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| black history jazz musicians: What Is This Thing Called Jazz? Eric Porter, 2002-01-31 Despite the plethora of writing about jazz, little attention has been paid to what musicians themselves wrote and said about their practice. An implicit division of labor has emerged where, for the most part, black artists invent and play music while white writers provide the commentary. Eric Porter overturns this tendency in his creative intellectual history of African American musicians. He foregrounds the often-ignored ideas of these artists, analyzing them in the context of meanings circulating around jazz, as well as in relationship to broader currents in African American thought. Porter examines several crucial moments in the history of jazz: the formative years of the 1920s and 1930s; the emergence of bebop; the political and experimental projects of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; and the debates surrounding Jazz at Lincoln Center under the direction of Wynton Marsalis. Louis Armstrong, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Yusef Lateef, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Wadada Leo Smith, Mary Lou Williams, and Reggie Workman also feature prominently in this book. The wealth of information Porter uncovers shows how these musicians have expressed themselves in print; actively shaped the institutional structures through which the music is created, distributed, and consumed, and how they aligned themselves with other artists and activists, and how they were influenced by forces of class and gender. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? challenges interpretive orthodoxies by showing how much black jazz musicians have struggled against both the racism of the dominant culture and the prescriptive definitions of racial authenticity propagated by the music's supporters, both white and black. |
| black history jazz musicians: Lift Every Voice and Swing Vaughn A. Booker, 2020-07-21 Winner of the 2022 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, award by by the Council of Graduate Schools Explores the role of jazz celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams as representatives of African American religion in the twentieth century Beginning in the 1920s, the Jazz Age propelled Black swing artists into national celebrity. Many took on the role of race representatives, and were able to leverage their popularity toward achieving social progress for other African Americans. In Lift Every Voice and Swing, Vaughn A. Booker argues that with the emergence of these popular jazz figures, who came from a culture shaped by Black Protestantism, religious authority for African Americans found a place and spokespeople outside of traditional Afro-Protestant institutions and religious life. Popular Black jazz professionals—such as Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams—inherited religious authority though they were not official religious leaders. Some of these artists put forward a religious culture in the mid-twentieth century by releasing religious recordings and putting on religious concerts, and their work came to be seen as integral to the Black religious ethos. Booker documents this transformative era in religious expression, in which jazz musicians embodied religious beliefs and practices that echoed and diverged from the predominant African American religious culture. He draws on the heretofore unexamined private religious writings of Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams, and showcases the careers of female jazz artists alongside those of men, expanding our understanding of African American religious expression and decentering the Black church as the sole concept for understanding Black Protestant religiosity. Featuring gorgeous prose and insightful research, Lift Every Voice and Swing will change the way we understand the connections between jazz music and faith. |
| black history jazz musicians: Jazz and Justice Gerald Horne, 2019-06-18 A galvanizing history of how jazz and jazz musicians flourished despite rampant cultural exploitation The music we call “jazz” arose in late nineteenth century North America—most likely in New Orleans—based on the musical traditions of Africans, newly freed from slavery. Grounded in the music known as the “blues,” which expressed the pain, sufferings, and hopes of Black folk then pulverized by Jim Crow, this new music entered the world via the instruments that had been abandoned by departing military bands after the Civil War. Jazz and Justice examines the economic, social, and political forces that shaped this music into a phenomenal US—and Black American—contribution to global arts and culture. Horne assembles a galvanic story depicting what may have been the era’s most virulent economic—and racist—exploitation, as jazz musicians battled organized crime, the Ku Klux Klan, and other variously malignant forces dominating the nightclub scene where jazz became known. Horne pays particular attention to women artists, such as pianist Mary Lou Williams and trombonist Melba Liston, and limns the contributions of musicians with Native American roots. This is the story of a beautiful lotus, growing from the filth of the crassest form of human immiseration. |
| black history jazz musicians: Soundtrack to a Movement Richard Brent Turner, 2021-04-27 **FINALIST for the 2022 PROSE Award in Music & the Performing Arts** **Certificate of Merit, Best Historical Research on Recorded Jazz, given by the 2022 Association for Recorded Sounds Collection Awards for Excellence in Historical Sound Research** Explores how jazz helped propel the rise of African American Islam during the era of global Black liberation Amid the social change and liberation of the civil rights and Black Power movements, the tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp recorded a tribute to Malcolm X’s emancipatory political consciousness. Shepp saw similarities between his revolutionary hero and John Coltrane, one of the most influential jazz musicians of the era. Later, the esteemed trumpeter Miles Davis echoed Shepp’s sentiment, recognizing that Coltrane’s music represented the very passion, rage, rebellion, and love that Malcolm X preached. Soundtrack to a Movement examines the link between the revolutionary Black Islam of the post-WWII generation and jazz music. It argues that from the late 1940s and ’50s though the 1970s, Islam rose in prominence among African Americans in part because of the embrace of the religion among jazz musicians. The book demonstrates that the values that Islam and jazz shared—Black affirmation, freedom, and self-determination—were key to the growth of African American Islamic communities, and that it was jazz musicians who led the way in shaping encounters with Islam as they developed a Black Atlantic “cool” that shaped both Black religion and jazz styles. Soundtrack to a Movement demonstrates how by expressing their values through the rejection of systemic racism, the construction of Black notions of masculinity and femininity, and the development of an African American religious internationalism, both jazz musicians and Black Muslims engaged with a global Black consciousness and interconnected resistance movements in the African diaspora and Africa. |
