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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music > Jazz
It's impossible to think of the heritage of music and dance in the
United States without the invaluable contributions of African
Americans. Those art forms have been touched by the genius of
African American culture and have helped this nation take its
important and unique place in the pantheon of world art. Steppin'
on the Blues explores not only the meaning of dance in African
American life but also the ways in which music, song, and dance are
interrelated in African American culture. Dance as it has emanated
from the black community is a pervasive, vital, and distinctive
form of expression--its movements speak eloquently of African
American values and aesthetics. Beyond that it has been, finally,
one of the most important means of cultural survival. Former dancer
Jacqui Malone throws a fresh spotlight on the cultural history of
black dance, the Africanisms that have influenced it, and the
significant role that vocal harmony groups, black college and
university marching bands, and black sorority and fraternity
stepping teams have played in the evolution of dance in African
American life. From the cakewalk to the development of jazz dance
and jazz music, all Americans can take pride in the vitality,
dynamism, drama, joy, and uncommon singularity with which African
American dance has gifted the world.
Bop Apocalypse, a narrative history from master storyteller Martin
Torgoff, details the rise of early drug culture in America by
weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new
segment of the American fabric. Channeling his decades of writing
experience, Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the
first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holliday, the Savoy
Ballroom, Reefer Madness, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the
rise of the Beat Generation, and the coming of heroin to Harlem.
Having spent a lifetime immersed in the world where music and drugs
overlap, Torgoff reveals material that is completely new and has
never been disclosed before, not even in his own litany of work.
Bop Apocalypse is truly a new and fresh contribution to the
understanding of jazz, race, and drug culture.
It's a misty night in 1950s New York. A silver Rolls-Royce
screeches to a stop at the neon-lit doorway of a 52nd Street jazz
club. Behind the wheel is a glamorous brunette, a chinchilla stole
draped over her shoulder and a long cigarette holder clinched in
her teeth. After taking a pull from a small silver flask, she
glides past the bouncer into the murky depths of the Three Deuces.
The Jazz Baroness has arrived. Raised in fairy-tale splendor,
Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter (known as
"Nica") piloted her own plane across the English Channel, married a
French baron, fought in the French Resistance, and had five
children. Then she heard a recording of Thelonious Monk's "Round
Midnight." Inspired by the liberating spirit of jazz, Nica left her
family, moved to Manhattan, and began haunting the city's
nightclubs. The tabloids first splashed her name across the
headlines after Charlie Parker died in her hotel suite-a scandal
that cast a dark shadow over the rest of her life. She retreated
from the public eye, but through her ongoing ministrations to Monk
and dozens of other musicians she became a legend. Nearly a score
of jazz compositions have been written in her honor, including two
of the most beloved classics of the genre: Horace Silver's "Nica's
Dream" and Monk's "Pannonica." Nica's Dream traces the story of a
fascinating woman across her thirty-year reign as the Jazz
Baroness, but it also explores a transformative era in
twentieth-century American culture. Based on interviews with
musicians, family members, historians, and artists, David Kastin's
probing biography unwraps the life of this enigmatic figure and
evokes the vibrancy of New York during the birth of bebop, the
first stirrings of the Beat Generation, and the advent of abstract
expressionism.
The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as 'possibly the
most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.' A native
of Lee's Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny
started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he
graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for
Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66,
he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he
was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his
talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny's twenty
Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity.
Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail
his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also
reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the
sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of
Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was
characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship. Author
Carolyn Glenn Brewer shows how his keen sense of ensemble had its
genesis in his school band under the guidance of a beloved band
director. Drawn from news accounts, archival material, interviews,
and remembrances, to which the author had unique access, Beneath
Missouri Skies portrays a place and time from which Metheny still
draws inspiration and strength.
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Mingus Speaks
(Hardcover)
John Goodman; Photographs by Sy Johnson
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R765
R661
Discovery Miles 6 610
Save R104 (14%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Charles Mingus is among jazz's greatest composers and perhaps its
most talented bass player. He was blunt and outspoken about the
place of jazz in music history and American culture, about which
performers were the real thing (or not), and much more. These
in-depth interviews, conducted several years before Mingus died,
capture the composer's spirit and voice, revealing how he saw
himself as composer and performer, how he viewed his peers and
predecessors, how he created his extraordinary music, and how he
looked at race. Augmented with interviews and commentary by ten
close associates--including Mingus's wife Sue, Teo Macero, George
Wein, and Sy Johnson--"Mingus Speaks" provides a wealth of new
perspectives on the musician's life and career.
