In jazz circles, players and listeners with "big ears" hear and
engage complexity in the moment, as it unfolds. Taking gender as
part of the intricate, unpredictable action in jazz culture, this
interdisciplinary collection explores the terrain opened up by
listening, with big ears, for gender in jazz. Essays range from a
reflection on the female boogie-woogie pianists who played at Cafe
Society in New York during the 1930s and 1940s to interpretations
of how the jazzman is represented in Dorothy Baker's novel "Young
Man with a Horn" (1938) and Michael Curtiz's film adaptation
(1950). Taken together, the essays enrich the field of jazz studies
by showing how gender dynamics have shaped the production,
reception, and criticism of jazz culture.
Scholars of music, ethnomusicology, American studies,
literature, anthropology, and cultural studies approach the
question of gender in jazz from multiple perspectives. One
contributor scrutinizes the tendency of jazz historiography to
treat singing as subordinate to the predominantly male domain of
instrumental music, while another reflects on her doubly
inappropriate position as a female trumpet player and a white jazz
musician and scholar. Other essays explore the composer George
Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept as a critique of
mid-twentieth-century discourses of embodiment, madness, and black
masculinity; performances of "female hysteria" by Les Diaboliques,
a feminist improvising trio; and the BBC radio broadcasts of Ivy
Benson and Her Ladies' Dance Orchestra during the Second World War.
By incorporating gender analysis into jazz studies, "Big Ears"
transforms ideas of who counts as a subject of study and even of
what counts as jazz.
"Contributors" Christina Baade, Jayna Brown, Farah Jasmine
Griffin, Monica Hairston, Kristin McGee, Tracy McMullen, Ingrid
Monson, Lara Pellegrinelli, Eric Porter, Nichole T. Rustin, Ursel
Schlicht, Julie Dawn Smith, Jeffrey Taylor, Sherrie Tucker, Joao H.
Costa Vargas
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