| black history jazz musicians: African-American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora Larry Ross, 2003 This study examines the migration of African American jazz musicians to other parts of the world from 1919 to the present. It provides evidence that African American jazz musicians fared better in the diaspora than they did in America where jazz and its inventors were born. Written by an anthropologist who is also a jazz musician, it provides a treatment of the cultural, historical, artistic, innovative, and aesthetic aspects of the migration of African American jazz musicians to the diaspora. |
| black history jazz musicians: Bill Evans Peter Pettinger, 2002-01-01 Acclaimed by musicologists and illustrated with dozens of photographs, a detailed, painstakingly researched and finely written biography examines the life and music of the influential, classically trained jazz pianist Bill Evans and includes a full discography of his recordings. UP. |
| black history jazz musicians: A History of African-American Jazz and Blues Joan Cartwright, M.A., 2013-10-10 Three essays and interviews with photographs by author and musician Joan Cartwright about the creation of blues in America by Africans captured for servitude on Euro-American plantations over a span of 400 years. This book should be read by music students and enthusiasts, alike. |
| black history jazz musicians: Cross the Water Blues Neil A. Wynn, 2010-02-09 Contributions from Christopher G. Bakriges, Sean Creighton, Jeffrey Green, Leighton Grist, Bob Groom, Rainer E. Lotz, Paul Oliver, Catherine Parsonage, Iris Schmeisser, Roberta Freund Schwartz, Robert Springer, Rupert Till, Guido van Rijn, David Webster, Jen Wilson, and Neil A. Wynn This unique collection of essays examines the flow of African American music and musicians across the Atlantic to Europe from the time of slavery to the twentieth century. In a sweeping examination of different musical forms--spirituals, blues, jazz, skiffle, and orchestral music--the contributors consider the reception and influence of black music on a number of different European audiences, particularly in Britain, but also France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The essayists approach the subject through diverse historical, musicological, and philosophical perspectives. A number of essays document little-known performances and recordings of African American musicians in Europe. Several pieces, including one by Paul Oliver, focus on the appeal of the blues to British listeners. At the same time, these considerations often reveal the ambiguous nature of European responses to black music and in so doing add to our knowledge of transatlantic race relations. |
| black history jazz musicians: Half-Blood Blues Esi Edugyan, 2012-02-28 Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011 An Oprah Magazine Best Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black. Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, both African Americans from Baltimore, have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film's premier, Sid's role in Falk's fate will be questioned and the two old musicians set off on a surprising and strange journey. From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk's incarceration in Sachsenhausen. Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues is a story about music and race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art. |
| black history jazz musicians: The Harmony of Bill Evans Jack Reilly, Bill Evans, 1994-05-01 (Keyboard Instruction). Bill Evans, the pianist, is a towering figure acknowledged by the jazz world, fans, musicians and critics. However Bill Evans, the composer, has yet to take his place alongside the great masters of composition. Therein lies the sole purpose of this book. A compilation of articles now revised and expanded that originally appeared in the quarterly newsletter Letter from Evans , this unique folio features extensive analysis of Evans' work. Pieces examined include: B Minor Waltz * Funny Man * How Deep Is the Ocean * I Fall in Love Too Easily * I Should Care * Peri's Scope * Time Remembered * and Twelve Tone Tune. |
| black history jazz musicians: The Jazz Republic Jonathan O. Wipplinger, 2017-04-14 Reveals the wide-ranging influence of American jazz on German discussions of music, race, and culture in the early twentieth century |
| black history jazz musicians: Black Music LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), 2023-12-04 A maioria dos críticos de jazz até agora são americanos brancos, enquanto os principais músicos não Black Music: free jazz e consciência negra (1959-1967), de Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), é um dos exercícios mais radicais e selvagens de crítica musical que já foi posto em prática. Nestes ensaios, resenhas, entrevistas, encartes, crônicas e impressões pessoais publicados entre 1959 e 1967, Baraka retrata a florescente cena do free jazz, um movimento que envolveu o aprofundamento das inovações sonoras do bebop e a recuperação do jazz como expressão autêntica da cultura afro-estadunidense em uma época em que seu sucesso comercial a tornava um gênero padronizado e palatável para a amérikkka branca. Figura central e unificadora do movimento Beat nos anos 50 e Black Power nas décadas seguintes, Amiri lança mão de uma linguagem elétrica e furiosa que reflete a liberdade de improvisação do free jazz para deixar claro que essa música só pode ser compreendida como parte de um conjunto de experiências, que ao longo do século XX, moldaram uma nova consciência do que significava ser negro nos Estados Unidos. E é por isso que os seus intérpretes, entre os quais se destacam John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Rollins, Don Cherry, Wayne Shorter e Cecil Taylor, devem ser considerados, além de grandes músicos: intelectuais ou místicos, ou ambos. |
