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Welcome to the 2013 Rhythm Changes Conference, Rethinking Jazz Cultures. This four-day event marks the final year of the HERAfunded Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities project and celebrates the cross-disciplinary strength of jazz research from around the world today. Rhythm Changes is a transnational research project which investigates jazz scenes and practices in different European settings. Funded as part of the HERA Joint Research Programme theme Cultural Dynamics: Inheritance and Identity, the project has used jazz as a platform to explore concepts of national identity, canonicity, and social ambience in different European contexts and has also examined the ways in which jazz works as a form of transnational cultural practice. The project team has worked with a range of partners across Europe to engage in innovative research and crossdisciplinary modes of enquiry. Over the past three years, the team has published books, articles and reports on core project themes and worked with networking organisations, musicians and festivals to engage different audiences in thinking about jazz and its place within Europe today. Rhythm Changes has drawn on the expertise of 13 researchers who work across 7 institutions in 5 European countries but the growing network of partners, musicians and scholars including those participating in the 2011 Jazz and National Identities Conference in Amsterdam and Rethinking Jazz Cultures in Salford means that the scope and impact of Rhythm Changes is ever widening. Our packed Conference programme offers stimulating keynote presentations and panels, plenary sessions, papers, performances, poster presentations and exhibitions, all of which should generate high quality debate and discussion. Rhythm Changes has sought to encourage people to rethink the way jazz has been articulated, represented and understood, and this conference will be a powerful reflection of this core aim. Whether we think about jazz as existing simultaneously as a national and transnational practice, as a cultural
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form that challenges traditional binary distinctions (America/Europe, Art/Popular) or as a vehicle for exploring broader themes of cultural and social change in Europe and beyond, the Rethinking Jazz Cultures Conference offers us a chance to create new insights and ways of thinking, and move jazz research beyond the current state of the art. Whilst Rhythm Changes ends formally in September 2013, the work of the team and the underlying themes of the project will live on and, as Project Leader, I am sure that the impact from activities over the last three years will be felt in decades to come. Indeed, the legacy of Rhythm Changes is already taking shape through the work of this interdisciplinary community, and a new jazz monograph series will be launched over the next 12 months which reflects the crossdisciplinary methods and transnational interests of Rhythm Changes. Equally, new partnerships and research questions have developed over the last three years which will inevitably find their way into future projects and publications. With this in mind, Im sure I speak on behalf of the entire project team when I say that we would like to hear from you if you have ideas and suggestions for future research projects, publications and collaborations. Finally, let me welcome you to the University of Salford and thank you for playing an active part in the ongoing work of Rhythm Changes! Here's to a challenging, stimulating, productive and memorable Conference. Tony Whyton
Project Leader, Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities Director, Salford Music Research Centre t.whyton@salford.ac.uk
EVENT SCHEDULE
Thursday 11 April
17.00 Registration and reception, The Cube Gallery, Great Portland Street, Manchester Rhythm Changes photography exhibition (running from 5 14 April 2013)
Photographing this project completely opened my eyes to the variety in modern jazz and its different manifestations in different locations.
Friday 12 April
8.30-9.15 9.15-10.30 Keynote Presentation Welcome: Keynote: Registration Keynote Presentation Time: 9.15-10.30 Room: DPL* Chair: Tony Whyton
Respondent:
Tony Whyton (University of Salford) David Ake (University of Nevada, Reno) After Wynton: Rethinking Jazz Cultures in the Post NeoTraditional Era Alan Stanbridge (University of Toronto)
10.30-11.00 11.00-13.00
