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Jazz Bubble: Neoclassical Jazz in Neoliberal Culture

Dale Chapman

Hailed by corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations as a metaphor for democratic interaction and business dynamics, contemporary jazz culture has a story to tell about the relationship ... More

Hailed by corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations as a metaphor for democratic interaction and business dynamics, contemporary jazz culture has a story to tell about the relationship between political economy and social practice in the era of neoliberal capitalism. The Jazz Bubble approaches the emergence of the neoclassical jazz aesthetic since the 1980s as a powerful, if unexpected, point of departure for a wide-ranging investigation of important social trends during this period. The emergence of financialization as a key dimension of the global economy shapes a variety of aspects of contemporary jazz culture, and jazz culture comments upon this dimension in turn. During the stateside return of Dexter Gordon in the mid-1970s, the cultural turmoil of the New York fiscal crisis served as a crucial backdrop to understanding the resonance of Gordon’s appearances in the city. The financial markets directly inform the structural upheaval that major label jazz subsidiaries must navigate in the music industry of the early twenty-first century, and they inform the disruptive impact of urban redevelopment in communities that have relied upon jazz as a site of economic vibrancy. In examining these issues, The Jazz Bubble seeks to intensify conversations surrounding music, culture, and political economy. Less

Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s

Michael C. Heller

The New York loft jazz scene of the 1970s was a pivotal period for uncompromising, artist-produced work. Faced with a flagging jazz economy, a group of young avant-garde improvisers chose to eschew ... More

The New York loft jazz scene of the 1970s was a pivotal period for uncompromising, artist-produced work. Faced with a flagging jazz economy, a group of young avant-garde improvisers chose to eschew the commercial sphere and develop alternative venues in the abandoned factories and warehouses of Lower Manhattan. This book provides a study of this period, tracing its history amid a series of overlapping discourses surrounding collectivism, urban renewal, experimentalist aesthetics, underground archives, and the radical politics of self-determination.Less

Jazz Diasporas: "Race, Music, and Migration in Post-World War II Paris"

Rashida K. Braggs

At the close of the Second World War, waves of African American musicians migrated to Paris, eager to thrive in its reinvigorated jazz scene. This book challenges the notion that Paris was a ... More

At the close of the Second World War, waves of African American musicians migrated to Paris, eager to thrive in its reinvigorated jazz scene. This book challenges the notion that Paris was a color-blind paradise for African Americans. On the contrary, musicians adopted a variety of strategies to cope with the cultural and social assumptions that confronted them throughout their careers in Paris, particularly as France became embroiled in struggles over race and identity when colonial conflicts like the Algerian War escalated. Using case studies of prominent musicians and thoughtful analysis of interviews, music, film, and literature, the author investigates the impact of this postwar musical migration. The book examines key figures including musicians Sidney Bechet, Inez Cavanaugh, and Kenny Clarke and writer and social critic James Baldwin to show how they performed both as artists and as African Americans. Their collaborations with French musicians and critics complicated racial and cultural understandings of who could represent “authentic” jazz and created spaces for shifting racial and national identities—what the book terms “jazz diasporas.”Less

Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy

Danielle Fosler-Lussier

During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Presentations program. Using archival documents and ... More

During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Presentations program. Using archival documents and newly collected oral histories, this study illuminates the reception of these musical events, for the practice of musical diplomacy on the ground sometimes differed substantially from what the Department’s planners envisioned. Performances of music in many styles—classical, rock ’n’ roll, folk, blues, and jazz—were meant to compete with traveling Soviet and Chinese artists, enhancing the reputation of American culture. These concerts offered large audiences evidence of America’s improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Most importantly, they also built meaningful connections with people in other lands. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although these tours were sometimes conceived as propaganda ventures, their most important function was the building of imagined and real relationships, which constitute the essence of soft power.Less

New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition

Lewis Watts and Eric Porter

This book joins the post-Katrina conversation about New Orleans and its changing cultural scene. Through photographs and the written word, Watts and Porter pay homage to the city (and region) and its ... More

This book joins the post-Katrina conversation about New Orleans and its changing cultural scene. Through photographs and the written word, Watts and Porter pay homage to the city (and region) and its residents, map recent and often contradictory social and cultural transformations, and seek to counter inadequate (and often pejorative accounts) of people and place. Focusing, for the most part, on African American New Orleans, New Orleans Suite is a story about how bad things have happened to people in both the long and short run, how they have persevered by drawing upon and transforming their cultural practices, and what they can teach us about citizenship, politics, and other issues.Less

Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries

David Ake

Charles Hiroshi Garrett and Daniel Goldmark (eds)

Jazz/Not Jazz explores some of the musicians who (and concepts, places, and practices that), though deeply connected to established jazz institutions and aesthetics, have rarely, if ever, appeared in ... More

Jazz/Not Jazz explores some of the musicians who (and concepts, places, and practices that), though deeply connected to established jazz institutions and aesthetics, have rarely, if ever, appeared in conventional jazz narratives. The book's goal is neither to map out a supposedly all-inclusive history of jazz, nor necessarily to salvage the reputations of typically dismissed styles or figures, but rather to explore what these missing people and pieces tell us about the ways in which jazz has been defined and its history told. That is, in focusing their inquiries beyond the veritable hall of jazz greatness, the authors seek to determine what we can learn about jazz as a whole by interrogating its traditionally understood musical and cultural margins (though not necessarily the economic margins: many of the performers and performances discussed in these essays have been enjoyed by millions of listeners), and to find out what is gained—and what is lost—when particular communities erect their own fences around jazz.Less

Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West

Beth Levy

This is an exploration of how the American West, both as physical space and inspiration, animated American music. Examining the work of such composers as Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, ... More

This is an exploration of how the American West, both as physical space and inspiration, animated American music. Examining the work of such composers as Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell, it addresses questions of regionalism, race, and representation, as well as changing relationships to the natural world, to highlight the intersections between classical music and the diverse worlds of Indians, pioneers, and cowboys. The author draws from an array of genres to show how different brands of western Americana were absorbed into American culture by way of sheet music, radio, lecture recitals, the concert hall, and film. The book is a comprehensive illumination of what the West meant and still means to composers living and writing long after the close of the frontier.Less

Blowin’ the Blues Away: Performance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene

Travis Jackson

New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the city's jazz scene is more important now than ever before. This book examines how jazz has thrived in New York ... More

New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the city's jazz scene is more important now than ever before. This book examines how jazz has thrived in New York following its popular resurgence in the 1980s. Using interviews, in-person observation, and analysis of live and recorded events, the author—an ethnomusicologist—explores both the ways in which various participants in the New York City jazz scene interpret and evaluate performance, and the criteria on which those interpretations and evaluations are based. Through the notes and words of its most accomplished performers and most ardent fans, jazz appears not simply as a musical style, but as a cultural form intimately influenced by and influential upon American concepts of race, place, and spirituality.Less

Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry

Clark Terry

Gwen Terry (ed.)

This is the story of one of the most recorded jazz trumpeters of all time, Clark Terry, born in 1920. Thi sbook takes us from his impoverished childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where jazz could be ... More

This is the story of one of the most recorded jazz trumpeters of all time, Clark Terry, born in 1920. Thi sbook takes us from his impoverished childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where jazz could be heard everywhere, to the smoke-filled small clubs and carnivals across the Jim Crow South where he got his start, and on to worldwide acclaim. The book takes us behind the scenes of jazz history as it introduces scores of legendary greats—Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Dinah Washington, Doc Severinsen, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims, and Dianne Reeves, among many others. The book also reveals much about Terry's own personal life, his experiences with racism, how he helped break the color barrier in 1960 when he joined the Tonight Show band on NBC, and why—at ninety years old—his students from around the world still call and visit him for lessons.Less

Music and Politics in San Francisco: From the 1906 Quake to the Second World War

Leta Miller

This history immerses the reader in San Francisco's musical life during the first half of the twentieth century, showing how a fractious community overcame virulent partisanship to establish cultural ... More

This history immerses the reader in San Francisco's musical life during the first half of the twentieth century, showing how a fractious community overcame virulent partisanship to establish cultural monuments such as the San Francisco Symphony (1911) and Opera (1923). The book draws on primary source material and first-hand knowledge of the music to argue that a utopian vision counterbalanced partisan interests and inspired cultural endeavors, including the San Francisco Conservatory, two world fairs, and America's first municipally owned opera house. The book demonstrates that rampant racism, initially directed against Chinese laborers (and their music), reappeared during the 1930s in the guise of labor unrest as WPA music activities exploded in vicious battles between administrators and artists, and African American and white jazz musicians competed for jobs in nightclubs.Less