| black history jazz musicians: Women in Jazz Jan Leder, 1985-10-22 This discography is successful in its attempt to `present a complete picture of women instrumentalists' recording activity from 1913 to 1968.' Jan Leder also shows the significant contributions made by women in jazz and their involvement playing jazz since its beginnings. The book contains two parts: Discography of Women in Jazz and Collective Section. The first section arranges names alphabetically by name of player with works arranged chronologically for each player. The second section is a chronological listing of recordings with two or more players. It gives date, place, name of orchestra, director, performers, recording titles, and company. Index of performers. An excellent resource on the subject. Reference Book Review This discography presents as complete a picture as possible of the recording activity of women jazz instrumentalists between 1913 and 1968. It is divided into two sections. The first section is alphabetical by the last name of the player and chronological within each player's section; the second is a chronologically arranged collective section containing information on recordings with two or more women players. An index of all women players with references to the pages where information on their recordings may be found completes the volume. |
| black history jazz musicians: Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930–1942 Christopher Wilkinson, 2012-02-01 Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence Best Research in Recorded Jazz Music–Certificate of Merit (2013) The coal fields of West Virginia would seem an unlikely market for big band jazz during the Great Depression. That a prosperous African American audience dominated by those involved with the coal industry was there for jazz tours would seem equally improbable. Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930-1942 shows that, contrary to expectations, black Mountaineers flocked to dances by the hundreds, in many instances traveling considerable distances to hear bands led by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, and Chick Webb, among numerous others. Indeed, as one musician who toured the state would recall, All the bands were goin' to West Virginia. The comparative prosperity of the coal miners, thanks to New Deal industrial policies, was what attracted the bands to the state. This study discusses that prosperity as well as the larger political environment that provided black Mountaineers with a degree of autonomy not experienced further south. Author Christopher Wilkinson demonstrates the importance of radio and the black press both in introducing this music and in keeping black West Virginians up to date with its latest developments. The book explores connections between local entrepreneurs who staged the dances and the national management of the bands that played those engagements. In analyzing black audiences' aesthetic preferences, the author reveals that many black West Virginians preferred dancing to a variety of music, not just jazz. Finally, the book shows bands now associated almost exclusively with jazz were more than willing to satisfy those audience preferences with arrangements in other styles of dance music. |
| black history jazz musicians: Jazz Griots Jean-Philippe Marcoux, 2012-06-27 This study is about how four representative African American poets in the 1960s, Langston Hughes, Umbra’s David Henderson, and the Black Arts Movement’s Sonia Sanchez, and Amiri Baraka engage, in the tradition of African griots, in poetic dialogues with aesthetics, music, politics, and Black History, and in so doing narrate, using jazz as meta-language, genealogies, etymologies, cultural legacies, and Black (hi)stories. In intersecting and complementary ways, Hughes, Henderson, Sanchez, and Baraka fashioned their griotism from theorizations of artistry as political engagement, and, in turn, formulated a Black aesthetic based on jazz performativity –a series of jazz-infused iterations that form a complex pattern of literary, musical, historical, and political moments in constant cross-fertilizing dialogues with one another. This form of poetic call-and-response is essential for it allows the possibility of intergenerational dialogues between poets and musicians as well as dialogical potential between song and politics, between Africa and Black America, within the poems. More importantly, these jazz dialogisms underline the construction of the Black Aesthetic as conceptualized respectively by the griotism of Hughes, of Henderson, and of Sanchez and Baraka. |
| black history jazz musicians: From Jazz to Swing Thomas J. Hennessey, 1994 Black jazz musicians transformed their art - a series of regional musics - into America's most popular music. From Jazz to Swing examines the historical context of jazz within the changing situation of the African-American community and notes the tensions created by the structures of segregation, stereotypes, and prejudice. Making use of the files of African-American newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, as well as published and archival oral history interviews, Thomas Hennessey explores the contradictions that musicians often faced as African Americans, as trained professional musicians, and as the products of differing regional experiences. From Jazz to Swing follows jazz from its beginnings in the regional black musics of the turn of the century in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and the territories that make up the rest of the country. Superstars of jazz such as Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Duke Ellington come to life, as do James Reese Europe, King Oliver, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, and others. |
| black history jazz musicians: Black British Jazz Dr Jason Toynbee, Dr Catherine Tackley, Dr Mark Doffman, 2014-08-28 Black British musicians have been making jazz since around 1920. This book reveals their hidden history and major contribution to the development of jazz in the UK. The chapters show the importance of black British jazz in terms of musical hybridity and the cultural significance of race. The volume also provides a case study in how music of the African diaspora reverberates around the world, beyond the shores of the USA - the engine-house of global black music. It will engage scholars of music and cultural studies not only in Britain, but across the world. |