Parallel session: 1a Time: Room: Chair: Jazz Crossings 11.00-13.00 3.29 Walter van de Leur Aaron Johnson (Columbia University), Shifting boundaries or "Man, _____'s a total sellout": The Battle for Jazz on 1970s Radio John Howland (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim), Hot Buttered Soul and Billboard Jazz: The Curious Case of Isaac Hayes and the Intersections of Jazz and Soul, 1969-1973 Nikko Higgins (Columbia University), Fusion in South India and Directions in World Jazz Kevin Fellezs (Columbia University), Suburban Jazz Meets Cosmopolitan Country: Earl Klugh, Chet Atkins, and George Benson *The Digital Performance Lab (DPL) is situated on the ground floor of the Media City UK building
Parallel session: 1b Time: Room: Chair: Andrew Dubber Digital Media 11.00-13.00 2.36 Jonty Stockdale (University of West London), Tuning to a Different Channel Sebastian Scotney (Editor, LondonJazz), Giving the musician a voice online - a practitioner perspective Tom Sykes (University of Salford), Jazz in the Big Society: participatory cultures and local jazz scenes in Britain Simon Barber (BCU), Edition Records: reimagining jazz culture in the digital age Session: 1c Time: Room: Chair: Venues and Festivals 11.00-13.00 3.02 George McKay ric Dussault (Historian), Jazz Musicians, Jazz Fans and Existentialist Cellar Clubs in Saint-Germain-des-Prs (Paris), 1945-1960 Ove Volquartz (freelance musician), Developing a local scene by self organized concert series: relations between performing venue and the development of (Jazz) music Katherine Williams (Leeds College of Music), Newport Up! Liveness, artifacts, and the seductive menace of jazz recordings revisited Darren Mueller (Duke University), Duke Ellington: Live (but Mediated) at Newport 1956 Session: 1d Time: 11.00Room: Chair: Improvisation 13.00 2.19 Petter Frost Fadnes Jeri Brown (Concordia University), Vocal Ecosystems: How Do We Really Improvise in Vocal Jazz? Damian Evans (Conservatory of Music and Drama, Dublin Institute of Technology/Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media), Rethinking Jazz Performance as a Research Method Lawrence Woof (freelance musician), Jazz and the Angel of History Per Zanussi (University of Stavanger), Composition for improvising musicians with particular focus on Asian compositional techniques as structures for improvisation
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13.00-14.00 14.00-15.30
Session: 2a Time: Room: Chair: Critics and Discourse 14.00 15.30 3.29 Nicholas Gebhardt Tom Perchard (Goldsmiths, University of London) We must expand jazz so that we never have to leave it: Andr Hodeirs contested territories Ken Prouty (Michigan State University), Neo-Classic? Neo-Conservative? NeoColonialist? Jazzs Shifting Geo -Political Discourse in the Early 21st Century Tony Mitchell (University of Technology, Sydney), Against the Flow: The Necks vs John Litweiler Session: 2b Time: Room: Chair: Jazz Education 14.00 15.30 2.36 Walter van de Leur Liz Haddon (University of York), The development of the individual voice within the institutional community Ari Poutiainen (University of Helsinki and Sibelius Academy), Nordic Jazz Curricula and Personal Voices Gerry Godley (12 Points!), Teach me Tonight: a perspective on the impact of jazz education Session: 2c Time: Room: Chair: South African Dialogues 14.00 15.30 3.02 Marc Duby Jonathan Eato (University of York), You Aint Gonna Hear Me Cause You Think You Hear Me: South African jazzs struggle against European clich Jostine Loubser (University of Salford), YOU ARE NOW IN FAIRYLAND: Jazz from District Six
Session 2d Time: Room: Chair: Language and Musical Practice 14.00-15.30 2.19 Alan Williams Haftor Medbe (Napier University), Groovin high and low: exploring the jazz vernacular (performance-led paper) Anne Dvinge (University of Copenhagen), Cosmopolitan vernaculars language, jazz, and critical musical practice 15.30-16.00 16.00-17.30 Coffee Break Parallel Sessions 3
Session 3a Time: Room: Chair: Jazz and the Media Panel 16.00-17.30 3.29 Tim Wall Tim Wall (BCU, Chair) Alyn Shipton (BBC), Sebastian Scotney (LondonJazz) Ian Patterson (All About Jazz), Alexander Kan (Europe Hub, BBC World Service) Session 3b Time: Room: Chair: Thinking with Jazz Panel 16.00-17.30 3.02 Nicholas Gebhardt Nicholas Gebhardt (University of Lancaster, Chair) Frank Griffith (Brunel University), Christophe de Bezenac (University of Salford), Adam Fairhall (Manchester Metropolitan University), Kathy Dyson (freelance musician) 17.30 18.30 Performance Performance Time: 17.30 18.30 Room: Foyer
Haftor Medbe (Napier University) and Alan Williams (University of Salford) 18.30- 21.00 21.00 Performance Free time Performance Time: 21.00
Room: DPL
Bourne Davis Kane Meeting for the first time in 2002, pianist Bourne, drummer Steve Davis and bassist Dave Kane played a completely improvised set at the Belfast Jazz Festival which became legendary. They followed this auspicious performance with a commission from the Bath Jazz Festival - Whatever Happened to Jack Jones and the Early Recordings of Johnny Mathis - and have played regularly on the European festival/gig circuit.
