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American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots

Mark Slobin (ed.)

Klezmer, the Yiddish word for a folk instrumental musician, has come to mean a person, a style, and a scene. This musical subculture came to the United States with the late-nineteenth-century Jewish ... More

Klezmer, the Yiddish word for a folk instrumental musician, has come to mean a person, a style, and a scene. This musical subculture came to the United States with the late-nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Although it had declined in popularity by the middle of the twentieth century, this lively music is now enjoying recognition among music fans of all stripes. Today, klezmer flourishes in the United States and abroad in world music and accompanies Jewish celebrations. The chapters this volume investigate American klezmer: its roots, its evolution, and its spirited revitalization. Contributors to the book include every kind of authority on the subject—from academics to leading musicians—and they offer a wide range of perspectives on the musical, social, and cultural history of klezmer in American life. The first half of this volume concentrates on the early history of klezmer, using folkloric sources, records of early musicians unions, and interviews with the last of the immigrant musicians. The second part of the book examines the klezmer “revival” that began in the 1970s. Several of these chapters were written by the leaders of this movement, or draw on interviews with them, and give firsthand accounts of how klezmer is transmitted and how its practitioners maintain a balance between preservation and innovation.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

Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians

Floyd Levin

The author of this book, an award-winning jazz writer, has personally known many of the jazz greats who contributed to the music's colorful history. This book, which contains works published mostly ... More

The author of this book, an award-winning jazz writer, has personally known many of the jazz greats who contributed to the music's colorful history. This book, which contains works published mostly in jazz magazines over a fifty-year period, takes us into the nightclubs, the recording studios, the record companies, and, most compellingly, into the lives of the musicians who made the great moments of the traditional jazz and swing eras. Weaving anecdotal material, primary research, and music analysis into every chapter, the book is a mine of information on a rich segment of American popular music. This collection begins with the author's first published piece and includes several new chapters that contain material inspired by his work on this compilation. The chapters are organized thematically, beginning with a piece on Kid Ory's early recordings and ending with a newly written chapter about the campaign to put up a monument to Louis Armstrong in New Orleans. Along the way, the book gives in-depth profiles of many well-known jazz legends, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, and many lesser-known figures who contributed greatly to the development of jazz.Less

The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

Steve Isoardi

While he was still in his twenties, Horace Tapscott gave up a successful career in Lionel Hampton's band and returned to his home in Los Angeles to found the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community ... More

While he was still in his twenties, Horace Tapscott gave up a successful career in Lionel Hampton's band and returned to his home in Los Angeles to found the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community arts group that focused on providing affordable, community-oriented jazz and jazz training. Over the course of almost forty years, the Arkestra, together with the related Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA) Foundation, were at the forefront of the vital community-based arts movements in black Los Angeles. Some three hundred artists—musicians, vocalists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, and graphic artists—passed through these organizations, many ultimately remaining within the community and others moving on to achieve international fame. Based primarily on one hundred in-depth interviews with current and former participants, this book is a history of the important and largely overlooked community arts movement of African American Los Angeles. The book completes the account begun in Central Avenue Sounds, which documented the secular music history of the first half of the twentieth century.Less

Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West

Phil Pastras

When Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton sat at the piano in the Library of Congress in May of 1938 to begin his monumental series of interviews with Alan Lomax, he spoke of his years on the West Coast ... More

When Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton sat at the piano in the Library of Congress in May of 1938 to begin his monumental series of interviews with Alan Lomax, he spoke of his years on the West Coast with great nostalgia. He had arrived in Los Angeles more than twenty years earlier, but he recounted his losses as vividly as though they had occurred just recently. The greatest loss was his separation from Anita Gonzales, by his own account “the only woman I ever loved,” to whom he left almost all of his royalties in his will. This book sets the record straight on the two periods (1917–1923 and 1940–1941) that Jelly Roll Morton spent on the West Coast. In addition to rechecking sources, correcting mistakes in scholarly accounts, and situating eyewitness narratives within the histories of New Orleans or Los Angeles, the book offers an interpretation of the life and work of Morton, one of the most important and influential early practitioners of jazz. The discovery of a previously unknown collection of memorabilia—including a 58-page scrapbook compiled by Morton himself—sheds new light on Morton's personal and artistic development, as well as on the crucial role played by Anita Gonzales. Morton's artistic development as a pianist, composer, and bandleader is traced. The book examines the complexities of racial identity for Morton and his circle, his belief in voodoo, his relationships with women, his style of performance, and his roots in black musical traditions.Less