| black history jazz musicians: Jazz in Black and White Charley Gerard, 1998-03-30 Is jazz a universal idiom or is it an African-American art form? Although whites have been playing jazz almost since it first developed, the history of jazz has been forged by a series of African-American artists whose styles caught the interest of their musical generation—masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker. Whether or not white musicians deserve their secondary status in jazz history, one thing is clear: developments in jazz have been a result of black people's search for a meaningful identity as Americans and members of the African diaspora. Blacks are not alone in being deeply affected by these shifts in African-American racial attitudes and cultural strategies. Historically in closer contact with blacks than nearly any other group of white Americans, white jazz musicians have also felt these shifts. More importantly, their careers and musical interests have been deeply affected by them. The author, an active participant in the jazz world as composer, performer, and author of several books on jazz and Latin music, hopes that this book will encourage jazz lovers to take a rhetoric-free look at the charged issue of race as has affected the world of jazz. A work about the formulation of identity in the face of racial difference, the book considers topics such as the promotion of black Southern culture and inner-city styles like rhythm and blues and rap as a means of achieving black racial solidarity. It discusses the body of music fostered by an identification to Africa, the conversion of black jazz musicians to Islam and other Eastern religions, and the impact of a jazz community united by heroin use. White jazz musicians who identify with black culture in an unsettling form by speaking black dialect and calling themselves African-American is examined, as is the assimilation of jazz into the wider American culture. |
| black history jazz musicians: Freedom Sounds Ingrid Monson, 2007-10-18 An insightful examination of the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and African Independence on jazz in the 1950s and 60s, Freedom Sounds traces the complex relationships among music, politics, aesthetics, and activism through the lens of the hot button racial and economic issues of the time. Ingrid Monson illustrates how the contentious and soul-searching debates in the Civil Rights, African Independence, and Black Power movements shaped aesthetic debates and exerted a moral pressure on musicians to take action. Throughout, her arguments show how jazz musicians' quest for self-determination as artists and human beings also led to fascinating and far reaching musical explorations and a lasting ethos of social critique and transcendence. Across a broad body of issues of cultural and political relevance, Freedom Sounds considers the discursive, structural, and practical aspects of life in the jazz world in the 1950s and 1960s. In domestic politics, Monson explores the desegregation of the American Federation of Musicians, the politics of playing to segregated performance venues in the 1950s, the participation of jazz musicians in benefit concerts, and strategies of economic empowerment. Issues of transatlantic importance such as the effects of anti-colonialism and African nationalism on the politics and aesthetics of the music are also examined, from Paul Robeson's interest in Africa, to the State Department jazz tours, to the interaction of jazz musicians such Art Blakey and Randy Weston with African and African diasporic aesthetics. Monson deftly explores musicians' aesthetic agency in synthesizing influential forms of musical expression from a multiplicity of stylistic and cultural influences--African American music, popular song, classical music, African diasporic aesthetics, and other world musics--through examples from cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and the avant-garde. By considering the differences between aesthetic and socio-economic mobility, she presents a fresh interpretation of debates over cultural ownership, racism, reverse racism, and authenticity. Freedom Sounds will be avidly read by students and academics in musicology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, popular music, African American Studies, and African diasporic studies, as well as fans of jazz, hip hop, and African American music. |
| black history jazz musicians: Soul on Soul Tammy Lynn Kernodle, 2004 A chronicle of the stormy personal and professional life of the legendary but underappreciated jazz pianist, composer, and arranger |
| black history jazz musicians: Jazz from Detroit Mark Stryker, 2019-07-08 Jazz from Detroit explores the city’s pivotal role in shaping the course of modern and contemporary jazz. With more than two dozen in-depth profiles of remarkable Detroit-bred musicians, complemented by a generous selection of photographs, Mark Stryker makes Detroit jazz come alive as he draws out significant connections between the players, eras, styles, and Detroit’s distinctive history. Stryker’s story starts in the 1940s and ’50s, when the auto industry created a thriving black working and middle class in Detroit that supported a vibrant nightlife, and exceptional public school music programs and mentors in the community like pianist Barry Harris transformed the city into a jazz juggernaut. This golden age nurtured many legendary musicians—Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones, Gerald Wilson, Milt Jackson, Yusef Lateef, Donald Byrd, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Joe Henderson, and others. As the city’s fortunes change, Stryker turns his spotlight toward often overlooked but prescient musician-run cooperatives and self-determination groups of the 1960s and ’70s, such as the Strata Corporation and Tribe. In more recent decades, the city’s culture of mentorship, embodied by trumpeter and teacher Marcus Belgrave, ensured that Detroit continued to incubate world-class talent; Belgrave protégés like Geri Allen, Kenny Garrett, Robert Hurst, Regina Carter, Gerald Cleaver, and Karriem Riggins helped define contemporary jazz. The resilience of Detroit’s jazz tradition provides a powerful symbol of the city’s lasting cultural influence. Stryker’s 21 years as an arts reporter and critic at the Detroit Free Press are evident in his vivid storytelling and insightful criticism. Jazz from Detroit will appeal to jazz aficionados, casual fans, and anyone interested in the vibrant and complex history of cultural life in Detroit. |
| black history jazz musicians: If You Can't be Free, be a Mystery Farah Jasmine Griffin, 2001 The threads of Billie Holiday's mystique are unraveled in this study of a woman who needed to create art at any cost. Griffin liberates Holiday from stereotypes of black women and pries her away from the male tradition of jazz criticism while presenting Holiday's independent spirit. of photos. |
