Rethinking Jazz Cultures

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

RETHINKING JAZZ CULTURES December 19, 2019

Lebanon: Jazz And The Revolution

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, ...

RETHINKING JAZZ CULTURES December 28, 2018

Francesco 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 ...

RETHINKING JAZZ CULTURES August 28, 2018

David 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, ...

RETHINKING JAZZ CULTURES January 13, 2014

E. 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 ...

RETHINKING JAZZ CULTURES October 21, 2013

Tony 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 ...