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Saturday 13 April
9.00-9.15 9.15-10.30 Registration Keynote Presentation Time: Room: Chair: 9.15-10.30 DPL George McKay George McKay (University of Salford) E Taylor Atkins (Northern Illinois University) Let's Call This: A Paradoxical Platform for Transnational Jazz Studies Catherine Tackley (Open University)
Sarallel session: 4a Time: Room: Chair: National/Transnational Discourses 11.00-13.00 3.29 Anne Dvinge Johanna Rohlf (Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin), Jazz on a Journey: The African-American music and its influence on Germany in the 1920s William Bares (UNC Asheville),An Ambassador for What?: Pro Helvetias Jazz and Swiss Cultural Diplomacy Michael Kahr (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz), Out of nowhere: The role of jazz institutions in Graz in the formation of jazz identity Loes Rusch (University of Amsterdam), How jazz changed the Netherlands - how the Netherlands changed jazz
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Session: 4b Time: Room: Chair: Jazz in Violent Spaces 11.00-13.00 2.36 George McKay Pedro Cravinho (University of Aveiro), Jazz and television in Portugal: TV JAZZ and the presence of Jazz on the Portuguese Television of the 1960s and 70s. Heli Reiman (University of Helsinki), Voices in dialogue: conceptualizing jazz from the Soviet perspective Martin Lcke (MHMK Munich), "Charlie and His Orchestra": Rise and Fall of Jazz in Nazi Germany Rdiger Ritter (University of Bremen), Broadcasting Jazz into the Eastern Bloc Cold War Weapon or Cultural Exchange? The Example of Willis Conover Session: 4c Time: Room: Chair: Poetry, Fiction, Narrative 11.00-13.00 3.02 Catherine Tackley Bob Lawson-Peebles (University of Exeter), The Grave Disease: Jazz and Interwar British Fiction Christopher Robinson (University of Kansas), Jazz Criticism as "Paracritical Hinge": The Anti-Canonical Project of Nathaniel Mackey's Bedouin Hornbook Walter van de Leur (University of Amsterdam), Last Notes: Narratives of Jazz and Death Dave Laing (University of Liverpool), Jazzetry UK: jazz and poetry in England in the early 1960s Session: 4d Time: Room: Chair: Musicians and Repertoire 11.00-13.00 2.19 Tom Sykes Barbara Bleij (Conservatory of Amsterdam), The Stellar Composer: The intersection of musical cultures in Wayne Shorters music Marian Jago (York University, Toronto), It Dont Mean A Thing: Race and Considerations of Hot and Cool in the Music of Lennie Tristano Robin Thomas (University of Huddersfield), The Evolution of the Jazz Vocal Song: What comes after the Great American Song Book? Jasmin Taylor (Goldsmiths, University of London) Billie Holiday and Gendered Networks of Collaboration
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13.00-14.00 14.00-15.30
Session: 5a Time: Room: Chair: Swing and Symphonic Jazz 14.00 15.30 3.29 Walter van de Leur Catherine Tackley (Open University), Rethinking Jazz and Rhapsody in Blue George Burrows (University of Portsmouth), Negotiating commercialism: reappraising Andy Kirks Clouds of Joy Alan Stanbridge (University of Toronto), Krazy Kats and Rhapsodies: Symphonic Jazz, Reconsidered Session: 5b Time: Room: Chair: Historiography and Anthropology 14.00 15.30 2.36 Nicholas Gebhardt Tim Wall (BCU), Rethinking European jazz through the work of Steven Feld Christopher Coady (Sydney Conservatorium of Music), Inspiration and the historical record: Exploring the impact of lived experience on the presentation of data in jazz historiography Mario Dunkel (Technische Universitt Dortmund), Marshall W. Stearns, Joachim-Ernst Berendt, and the Politics of German Jazz Historiography Session: 5c Time: Room: Chair: Shifting European Identities 14.00-15.30 3.02 Loes Rusch Alexander Kan (Europe Hub, BBC World Service), Soviet Jazz Collapse of an Identity Jos Dias (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Jazz networking in Europe: building common identity, and struggling economic crisis through music Diana Kondrashin (Jazz.Ru), Contemporary Russian Jazz: Adoption, Tradition or High Treason? 15.30-16.00 Coffee Break
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16.00-17.30
Parallel sessions 6