| black history jazz musicians: Swingin' on Central Avenue Peter Vacher, 2015-09-17 The development of jazz and swing in the African-American community in Los Angeles in the years before the second World War received a boost from the arrival of a significant numbers of musicians from Chicago and the southwestern states. In Swingin’ on Central: African-American Jazz in Los Angeles, a new study of that vibrant jazz community, music historian and jazz journalist Peter Vacher traveled between Los Angeles and London over several years in order to track down key figures and interview them for this oral history of one of the most swinging jazz scenes in the United States. Vacher recreates the energy and vibrancy of the Central Avenue scene through first-hand accounts from such West Coast notables as trumpeters Andy Blakeney , George Orendorff, and McLure “Red Mack” Morris; pianists Betty Hall Jones, Chester Lane, and Gideon Honore, saxophonists Chuck Thomas, Jack McVea, and Caughey Roberts Jr; drummers Jesse Sailes, Red Minor Robinson, and Nathaniel “Monk” McFay; and others. Throughout, readers learn the story behind the formative years of these musicians, most of whom have never been interviewed until now. While not exactly headliners—nor heavily recorded—this community of jazz musicians was among the most talented in pre-war America. Arriving in Los Angeles at a time when black Americans faced restrictions on where they could live and work, jazz artists of color commonly found themselves limited to the Central Avenue area. This scene, supplemented by road travel, constituted their daily bread as players—with none of them making it to New York. Through their own words, Vacher tells their story in Los Angeles, offering along the way a close look at the role the black musicians union played in their lives while also taking on jazz historiography’s comparative neglect of these West Coast players. Music historians with a particular interest in pre-bop jazz in California will find much new material here as Vacher paints a world of luxurious white nightclubs with black bands, ghetto clubs and after-hours joints, a world within a world that resulted from the migration of black musicians to the West Coast. |
| black history jazz musicians: Clawing at the Limits of Cool Farah Jasmine Griffin, Salim Washington, 2013-10-22 When the renowned trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis chose the members of his quintet in 1955, he passed over well-known, respected saxophonists such as Sonny Rollins to pick out the young, still untested John Coltrane. What might have seemed like a minor decision at the time would instead set the course not just for each of their careers but for jazz itself. Clawing at the Limits of Cool is the first book to focus on Davis and Coltrane's musical interaction and its historical context, on the ways they influenced each other and the tremendous impact they've had on culture since then. It chronicles the drama of their collaboration, from their initial historic partnership to the interlude of their breakup, during which each man made tremendous progress toward his personal artistic goals. And it continues with the last leg of their journey together, a time when the Miles Davis group, featuring John Coltrane, forever changed the landscape of jazz. Authors Farah Jasmine Griffin and Salim Washington examine the profound implications that the Davis/Coltrane collaboration would have for jazz and African American culture, drawing parallels to the changing standards of African American identity with their public personas and private difficulties. With vastly different personal and musical styles, the two men could not have been more different. One exemplified the tough, closemouthed cool of the fifties while the other made the transition during this time from unfocused junkie to a religious pilgrim who would inspire others to pursue spiritual enlightenment in the coming decade. Their years together mark a watershed moment, and Clawing at the Limits of Cool draws on both cultural history and precise musical detail to illuminate the importance that their collaboration would have for jazz and American history as a whole. |
| black history jazz musicians: Hear Me Talkin' to Ya Nat Shapiro, Nat Hentoff, 2012-08-16 In this marvelous oral history, the words of such legends as Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Billy Holiday trace the birth, growth, and changes in jazz over the years. |
| black history jazz musicians: The Jazz Cadence of American Culture Robert G. O'Meally, 1998 Taking to heart Ralph Ellison's remark that much in American life is jazz-shaped, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture offers a wide range of eloquent statements about the influence of this art form. Robert G. O'Meally has gathered a comprehensive collection of important essays, speeches, and interviews on the impact of jazz on other arts, on politics, and on the rhythm of everyday life. Focusing mainly on American artistic expression from 1920 to 1970, O'Meally confronts a long era of political and artistic turbulence and change in which American art forms influenced one another in unexpected ways. Organized thematically, these provocative pieces include an essay considering poet and novelist James Weldon Johnson as a cultural critic, an interview with Wynton Marsalis, a speech on the heroic image in jazz, and a newspaper review of a recent melding of jazz music and dance, Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. From Stanley Crouch to August Wilson to Jacqui Malone, the plurality of voices gathered here reflects the variety of expression within jazz. The book's opening section sketches the overall place of jazz in America. Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner unpack the word jazz and its register, Albert Murray considers improvisation in music and life, Amiri Baraka argues that white critics misunderstand jazz, and Stanley Crouch cogently dissects the intersections of jazz and mainstream American democratic institutions. After this, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring jazz and the visual arts, dance, sports, history, memory, and literature. Ann Douglas writes on jazz's influence on the design and construction of skyscrapers in the 1920s and '30s, Zora Neale Hurston considers the significance of African-American dance, Michael Eric Dyson looks at the jazz of Michael Jordan's basketball game, and Hazel Carby takes on the sexual politics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith's blues. The Jazz Cadence offers a wealth of insight and information for scholars, students, jazz aficionados, and any reader wishing to know more about this music form that has put its stamp on American culture more profoundly than any other in the twentieth century. |
| black history jazz musicians: The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture Jon Seebart Panish, 1995 |
| black history jazz musicians: Harlem in Montmartre William A. Shack, 2001-09-04 Illuminates the expatriate African American community of jazz musicians that thrived in the Montmartre district of Paris in the '20s and '30s and helped turn the city of lights into the major jazz capital it remains today. |
