Rethinking Jazz Cultures
Walter van de Leur: Jazz & Death, Part 2—Dancing With the Devil
by Ian Patterson
Part 1 | Part 2 Most people would probably take a linear, historical view of jazz in an attempt to understand its complex history. Walter van de Leur, Professor of Jazz and Improvised Music at the University of Amsterdam, starts with death. His book, Jazz And Death: Reception, Rituals And Representations (Routledge, 2023) illustrates multiple ways in which jazz's fascination with death feeds into the narratives and mythologies that surround the music and its practitioners.
read moreWalter van de Leur: Jazz & Death, Part 1—A Closer Walk With Thee
by Ian Patterson
Part 1 | Part 2 What is jazz? Beacon of the oppressed; music of jny: New Orleans bordellos; popular dance music; revolutionary music; high-art music with an established cannon; progressive music that absorbs and grows; hermetic traditional music... Jazz has always meant different things to different people. Even the term 'jazz' is political and contentious. Black American Music, or borderless music of the world? The most democratic form of music, or a club that is stubbornly ...
read moreKimberly Hannon Teal: Jazz Places, Space For Everybody?
by Ian Patterson
Behind the bricks and mortar of any jazz venue, large or small, lies an often complex history, a set of codes, expectations and ideologies, projected both both from within and from without. Old school, traditional, cutting edge, avant-garde, mainstream--different venues convey meanings and associations that align with different and often competing strands of jazz history. In her fascinating book Jazz Places: How Performance Spaces Shape Jazz History (University of California Press, 2021), Kimberly Hannon Teal, Assistant ...
read moreLebanon: Jazz And The Revolution
by Ian Patterson
When people's anger and frustration spill onto Beirut's streets, music is one of the first things to suffer. Every few years, it seems, roads are blocked, and crowds swell the downtown area—angry at Syrian intervention or political assassination, enraged by Israeli attack, sick to the teeth of inadequate garbage collection. There's always something to arouse the ire of the Lebanese people. In such times of unrest, when explosions of violence are always a possibility, gigs inevitably, ...
read moreFrancesco Martinelli: European Jazz - Tales of Etruscan Vases, Arias And Resistance
by Ian Patterson
Few have attempted to tackle the history of European jazz in any meaningful way. That's hardly surprising given the size of the task. How do you address the jazz history of over forty countries in a succinct and logical manner? How do you manage to throw light on all the major personalities at the expense of many lesser known musicans and still retain a balanced narrative? What weight should you give to the geo-political and socio-economic circumstances peculiar ...
read moreDavid Lyttle: Leading Jazz Into The Hinterlands
by Ian Patterson
There was a time when jazz groups would zig-zag all over the country, by train, in customized buses or in cars, playing date after date in towns big and small. Tours that kept a band on the road for months at a time were once the norm for many jazz outfits--the bread and butter of countless jazz musicians. Touring on such a scale, in such a manner, however, is largely a thing of the past. Outside of dedicated jazz clubs, ...
read moreE. Taylor Atkins: Let's Call This... Our Jazz?
by Ian Patterson
African-American vernacular or universal language? Symbol of freedom and equality, or one of nationalist ideals and bourgeois elitism? Folk music or high art? Jazz, since its earliest days, has represented many things to many people. For Professor E. Taylor Atkins, such binary ways of thinking rather over-simplify the arguments. Whereas an either or way of thinking about jazz is merely divisive, Atkins has spent much of the past twenty years arguing for a more inclusive approach to jazz studies, one ...
read moreTony Whyton: What Does Jazz Do For You?
by Ian Patterson
[The first installment of interviews with leading jazz academics as part of All About Jazz's new Rethinking Jazz Cultures series begins with Professor Tony Whyton, Director of the Salford Music Research Centre at the University of Salford.] Wherever you stand on what constitutes jazz music, jazz history and its great historical figures/landmark recordings, Tony Whyton invites you to think again. Whatever your views on jazz criticism, literature and photography, Whyton might just make you see things in a ...
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