As a writer for "Playboy, " John F. Goodman reviewed Mingus's
comeback concert in 1972 and went on to achieve an intimacy with
the composer that brings a relaxed and candid tone to the ensuing
interviews. Much of what Mingus shares shows him in a new light:
his personality, his passions and sense of humor, and his thoughts
on music. The conversations are wide-ranging, shedding fresh light
on important milestones in Mingus's life such as the publication of
his memoir, "Beneath the Underdog," the famous Tijuana episodes,
his relationships, and the jazz business.
Discover Pam Wedgwood's exciting world of jazz piano! How to Play
Jazz Piano is a fun and simple introduction for young players with
a basic knowledge of how to play the piano (about Grade 2
standard). It includes an introduction to improvisation, suggested
listening ideas and covers swing, syncopated rhythms, basic chords
and chord symbols, scales and modes used in jazz. There are also
plenty of great pieces in different styles, online audio and Pam's
helpful advice and teaching tips every step of the way!
Stephen Botek apprenticed at the side of some of the greats of the
jazz era, learning not only about music, but about life. Growing up
in small-town Pennsylvania in the shadow of the Dorseys, Botek
decides to follow his muse to a future in jazz. He gets mentored by
clarinet great Buddy DeFranco and saxophone legend Joe Allard,
meets up with greats such as Artie Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie along
the way, and follows in Glenn Miller's footsteps with the Army Air
Force Band. A primer on the jazz era, as well as an account of the
benefits of apprenticeship, SONG ON MY LIPS not only recounts
stories of the greats but takes us backstage, to their studios, and
to many of the unique venues of the time. Jazz aficionados and new
musicians alike will learn much about the music from this unique
life story.
Miles Davis's Bitches Brew is one of the most iconic albums in
American music, the preeminent landmark and fertile seedbed of
jazz-fusion. Fans have been fortunate in the past few years to gain
access to Davis's live recordings from this time, when he was
working with an ensemble that has come to be known as the Lost
Quintet. In this book, jazz historian and musician Bob Gluck
explores the performances of this revolutionary group Davis's first
electric band to illuminate the thinking of one of our rarest
geniuses and, by extension, the extraordinary transition in
American music that he and his fellow players ushered in. Gluck
listens deeply to the uneasy tension between this group's driving
rhythmic groove and the sonic and structural openness, surprise,
and experimentation they were always pushing toward. There he hears
and outlines a fascinating web of musical interconnection that
brings Davis's funk-inflected sensibilities into conversation with
the avant-garde worlds that players like Ornette Coleman and John
Coltrane were developing. Going on to analyze the little-known
experimental groups Circle and the Revolutionary Ensemble, Gluck
traces deep resonances across a commercial gap between the
celebrity Miles Davis and his less famous but profoundly innovative
peers. The result is a deeply attuned look at a pivotal moment when
once-disparate worlds of American music came together in
explosively creative combinations.
1) This is the only book that is written as a coursebook for
Improv, and directed to the college classroom. 2) Brings various
aspects of the jazz learning process together -- practicing scales,
chord arpeggios and melodic motives in 12 keys, along with the
assimilation of the rhythmic nature of jazz and its related forms
of (primarily African American) music -- in one systematic,
organized and easy-to-assimilate manner. 3) Chapters are organized
with: - a paragraph or two explaining a particular scale/harmonic
basis or a common form used in jazz repertoire - suggested
exercises, from basic scales to advanced melodic motives taken
directly from recordings - a repertoire list that employs the
harmonic, melodic or formal aspects being discussed in each chapter
- concludes with a transcription of an improvised solo by a jazz
master which illustrates how theory is put into practice. 4)
Includes supplementary materials such as recordings of the
transcribed solos, relevant Aebersold Play-Along recordings, and
fake books
Hearing Luxe Pop explores a deluxe-production aesthetic that has
long thrived in American popular music, in which popular-music
idioms are merged with lush string orchestrations and big-band
instrumentation. John Howland presents an alternative music history
that centers on shifts in timbre and sound through innovative uses
of orchestration and arranging, traveling from symphonic jazz to
the Great American Songbook, the teenage symphonies of Motown to
the "countrypolitan" sound of Nashville, the sunshine pop of the
Beach Boys to the blending of soul and funk into 1970s disco, and
Jay-Z's hip-hop-orchestra events to indie rock bands performing
with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. This book attunes readers to hear
the discourses gathered around the music and its associated images
as it examines pop's relations to aspirational consumer culture,
theatricality, sophistication, cosmopolitanism, and glamorous
lifestyles.
