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Books > Music > Contemporary popular music > Jazz
The tale of British Jazz music over the 20 years from the end of the Second World War. Told by the 9 musicians interviewed over the last 12 years, who were lucky enough to be there at the time. The likes of Chris Barber (band leader and trombonist), John Critchinson (Ronnie Scott's pianist), Paul Jones (the singer in Manfred Mann), Don Rendell (John Dankworth's tenor saxophonist), Wally Houser (Ronnie's Club solicitor), Harold Pendleton (The Marquee Club owner/Reading & Leeds Festival founder). The UK at its hardest up about to live it up as best it can! Bringing to life the boom of the traditional jazz revival, the first British popular music. Telling the story of the birth of British modern jazz. Providing an entire chapter on the London jazz clubs that are no more. Illustrating the early negotiations in New York that led to the touring in the US of British jazz groups, and the return of Americans to the UK during the MU/AFM trade dispute. The jazz that in turn led to GB's rhythm and blues and the break-out from that into our popular music of today.
This book is a critical reflection on the life and career of the late legendary Zimbabwean music icon, Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi, and his contribution towards the reconstruction of Zimbabwe, Africa and the globe at large. Mtukudzi was a musician, philosopher, and human rights activist who espoused the agenda of reconstruction in order to bring about a better world, proposing personal, cultural, political, religious and global reconstruction. With twenty original chapters, this vibrant volume examines various themes and dimensions of Mtukudzi's distinguished life and career, notably, how his music has been a powerful vehicle for societal reconstruction and cultural rejuvenation, specifically speaking to issues of culture, human rights, governance, peacebuilding, religion and identity, humanism, gender and politics, among others. The contributors explore the art of performance in Mtukudzi's music and acting career, and how this facilitated his reconstruction agenda, offering fresh and compelling perspectives into the role of performing artists and cultural workers such as Mtukudzi in presenting models for reconstructing the world.
The influence of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," consisting of Davis (trumpet), Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums) continues to resonate. Jazz musicians, historians, and critics have celebrated the group for its improvisational communication, openness, and its transitional status between hard bop and the emerging free jazz of the 1960s, creating a synthesis described by one quintet member as "controlled freedom." The book provides a critical analytical study of the Davis quintet studio recordings released between 1965-68, including E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky, and Filles de Kilimanjaro. In contrast to the quintet's live recordings, which included performances of older jazz standards, the studio recordings offered an astonishing breadth of original compositions. Many of these compositions have since become jazz standards, and all of them played a central role in the development of contemporary jazz composition. Using transcription and analysis, author Keith Waters illuminates the compositional, improvisational, and collective achievements of the group. With additional sources, such as rehearsal takes, alternate takes, session reels, and copyright deposits of lead sheets, he shows how the group in the studio shaped and altered features of the compositions. Despite the earlier hard bop orientation of the players, the Davis quintet compositions offered different responses to questions of form, melody, and harmonic structure, and they often invited other improvisational paths, ones that relied on an uncanny degree of collective rapport. And given the spontaneity of the recorded performances-often undertaken with a minimum of rehearsal-the players responded with any number of techniques to address formal, harmonic, or metrical discrepancies that arose while the tape was rolling. The book provides an invaluable resource for those interested in Davis and his sidemen, as well as in jazz of the 1960s. It serves as a reference for jazz musicians and educators, with detailed transcriptions and commentary on compositions and improvisations heard on the studio recordings.
The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the team responsible for
Jazz and Totalitarianism examines jazz in a range of regimes that in significant ways may be described as totalitarian, historically covering the period from the Franco regime in Spain beginning in the 1930s to present day Iran and China. The book presents an overview of the two central terms and their development since their contemporaneous appearance in cultural and historiographical discourses in the early twentieth century, comprising fifteen essays written by specialists on particular regimes situated in a wide variety of time periods and places. Interdisciplinary in nature, this compelling work will appeal to students from Music and Jazz Studies to Political Science, Sociology, and Cultural Theory.