| black history jazz musicians: Benny Goodman & Teddy Wilson Lesa Cline-Ransome, 2014-02-01 Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman broke the color barrier in entertainment when they formed the Benny Goodman Trio with Gene Krupa. Here is the story of how two musical prodigies from very different backgrounds grew up, were brought together by the love of music, and helped to create the jazz style known as swing. |
| black history jazz musicians: Free Jazz/Black Power Philippe Carles, Jean-Louis Comolli, 2015-01-05 In 1971, French jazz critics Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli cowrote Free Jazz/Black Power, a treatise on the racial and political implications of jazz and jazz criticism. It remains a testimony to the long-ignored encounter of radical African American music and French left-wing criticism. Carles and Comolli set out to defend a genre vilified by jazz critics on both sides of the Atlantic by exposing the new sound’s ties to African American culture, history, and the political struggle that was raging in the early 1970s. The two offered a political and cultural history of Black presence in the United States to shed more light on the dubious role played by jazz criticism in racial oppression. This analysis of jazz criticism and its production is astutely self-aware. It critiques the critics, building a work of cultural studies in a time and place where the practice was virtually unknown. The authors reached radical conclusions—free jazz was a revolutionary reaction against white domination, was the musical counterpart to the Black Power movement, and was a musical style that demanded a similar political commitment. The impact of this book is difficult to overstate, as it made readers reconsider their response to African American music. In some cases, it changed the way musicians thought about and played jazz. Free Jazz/Black Power remains indispensable to the study of the relation of American free jazz to European audiences, critics, and artists. This monumental critique caught the spirit of its time and realigned that zeitgeist. |
| black history jazz musicians: Spiritual, Blues, and Jazz People in African American Fiction A. Yemisi Jimoh, 2002 Jimoh (English, U. of Arkansas-Fayetteville) investigates African American intracultural issues that inform a more broadly intertextual use of music in creating characters and themes in fiction by US black writers. Conventional close readings of texts, she argues, often miss historical-sociopolitical discourses that can illuminate African American narratives. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR |
| black history jazz musicians: A History of the Harlem Renaissance Rachel Farebrother, Miriam Thaggert, 2021-02-04 This book presents original essays that explore the eclecticism of Harlem Renaissance literature and culture. |
| black history jazz musicians: A Celebration of Black History through Music Blair Bielawski, 2010-09-01 Introduce your students to the rich history of African-American music with A Celebration of Black History through Musicfrom spirituals to hip-hop. Featuring some of the most important musicians of each style of music covered, A Celebration of Black History through Music highlights how the roots of African-American music can be traced from the slave songs of the 1700s through hip-hop music of the 1970s and 80s, and demonstrates how this music has influenced and shaped the music of the world. Words alone will not do justice to any of the music described in this book. An enhanced CD containing audio examples of the featured music styles is included to allow your students to hear the music in the lessons. In addition, a discography, reproducible worksheets, extension activities, and a complete PowerPoint presentation are all included for use with your class. |
| black history jazz musicians: The Black Russian Vladimir Alexandrov, 2013-06-01 The extraordinary story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, the son of former slaves who fled America to build a life in Tsarist Russia. 'A fascinating tale' Anne Applebaum 'Thoroughly enjoyable' Spectator 'Extraordinary and gripping' Adam Hochschild After the brutal death of his father when he was a teenager, Frederick Thomas fled the stifling racism of the American South and headed for New York City, where he worked as a valet and trained as a singer. Through charisma and cunning, Thomas emigrated to Europe, where his acquired skills as a multilingual maitre d'hôtel allowed him to travel from London to Monte Carlo before settling in Moscow in the glorious days before the 1917 Revolution. There Thomas became a rich and respected nightclub impresario, opening a lavish nightclub called Maxim. With evocative backdrops in Moscow and later in Odessa and Constantinople, where Thomas rebuilt his life after the revolution, The Black Russian is an inspiring story of personal reinvention set in one of history's richest periods. |
| black history jazz musicians: Jazz Diasporas Rashida K. Braggs, 2016-01-26 At the close of the Second World War, waves of African American musicians migrated to Paris, eager to thrive in its reinvigorated jazz scene. Jazz Diasporas 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, Rashida K. Braggs investigates the impact of this postwar musical migration. She 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 Braggs terms “jazz diasporas.” |
| black history jazz musicians: Current Housing Reports , 1988 |
| black history jazz musicians: A Power Stronger Than Itself George E. Lewis, 2008-09-15 Founded in 1965 and still active today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an American institution with an international reputation. George E. Lewis, who joined the collective as a teenager in 1971, establishes the full importance and vitality of the AACM with this communal history, written with a symphonic sweep that draws on a cross-generational chorus of voices and a rich collection of rare images. Moving from Chicago to New York to Paris, and from founding member Steve McCall’s kitchen table to Carnegie Hall, A Power Stronger Than Itself uncovers a vibrant, multicultural universe and brings to light a major piece of the history of avant-garde music and art. |
