Jazz Cultures

Jazz Cultures

Language: English

Pages: 265

ISBN: 0520228898

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


From its beginning, jazz has presented a contradictory social world: jazz musicians have worked diligently to erase old boundaries, but they have just as resolutely constructed new ones. David Ake's vibrant and original book considers the diverse musics and related identities that jazz communities have shaped over the course of the twentieth century, exploring the many ways in which jazz musicians and audiences experience and understand themselves, their music, their communities, and the world at large.

Writing as a professional pianist and composer, the author looks at evolving meanings, values, and ideals—as well as the sounds--that musicians, audiences, and critics carry to and from the various activities they call jazz. Among the compelling topics he discusses is the "visuality" of music: the relationship between performance demeanor and musical meaning. Focusing on pianists Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, Ake investigates the ways in which musicians' postures and attitudes influence perceptions of them as profound and serious artists. In another essay, Ake examines the musical values and ideals promulgated by college jazz education programs through a consideration of saxophonist John Coltrane. He also discusses the concept of the jazz "standard" in the 1990s and the differing sense of tradition implied in recent recordings by Wynton Marsalis and Bill Frisell.

Jazz Cultures shows how jazz history has not consisted simply of a smoothly evolving series of musical styles, but rather an array of individuals and communities engaging with disparate—and oftentimes conflicting--actions, ideals, and attitudes.

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Their home from the 1920s onward.37 Through his autobiography, Treat It Gentle (published posthumously in 1960), Bechet left behind a wonderfully rich firsthand account of musical and cultural life in turn-of-the-century New Orleans. Treat It Gentle stands as one of the true gems of autobiography—jazz or otherwise—it is a beautiful story, beautifully told. If, as John Chilton has pointed out, Bechet’s tale does not always correlate with what we might regard as historical fact, the work does tell.

Transform the entire system, as individuals are forced to contend with competing models of identity. jazz and formalist history Having rehearsed briefly the development of bebop attitudes and the challenge to these posed by Ornette Coleman’s group, I would like to return to Frank Tirro’s comments concerning the Coleman controversy of the late 1950s. To restate briefly: Tirro expressed surprise and amusement at the degree to which some musicians and audiences attacked Coleman’s music, given the.

Feelings, and how does Evans seem to communicate these so clearly? Also relevant here are Tirro’s description of Evans’s posture, as well as Keepnews’s depiction of his own mode of listening wherein his body “disappears.” To begin to address these issues, I turn to Bill Evans’s piano style, through which we can see how performance posture, stage demeanor, and other factors help to determine the meanings associated with the sounds. The Sound Evans’s playing style, aspects of which have been.

05-C1877 8/20/2001 12:46 PM Page 122 prehensive Method of Jazz Education for Student and Teacher, Baker objects to the reinscription of classical ideals on jazz students. But even he reinforces these aesthetics to a large degree. The sample course syllabi he provides for prospective jazz improvisation teachers deal overwhelmingly with memorization of songs and jazz-related harmonic theory. Baker does stress some ear training, but the mock exams he includes test students only on their ability to.

Relationships among the three predominant centers (B, E , and G) preclude strong gravity toward a single tonality. For players accustomed to Tin Pan Alley–based progressions, the piece can feel awkward, as the composer purposely thwarted the usual paths toward harmonic resolution.30 Despite its peculiarities, “Giant Steps” does offer a short, steady and, once one becomes accustomed to it, predictable series of chords on which to play, and this provides a key to jazz pedagogy’s fascination with.

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