Microgroove continues John Corbett's exploration of diverse musics, with essays, interviews, and musician profiles that focus on jazz, improvised music, contemporary classical, rock, folk, blues, post-punk, and cartoon music. Corbett's approach to writing is as polymorphous as the music, ranging from oral history and journalistic portraiture to deeply engaged cultural critique. Corbett advocates for the relevance of "little" music, which despite its smaller audience is of enormous cultural significance. He writes on musicians as varied as Sun Ra, PJ Harvey, Koko Taylor, Steve Lacy, and Helmut Lachenmann. Among other topics, he discusses recording formats; the relationship between music and visual art, dance, and poetry; and, with Terri Kapsalis, the role of female orgasm sounds in contemporary popular music. Above all, Corbett privileges the importance of improvisation; he insists on the need to pay close attention to "other" music and celebrates its ability to open up pathways to new ideas, fresh modes of expression, and unforeseen ways of knowing.
Jazz Improvisation for Keyboard Players is a straightforward, no-nonsense improvisation series. It deals with creating melodies, using the left hand, pianistic approaches to soloing, scale choices for improvisation and much more.
The widespread presence of jazz and blues in African American
visual art has long been overlooked. The Hearing Eye makes the case
for recognizing the music's importance, both as formal template and
as explicit subject matter. Moving on from the use of iconic
musical figures and motifs in Harlem Renaissance art, this
groundbreaking collection explores the more allusive - and elusive
- references to jazz and blues in a wide range of mostly
contemporary visual artists.
The widespread presence of jazz and blues in African American
visual art has long been overlooked. The Hearing Eye makes the case
for recognizing the music's importance, both as formal template and
as explicit subject matter. Moving on from the use of iconic
musical figures and motifs in Harlem Renaissance art, this
groundbreaking collection explores the more allusive - and elusive
- references to jazz and blues in a wide range of mostly
contemporary visual artists.
**As featured on Barack Obama's Summer 2022 Reading List** Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize Winner of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for the Pen/Diamonstein-Spievogel Award for the Art of the Essay Shortlisted for the National Book Award 'Gorgeous' - Brit Bennett 'Pure genius' - Jacqueline Woodson 'One of the most dynamic books I have ever read' - Clint Smith At the March on Washington, Josephine Baker reflected on her life and her legacy. She had spent decades as one of the most successful entertainers in the world, but, she told the crowd, "I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too". Inspired by these words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a stirring meditation on Black performance in the modern age, in which culture, history and his own lived experience collide. With sharp insight, humour and heart, Abdurraqib explores a sequence of iconic and intimate performances that take him from mid-century Paris to the moon -- and back down again, to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. Each one, he shows, has layers of resonance across Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and his own personal history of love and grief -- whether it's the twenty-seven seconds of 'Gimme Shelter' in which Merry Clayton sings, or the magnificent hours of Aretha Franklin's homegoing; Beyonce's Super Bowl show or a schoolyard fistfight; Dave Chapelle's skits or a game of spades among friends.
This fabulous collection of easy duets in jazzy and light styles is just the thing to liven up any lesson or practice session. Expertly written for students around the level of Piano Time 3, these stylish and toe-tapping duets provide accessible and fun material for all young jazz players.
Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. John Wriggle takes you behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. Blue Rhythm Fantasy traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet--a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others--to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. Wriggle's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, Blue Rhythm Fantasy is a long-overdue study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.
How did French musicians and critics interpret jazz - that quintessentially American music - in the mid-twentieth century? How far did players reshape what they learned from records and visitors into more local jazz forms, and how did the music figure in those angry debates that so often suffused French cultural and political life? After Django begins with the famous interwar triumphs of Josephine Baker and Django Reinhardt, but, for the first time, the focus here falls on the French jazz practices ofthe postwar era. The work of important but neglected French musicians like Andre Hodeir and Barney Wilen is examined in depth, as are native responses to Americans like Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. The book provides an original intertwining of musical and historical narrative, supported by extensive archival work. In clear and involving prose, it describes both the music that was made and the arguments to which jazz was recruited, from debates on national identity in the 1930s to the street battles of 1968, following decolonization. By examining musical practices as well as critical discourses, this book seeks to understand those problematic efforts towards aesthetic assimilation and transformation, made by those concerned with jazz in fact and in idea, even after anti-jazz diatribes disappeared from the press.
Thanks to the pioneering tours of the Creole Band, jazz began to be
heard nationwide on the vaudeville stages of America from 1914 to
1918. This seven-piece band toured the country, exporting for the
first time the authentic jazz strains that had developed in New
Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The band's vaudeville
routines were deeply rooted in the minstrel shows and plantation
cliches of American show business in the late 19th century, but its
instrumental music was central to its performance and distinctive
and entrancing to audiences and reviewers.