| black history jazz musicians: Paris Blues Andy Fry, 2014-07-04 The Jazz Age. The phrase conjures images of Louis Armstrong holding court at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Duke Ellington dazzling crowds at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and star singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the Jazz Age was every bit as much of a Paris phenomenon as it was a Chicago and New York scene. In Paris Blues, Andy Fry provides an alternative history of African American music and musicians in France, one that looks beyond familiar personalities and well-rehearsed stories. He pinpoints key issues of race and nation in France’s complicated jazz history from the 1920s through the 1950s. While he deals with many of the traditional icons—such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, among others—what he asks is how they came to be so iconic, and what their stories hide as well as what they preserve. Fry focuses throughout on early jazz and swing but includes its re-creation—reinvention—in the 1950s. Along the way, he pays tribute to forgotten traditions such as black musical theater, white show bands, and French wartime swing. Paris Blues provides a nuanced account of the French reception of African Americans and their music and contributes greatly to a growing literature on jazz, race, and nation in France. |
| black history jazz musicians: The Creation of Jazz Burton William Peretti, 1994 As musicians, listeners, and scholars have sensed for many years, the story of jazz is more than a history of the music. Burton Peretti presents a fascinating account of how the racial and cultural dynamics of American cities created the music, life, and business that was jazz. From its origins in the jook joints of sharecroppers and the streets and dance halls of 1890s New Orleans, through its later metamorphoses in the cities of the North, Peretti charts the life of jazz culture to the eve of bebop and World War II. In the course of those fifty years, jazz was the story of players who made the transition from childhood spasm bands to Carnegie Hall and worldwide touring and fame. It became the music of the Twenties, a decade of Prohibition, of adolescent discontent, of Harlem pride, and of Americans hoping to preserve cultural traditions in an urban, commercial age. And jazz was where black and white musicians performed together, as uneasy partners, in the big bands of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. Blacks fought back by using jazz, states Peretti, with its unique cultural and intellectual properties, to prove, assess, and evade the dynamic of minstrelsy. Drawing on newspaper reports of the times and on the firsthand testimony of more than seventy prominent musicians and singers (among them Benny Carter, Bud Freeman, Kid Ory, and Mary Lou Williams), The Creation of Jazz is the first comprehensive analysis of the role of early jazz in American social history. |
| black history jazz musicians: African American Jazz and Rap James L. Conyers, Jr., 2015-11-03 Music is an expressive voice of a culture, often more so than literature. While jazz and rap are musical genres popular among people of numerous racial and social backgrounds, they are truly important historically for their representation of and impact upon African American culture and traditions. Essays offer interdisciplinary study of jazz and rap as they relate to black culture in America. The essays are grouped under sections. One examines an Afrocentric approach to understanding jazz and rap; another, the history, culture, performers, instruments, and political role of jazz and rap. There are sections on the expressions of jazz in dance and literature; rap music as art, social commentary, and commodity; and the future. Each essay offers insight and thoughtful discourse on these popular musical styles and their roles within the black community and in American culture as a whole. References are included for each essay. |
Jazz as Black History: Teaching African American History …
This unit will require students to develop and make use of critical listening, reading and thinking abilities as we examine a wide range of music, lyrics, primary sources and more in an effort to gain understanding of the rich cultural history and musical evolution of jazz. Students will be asked to note connections as … See more
Jazz is African Diasporic Music: Reconfiguring the Uniquely …
The music of the African Diaspora was making its way back into popular circles of jazz musicians from the mid-1950s about the same time as the Bandung Conference, the beginning of the jazz …
Race, History, and Black British Jazz
Since the arrival of jazz in Britain in 1919, black musicians have played a key role in the development of the genre. They have made significant innovations and brought a distinct …
Tough on Black Asses: Segregation Ideology in the Early …
In the time it originated, in the early 1920's, jazz music was seen as “black music” because it was played almost exclusively by African-American musi-cians, so the racial culture of America …
Jazz, Civil Rights, and Black Power - Knowledge UChicago
Though jazz musicians have been identified as Civil Rights activists, they are not understood as pursuing their activism through music outside of Civil Rights organizations. This thesis …
Black American Musicans: Precursors of Jazz - Yale University
Black music has a long history of oral tradition, improvisation, harmonic variety and rhythmic perfection. This music enjoys a certain unique characteristic in its performance and …
Eric Porter. What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American ...
many of the myths of jazz history and how these politics have actually brought about the repression of certain realities of the music. A salient ex ample is the forgotten practice among …
Music Of Black Americans A History (book) - now.acs.org
Music Of Black Americans A History: ... War II jazz scene look at female artists like gospel star Shirley Caesar and jazz musician arranger Melba Liston illuminate the ... s debt to African …
Jazz and the Great Migration - TDL
Of particular note is the emergence of black musicians, who had a profound impact not only on the black communities of America but also on the entire country. They gave African Americans …
Free Jazz: A Reflection of Black Power Ideology - JSTOR
The term free jazz was primarily used by jazz enthusiasts, whereas the critics called it "avant-garde jazz." The musicians, who developed the music, preferred that it be called "the New …
From Potent to Popular: The Effects of Racism on Chicago Jazz …
city's Black Belt were taking to heart the racial implications of jazz. They supported black musicians, "Race heroes" like Louis Armstrong, who could make names for themselves despite …
Leaders and Players: The Role of Jazz Artists as Civil Rights …
Jazz artists served as gateways into the often-unheard thoughts and feelings of African Americans. A common message that jazz and blues musicians that promulgated during the …
Musical Literacy and Jazz Musicians in the 1910s and 1920s
The aim of this article is to consider the various ways that jazz musicians —both white and black—encountered and engaged with written music in the 1910s and 1920s.