From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz

Raul Fernandez

This book explores the complexity of Cuban dance music and the webs that connect it, musically and historically, to other Caribbean music, to salsa, and to Latin Jazz. Establishing a scholarly ... More

This book explores the complexity of Cuban dance music and the webs that connect it, musically and historically, to other Caribbean music, to salsa, and to Latin Jazz. Establishing a scholarly foundation for the study of this music, the author introduces a set of terms, definitions, and empirical information that allow for a broader, more informed discussion. He presents musical biographies of prominent performers Cachao López, Mongo Santamaría, Armando Peraza, Patato Valdés, Francisco Aguabella, Cándido Camero, Chocolate Armenteros, and Celia Cruz. Based on interviews that the author conducted over a nine-year period, these profiles provide in-depth assessments of the musicians' substantial contributions to both Afro-Cuban music and Latin Jazz. In addition, the book examines the links between Cuban music and other Caribbean music; analyzes the musical and poetic foundations of the Cuban son form; addresses the salsa phenomenon; and develops the aesthetic construct of sabor, central to Cuban music.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

George Gershwin: His Life and Work

Howard Pollack

This biography of George Gershwin (1898–1937) unravels the myths surrounding one of America's most celebrated composers and establishes the enduring value of his music. Gershwin created some of the ... More

This biography of George Gershwin (1898–1937) unravels the myths surrounding one of America's most celebrated composers and establishes the enduring value of his music. Gershwin created some of the most beloved music of the twentieth century and, along with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, helped make the golden age of Broadway golden. The author draws from sketches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, books, articles, recordings, films, and other materials—including a large cache of Gershwin scores discovered in a Warner Brothers warehouse in 1982—to create a chronicle of Gershwin's meteoric rise to fame. He also traces Gershwin's powerful presence that, even today, extends from Broadway, jazz clubs, and film scores to symphony halls and opera houses. Gershwin's early career as a pianist, his friendships and romantic life, his relation to various musical trends, his writings on music, his working methods, and his tragic death at the age of 38 are discussed. Unlike Kern, Berlin, and Porter, who mostly worked within the confines of Broadway and Hollywood, Gershwin actively sought to cross the boundaries between high and low, and wrote works that crossed over into a realm where art music, jazz, and Broadway met and merged. The author surveys Gershwin's entire oeuvre, from his first surviving compositions to the melodies that his brother and principal collaborator, Ira Gershwin, lyricized after his death. The book concludes with an exploration of the performances and critical reception of Gershwin's music over the years, from his time to ours.Less

Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars

William Shack

During the years between the world wars, a small but dynamic community of African American jazz musicians left the United States and settled in Paris, creating a vibrant expatriate music scene and ... More

During the years between the world wars, a small but dynamic community of African American jazz musicians left the United States and settled in Paris, creating a vibrant expatriate music scene and introducing jazz to the French. While the Harlem Renaissance was taking off across the Atlantic, entertainers in Montmartre, the epicenter of the Parisian scene, contributed enthusiastically to a culture that thrived for two decades, until the occupation of the city by German troops on June 18, 1940. This book looks at this cultural moment, one in which African American musicians could flee the racism of the United States to pursue their lives and art in the relatively free context of bohemian Europe. It is a comprehensive treatment of the rise and decline of the African American music community in Paris; it considers the international dimensions of black experience in the modern era, and explores the similarities and differences between Harlem-style jazz and culture in Europe and America. The author focuses on some of the people who played critical roles in shaping the jazz scene in Montmartre—Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, and Bricktop—but also discusses others who opened clubs, underwrote loans, and contributed their musical talents, paying particular attention to club culture. He describes the musicians' experiences, the settings in which they performed, and the response of French audiences. Fusing biographical, sociological, and historical details, the book brings this unique era to life.Less

Interpreting Popular Music

David Brackett

There is a well-developed vocabulary for discussing classical music, but when it comes to popular music, how do we analyze its effects and its meaning? This book draws from the disciplines of ... More

There is a well-developed vocabulary for discussing classical music, but when it comes to popular music, how do we analyze its effects and its meaning? This book draws from the disciplines of cultural studies and music theory to demonstrate how listeners form opinions about popular songs, and how they come to attribute a rich variety of meanings to them. Exploring several genres of popular music through recordings made by Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Hank Williams, James Brown, and Elvis Costello, the book develops a set of tools for looking at both the formal and cultural dimensions of popular music of all kinds.Less