Improvisation rattles some listeners. Maybe they're even suspicious of it. John Coltrane's saxophonic flights of fancy, Jimi Hendrix's feedback drenched guitar solos, Ravi Shankar's sitar extrapolations--all these sounds seem like so much noodling or jamming, indulgent self-expression. "Just" improvising, as is sometimes said. For these music fans, it seems natural that music is meant to be composed. In the first book of its kind, John Corbett's A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation provides a how-to manual for the most extreme example of spontaneous improvising: music with no pre-planned material at all. Drawing on over three decades of writing about, presenting, playing, teaching, and studying freely improvised music, Corbett offers an enriching set of tools that show any curious listener how to really listen, and he encourages them to enjoy the human impulse-- found all around the world-- to make up music on the spot. Corbett equips his reader for a journey into a difficult musical landscape, where there is no steady beat, no pre-ordained format, no overarching melodic or harmonic framework, and where tones can ring with the sharpest of burrs. In "Fundamentals," he explores key areas of interest, such as how the musicians interact, the malleability of time, overcoming impatience, and watching out for changes and transitions; he grounds these observations in concrete listening exercises, a veritable training regime for musical attentiveness. Then he takes readers deeper in "Advanced Techniques," plumbing the philosophical conundrums at the heart of free improvisation, including topics such as the influence of the audience and the counterintuitive challenge of listening while asleep. Scattered throughout are helpful and accessible lists of essential resources--recordings, books, videos-- and a registry of major practicing free improvisors from Noel Akchote to John Zorn, particularly essential because this music is best experienced live. The result is a concise, humorous, and inspiring guide, a unique book that will help transform one of the world's most notoriously unapproachable artforms into a rewarding and enjoyable experience.
This book is part player's manual, part historical profile, and part musical portrait. It explores in-depth all facets of jazz bass playing - from the development of "walking" and other techniques, to the human and musical interaction inside a rhythm section, to the bassists who made their instrument an integral part of America's greatest art form. Citing examples from key recordings in the jazz canon, the book defines the essence of the musical contributions made by every important jazz bassist. These achievements are explained both conceptually and technically, helping musicians and fans alike understand the art and craft of jazz bass playing. Bassists get expert guidance on mastering proper technique, practice methods, and improvisation, plus new insight into the theoretical and conceptual aspects of jazz. The companion CD featuring bass plus rhythm section allows readers to hear technical examples from the book, presented in slow and fast versions. It also offers play-along tracks of typical chord progressions.
A seasoned jazz critic draws on his interviews of forty musicians, from Slide Hampton and Bucky Pizzarelli to Dee Dee Bridgewater and Diana Krall, illuminating their lives, careers, and art.
Many jazz fans and critics -- and even some jazz musicians -- contend that white players have contributed little of substance to the music. Now, with Lost Chords, musician-historian Richard M. Sudhalter challenges this narrow view, with a book that pays definitive tribute to a generation of white jazz players, many unjustly forgotten -- while never scanting the role of the great black pioneers.
The author of "Women, Race and Class" suggests that "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday represent a black working-class, feminist ideology and historical consciousness. Davis' illuminating analysis of the songs performed by these artists provides readers with a compelling and transformative understanding of their musical and social contributions and of their relation to both the African-American community and American culture. of photos.
(Piano Solo Songbook). A thorough collection of beautiful classic jazz piano solos featuring standards in any jazz artist's repertoire. Non-jazz pianists will also find these well-thought out arrangements very beneficial. Includes: Afternoon in Paris * Birdland * C-Jam Blues * Django * Dolphin Dance * Giant Steps * I Hear a Rhapsody * In Walked Bud * Killer Joe * Line for Lyons * Moonlight in Vermont * Moten Swing * A Night in Tunisia * Night Train * On Green Dolphin Street * Shiny Stockings * So What * Song for My Father * Up Jumped Spring * West Coast Blues * Yardbird Suite * and more.
This is a unique reference book on jazz. It brings together 60 essays that cover every aspect of jazz history: pre-history, New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, more recent jazz. There are also essays on individual jazz figures from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane, on jazz instruments and singers, jazz outside the United States, and a range of subjects such as jazz criticism, jazz in literature and film and TV, and jazz dance. Each entry was commissioned for this book. |
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