Following on from "Giant Steps" comes the second installment in
Kenny Mathieson's series of jazz histories
"Cookin'" examines the birth and development of two of the key
jazz styles of the postwar era, hard bop and its related offshoot,
soul jazz. Hard bop was the most exciting jazz style of its day,
and remains at the core of the modern jazz mainstream even now. It
drew on the twin poles of bebop and the blues for its foundation,
spiced up with gospel, Latin, and rhythm and blues influences. The
book looks at the founding fathers of the form, Art Blakey and
Horace Silver, and goes on to trace the music through its peak
decade. The second installment of Kenny Mathieson's series of jazz
histories provides a fine overview of one of the most exciting
periods in the music's development and features profiles of
Cannonball Adderley, Donald Byrd, Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, and
J.J. Johnson, among others.
Bud Powell was not only one of the greatest bebop pianists of all
time, he stands as one of the twentieth century's most dynamic and
fiercely adventurous musical minds. His expansive musicianship,
riveting performances, and inventive compositions expanded the
bebop idiom and pushed jazz musicians of all stripes to higher
standards of performance. Yet Powell remains one of American
music's most misunderstood figures, and the story of his
exceptional talent is often overshadowed by his history of alcohol
abuse, mental instability, and brutalization at the hands of white
authorities. In this first extended study of the social
significance of Powell's place in the American musical landscape,
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. shows how the pianist expanded his own
artistic horizons and moved his chosen idiom into new realms.
Illuminating and multi-layered, "The Amazing Bud Powell"
centralizes Powell's contributions as it details the collision of
two vibrant political economies: the discourses of art and the
practice of blackness.
'You the funkiest man alive.' Miles Davis' accolade was the perfect
expression of John Lee Hooker's apotheosis as blues superstar:
recording with the likes of Van Morrison, Keith Richards and Carlos
Santana; making TV commercials (Lee Jeans); appearing in films (The
Blues Brothers); and even starring in Pete Townshend's musical
adaptation of Ted Hughes' story The Iron Man. His was an
extraordinary life. Born in the American deep south, he moved to
Detroit and then, in a career spanning over fifty years, recorded
hypnotic blues classics such as 'Boogie Chillen', rhythm-and-blues
anthems such as 'Dimples' and 'Boom Boom' and, in his final,
glorious renaissance, the Grammy-winning album The Healer. Charles
Shaar Murray's authoritative biography vividly, and often in John
Lee Hooker's own words, does magnificent justice to the man and his
music.
Graham Collier's radical new analysis of the place of the composer
in jazz is nothing less than a complete reassessment of the
direction in which the music is developing and a powerful argument
for fresh thinking. He takes a detailed look at the music of Duke
Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans. His views about jazz
composition - jazz happens in real time, once - and about
contemporary composers are clearly and strongly expressed,
controversial and provocative. This book will appeal to lay
readers, especially those who enjoy an argument, as well as
professional musicians and teachers. Musical examples in the book
are linked to the author's website. 'I find "The Jazz Composer" to
be an insightful, intelligent, creative and artful view to the
understanding of jazz composition. It is written and developed for
all interested listeners, the novice as well as the performer, and
shows the way to the deepest artistic level' - Justin DiCioccio,
jazz educator. 'Composers - take heed! ...If you're confident in
your compositional devices - take the challenge to have your
foundations soundly rattled If you're searching for a methodology
to follow or guide you, it could well lie here...Not for the
squeamish . ..prepare to be provoked' - Mike Gibbs, jazz composer.
'Collier ...makes music that speaks directly ...strongly personal
but in no way self-dramatising ...It's reassuring to learn that
when he turns to prose, the same qualities are in place' - Brian
Morton, jazz critic.
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