radano examines
Braxton's early years on the South Side of Chicago, whose
vibrant black musical legacy inspired him to explore new
avenues of expression. Here is the first detailed history of
Braxton's central role in the Association for the Advancement
of Creative Musicians, the principal musician-run institution
of free jazz in the United States. After leaving Chicago,
Braxton was active in Paris and New York, collaborating with
Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, and other
composers affiliated with the experimental-music movement.
From 1974 to 1981, he gained renown as a popular jazz
performer and recording artist. Since then he has taught at
Mills College and Wesleyan University, given lectures on his
theoretical musical system, and written works for chamber
groups as well as large, opera-scale pieces.
The neglect of radical, challenging figures like Braxton
in standard histories of jazz, Radano argues, mutes the
innovative voice of the African-American musical tradition.
Refreshingly free of technical jargon, "New Musical Figurations"
is more than just another variation on the same jazz theme.
Rather, it is an exploratory work as rich in theoretical
vision as it is in historical detail.
Considered by some to be Budd Schulberg's masterpiece, "The
Disenchanted" tells the tragic story of Manley Halliday, a
fabulously successful writer during the 1920s--a golden figure in a
golden age--who by the late 1930s is forgotten by the literary
establishment, living in Hollywood and writing for the film
industry. Halliday is hired to work on a screenplay with a young
writer in his twenties named Shep, who is desperate for success and
idolizes Halliday. The two are sent to New York City, where a few
drinks on the plane begin an epic disintegration on the part of
Halliday due to the forces of alcoholism he is heroically fighting
against and the powerful draw of memory and happier times. Based in
part on a real-life and ill-fated writing assignment between the
author and F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1939, Schulberg's novel is at its
heart a masterful depiction of Manley Halliday--at times bitter, at
others sympathetic and utterly sorrowful--and "The Disenchanted"
stands as one of the most compelling and emotional evocations of
generational disillusionment and fallen American stardom.
Ornette Coleman's career encompassed the glory years of jazz and
the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas,
during the Great Depression, the African American composer and
musician was the zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues
tradition, Ornette and jazz grew up together, as the brassy blare
of big band swing gave way to bebop, a faster music for a faster,
post-war world. At the dawn of the Space Age and New York's 1960s
counterculture, his music gave voice to the moment. Lauded by some,
maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called `the
new thing' or `free jazz'. Featuring previously unpublished
photographs of Ornette and his contemporaries, this is the
compelling story of one of America's most adventurous musicians and
the sound of a changing world.
This book provides a timely analysis of the relationship between
jazz and recording and broadcast technologies in the early
twentieth century. Jazz histories have traditionally privileged
qualities such as authenticity, naturalness and spontaneity, but to
do so overlooks jazz's status as a modernist, mechanised art form
that evolved alongside the moving image and visual cultures. Jazz
as Visual Language shows that the moving image is crucial to our
understanding of what the materiality of jazz really is. Focusing
on Len Lye's direct animation, Gjon Mili's experimental footage of
musicians performing and the BBC's Jazz 625 series, this book
places emphasis on film and television that conveys the 'sound of
surprise' through formal innovation, rather than narrative
structure. Nicolas Pillai seeks to refine a critical vocabulary of
jazz and visual culture whilst arguing that jazz was never just a
new sound; it was also a new way of seeing the world.
The colourful story of the 80-year-old saxophone player and singer
affectionately know as The King of The Swingers. Paddy Cole has
taken his style of Jazz, Dixieland and Swing band music all over
the world - and back home too. Paddy Cole is the grand old man of
Irish Showbiz who still is young at heart and has built a new radio
career with his show on Dublin's Sunshine Radio every Sunday. His
story is as heart-warming as it is hilarious!
Cool syncopation, funky riffs and smooth, stylish tunes - from
dynamic to nostalgic, Pam Wedgwood's series has it all. Easy
Jazzin' About Piano/Keyboard is a vibrant collection of original
pieces in a range of contemporary styles, tailor-made for the
beginner (grade 1-3) and including lots of tips and workouts. This
new edition features a fantastic accompanying CD complete with
performances, backing tracks, and slowed-down backing tracks for
practice. So take a break from the classics and get into the groove
as you cruise from blues, to rock, to jazz.
Jazz has always been a genre built on the blending of disparate
musical cultures. Latin jazz illustrates this perhaps better than
any other style in this rich tradition, yet its cultural heritage
has been all but erased from narratives of jazz history. Told from
the perspective of a long-time jazz insider, Latin Jazz: The Other
Jazz corrects the record, providing a historical account that
embraces the genre's international nature and explores the dynamic
interplay of economics, race, ethnicity, and nationalism that
shaped it.
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