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

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

Jazz Matters: Sound, Place, and Time since Bebop

David Ake

What, where, and when is jazz? To most of us jazz means small combos, made up mostly of men, performing improvisationally in urban club venues. But jazz has been through many changes in the decades ... More

What, where, and when is jazz? To most of us jazz means small combos, made up mostly of men, performing improvisationally in urban club venues. But jazz has been through many changes in the decades since World War II, emerging in unexpected places and incorporating a wide range of new styles. This book examines post-1940s jazz and investigates such issues as improvisational analysis, pedagogy, American exceptionalism, and sense of place in jazz. The author uses case studies to illustrate how some of the values ascribed to the postwar jazz culture are reflected in and fundamentally shaped by aspects of sound, location, and time.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

Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician

Barry Seldes

From his dazzling conducting debut in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein's star blazed brilliantly. This biography of Bernstein's political life examines his career against the backdrop ... More

From his dazzling conducting debut in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein's star blazed brilliantly. This biography of Bernstein's political life examines his career against the backdrop of cold war America—blacklisting by the State Department in 1950, voluntary exile from the New York Philharmonic in 1951 for fear that he might be blacklisted, signing a humiliating affidavit to regain his passport—and the factors that by the mid-1950s allowed his triumphant return to the New York Philharmonic. The book links Bernstein's great concert-hall and musical-theatrical achievements and his real and perceived artistic setbacks to his involvement with progressive political causes. Making extensive use of previously untapped FBI files as well as overlooked materials in the Library of Congress's Bernstein archive, the text illuminates the ways in which Bernstein's career intersected with the twentieth century's most momentous events. The book reveals often ignored intersections of American culture and political power.Less

Lining Out the Word: Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in the Music of Black Americans

William Dargan

This book takes a close look at an important and little-studied component of African American music, one that has roots in Europe, but was adapted by African American congregations and went on to ... More

This book takes a close look at an important and little-studied component of African American music, one that has roots in Europe, but was adapted by African American congregations and went on to have a profound influence on music of all kinds—from gospel to soul to jazz. “Lining out,” also called Dr. Watts hymn singing, refers to hymns sung to a limited selection of familiar tunes, intoned a line at a time by a leader and taken up in turn by the congregation. From its origins in seventeenth-century England to the current practice of lining out among some Baptist congregations in the American South today, this study illuminates a unique American music genre in a narrative that stretches from Isaac Watts to Aretha Franklin and Ornette Coleman. The book traces the history of lining out from the time of slavery, when African American slaves adapted the practice for their own uses, blending it with other music, such as work songs. It explores the role of lining out in worship and the cultural implications of this practice far beyond the limits of the church, showing how African Americans wove African and European elements together to produce a powerful and unique cultural idiom. Drawing from a wide range of sources—including his own fieldwork and oral sources—the author offers a new perspective on the emergence of African American music in the United States.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

Making Music in Los Angeles: Transforming the Popular

Catherine Parsons Smith

This social history of music in Los Angeles from the 1880s to 1940 ventures into an often neglected period to discover that during America's Progressive Era, Los Angeles was a center for making music ... More

This social history of music in Los Angeles from the 1880s to 1940 ventures into an often neglected period to discover that during America's Progressive Era, Los Angeles was a center for making music long before it became a major metropolis. The author describes the thriving music scene over some sixty years, including opera, concert giving, and promotion, and the struggles of individuals who pursued music as an ideal, a career, a trade, a business—or all those things at once. The book demonstrates that music making was closely tied to broader Progressive Era issues, including political and economic developments, the new roles played by women, and issues of race, ethnicity, and class.Less

Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz

Alex Stewart

The received wisdom of popular jazz history is that the era of the big band was the 1930s and '40s, when swing was at its height. But, as practicing jazz musicians know, even though big bands lost ... More

The received wisdom of popular jazz history is that the era of the big band was the 1930s and '40s, when swing was at its height. But, as practicing jazz musicians know, even though big bands lost the spotlight once the bebop era began, they never really disappeared. This book challenges conventional jazz historiography by demonstrating the vital role of big bands in the ongoing development of jazz. The author describes how jazz musicians have found big bands valuable, exploring the rich “rehearsal band” scene in New York and the rise of repertory orchestras. The book combines historical research, ethnography, and participant observation with musical analysis, ethnic studies, and gender theory, dismantling stereotypical views of the big band.Less