Black Scholars on Black Music: The Past, the Present, and the …
and commentary on black music began to include blues and jazz. By the time that the black writer Maud Cuney-Hare's notable publication Negro Musicians and Their Music (1936) appeared, …
Jazz as a Black American Art Form : Definitions of the Jazz ...
Jazz music and culture have experienced a surge in popularity after the passage of the Jazz Preservation Act (JPA) in 1987. This resolution defined jazz as a black American art form, thus …
The Roots and Impact of African American Blues Music
some of the most famous black and white musicians in history. The beginnings of blues, along with all other forms of African American music, can be traced back to the era of the slave trade …
The White Reception of Jazz in America - JSTOR
Motivated by political and racial concerns, many jazz critics during the Harlem Renaissance publicized their dislike of jazz music in order to express their dislike of African Americans.
Jazz and the Boundaries of Race - JSTOR
Demand for jazz was huge among portrayed the music's racial identity. They analyze some both black and white audiences. Black, Creole, and white of the ways in which jazz and its reception …
Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the …
Jul 11, 2018 · has the competitive narrative framed how black women musicians are read and defined within popular culture history and criticism? To understand this we must interrogate …
'Classical Jazz' and the Black Arts Movement - JSTOR
If one recalls artists such as John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Eric Dolphy, it is clear that jazz musicians were never before so technically proficient on their instruments or in their mastery of …
Jazz as Black History: Teaching African American History …
Nov 17, 2017 · Creoles Sidney Bechet & Jelly Roll Morton were some of the most notable jazz musicians; they were instrumental in the early foundations of the genre. It is important for …
Jazz is African Diasporic Music: Reconfiguring the …
The music of the African Diaspora was making its way back into popular circles of jazz musicians from the mid-1950s about the same time as the Bandung Conference, the beginning of the jazz …
Race, History, and Black British Jazz
Since the arrival of jazz in Britain in 1919, black musicians have played a key role in the development of the genre. They have made significant innovations and brought a distinct African diasporic …
Tough on Black Asses: Segregation Ideology in the Early …
In the time it originated, in the early 1920's, jazz music was seen as “black music” because it was played almost exclusively by African-American musi-cians, so the racial culture of America …
Jazz, Civil Rights, and Black Power - Knowledge UChicago
Though jazz musicians have been identified as Civil Rights activists, they are not understood as pursuing their activism through music outside of Civil Rights organizations. This thesis examines …
Black American Musicans: Precursors of Jazz - Yale University
Black music has a long history of oral tradition, improvisation, harmonic variety and rhythmic perfection. This music enjoys a certain unique characteristic in its performance and acceptability. …
Eric Porter. What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American ...
many of the myths of jazz history and how these politics have actually brought about the repression of certain realities of the music. A salient ex ample is the forgotten practice among the first …
Music Of Black Americans A History (book) - now.acs.org
Music Of Black Americans A History: ... War II jazz scene look at female artists like gospel star Shirley Caesar and jazz musician arranger Melba Liston illuminate the ... s debt to African …
Jazz and the Great Migration - TDL
Of particular note is the emergence of black musicians, who had a profound impact not only on the black communities of America but also on the entire country. They gave African Americans a face …
Free Jazz: A Reflection of Black Power Ideology - JSTOR
The term free jazz was primarily used by jazz enthusiasts, whereas the critics called it "avant-garde jazz." The musicians, who developed the music, preferred that it be called "the New Thing" or …
From Potent to Popular: The Effects of Racism on Chicago …
city's Black Belt were taking to heart the racial implications of jazz. They supported black musicians, "Race heroes" like Louis Armstrong, who could make names for themselves despite the fact that …
Leaders and Players: The Role of Jazz Artists as Civil Rights …
Jazz artists served as gateways into the often-unheard thoughts and feelings of African Americans. A common message that jazz and blues musicians that promulgated during the 1960s was the …
Musical Literacy and Jazz Musicians in the 1910s and 1920s
The aim of this article is to consider the various ways that jazz musicians —both white and black—encountered and engaged with written music in the 1910s and 1920s.
Black Scholars on Black Music: The Past, the Present, and the …
and commentary on black music began to include blues and jazz. By the time that the black writer Maud Cuney-Hare's notable publication Negro Musicians and Their Music (1936) appeared, the …
Jazz as a Black American Art Form : Definitions of the Jazz ...
Jazz music and culture have experienced a surge in popularity after the passage of the Jazz Preservation Act (JPA) in 1987. This resolution defined jazz as a black American art form, thus …
The Roots and Impact of African American Blues Music
some of the most famous black and white musicians in history. The beginnings of blues, along with all other forms of African American music, can be traced back to the era of the slave trade …
The White Reception of Jazz in America - JSTOR
Motivated by political and racial concerns, many jazz critics during the Harlem Renaissance publicized their dislike of jazz music in order to express their dislike of African Americans.
Jazz and the Boundaries of Race - JSTOR
Demand for jazz was huge among portrayed the music's racial identity. They analyze some both black and white audiences. Black, Creole, and white of the ways in which jazz and its reception …
Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the …
Jul 11, 2018 · has the competitive narrative framed how black women musicians are read and defined within popular culture history and criticism? To understand this we must interrogate how …
'Classical Jazz' and the Black Arts Movement - JSTOR
If one recalls artists such as John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Eric Dolphy, it is clear that jazz musicians were never before so technically proficient on their instruments or in their mastery of …