Session: 6a Time: Room: Chair: New Orleans, Identity and Revivalism 16.00 17.30 3.29 George McKay Mikko Karjalainen (Independent researcher), Performing sonic cultural identities: New Orleans brass band music as sonic practice Richard Ekins (University of Ulster) Authenticity as Authenticating in New Orleans Jazz Revivalism: Adapting Authenticity and the Case of Dan Pawsons Artesian Hall Stompers (1960-2002) Alyn Shipton (Royal Academy of Music/BBC), Questions of National Identity in the British Traditional Jazz Revival Session 6b Scenes and narratives Time: Room: Chair: 16.003.02 Anne Dvinge 17.30 Christa Bruckner Haring (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz), Women in contemporary Austrian jazz Peter Freeman (University of Queensland), Strings with Jazz Andrew Dubber (BCU), Shift Left 95: From Cultural Cringe to the New Aesthetic in Aotearoa New Zealand Session: 6c Canons & Educational Settings Time: Room: Chair: 16.00 2.19 Tom Sykes 17.30 Marc Duby (University of South Africa), New ways of being South African: Canon-formation in South African jazz education and elsewhere Jacopo Conti (Universit degli Studi di Torino), Jazz in Italian Conservatoires: how to become classic James Dickenson (Freelance musician), THE LINDEMAN LIST the evolution of a Norwegian jazz fraternity
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Room: Chair: DPL Christophe de Bezenac Nick Katuszonek (University of Salford) The Ah-A Project Presentation and quartet performance followed by discussion 17.30-19.00 19.00 Free time Conference meal (Damson, Media City)*
*Pre-registration needed and meal payable separately. Please visit the registration pages or contact a member of the conference team.
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Session: 7a Time: Room: Chair: Collectives and Cultural Politics 9.30-11.00 3.29 Nicholas Gebhardt Scott Currie (University of Minnesota), Improvising Truth to Power: The Collective Poetics and Cultural Politics of 'Avant-Jazz for Peace' Floris Schuiling (University of Cambridge), Jazz as Material Culture: Mediating Objects in the Performance Practice of the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra Fumi Okiji (Royal Holloway), Jazz Insists! - Music as Social Criticism Session: 7b Time: Room: Chair: Film & Media 9.30-11.00 2.36 Andrew Dubber Frdric Dhl (Free University Berlin), About the Identity of Jazz. The Gershwin Projects of Andr Previn in Jazz, Film and Art Music Nick Heffernan (University of Nottingham), Reds, Blacks and the Blues: Left Filmmakers and the Representation of Jazz in Cold War America Marcel Swiboda (University of Leeds), The Uses and Abuses of Jazz and Improvisation in an Age of Hyper- Medial Reproduction Session: 7c Time: Room: Chair: Identity, Listening and Memory 9.30-11.00 2.19 Tom Sykes Lawrence Davies (Kings College London), 'Long Distance Call': Hearing Muddy Waters in Britain Brett Pyper (NYU & Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, South Africa), On Jazz, listening and sociality among South African jazz appreciation societies Mikkel Vad (Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Denmark), The Tribute Concert as a Site of Memory
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Session: 7d Time: Room: Chair: Jazz, Place and Performance 9.30-11.00 3.02 Nick Katuszonek Alex Stein (Brown University), Understanding Distracted Engagement at Wallys Jazz Club: Nightlife and the Jazz Club Imaginary Adam Fairhall (MMU), Imaginary Pasts: Representing Early Jazz in Contemporary Jazz Practice Petter Frost Fadnes (University of Stavanger), The performative aspects of contemporary space: Negotiating new rooms in improvised music 11.00-11.30 11.30-13.00 Plenary Session Val Wilmer Coffee Break Closing plenary Time: 11.3013.00 Room: DPL Chair: Dave Laing
13.00
Conference close
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E. Taylor Atkins is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History at Northern Illinois University, USA. He is the author of Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945 (University of California Press, 2010) and Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Duke University Press, 2001; winner of the 2003 John Whitney Hall Prize), and editor of Jazz Planet (University Press of Mississippi, 2003). In addition to the Popular Culture chapter in A Companion to Japanese History (ed. William Tsutsui, Blackwell, 2007), he has published articles in Journal of Asian Studies, American Music, positions, and Japanese Studies. Val Wilmer is a British-born writer and photographer who has been documenting music and musicians for more years than she cares to remember. From Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Harry Carney to Eric Dolphy and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, she has specialised in recording oral history as well as photographing musicians. Listening to the voices of African-American musicians as well as the notes, she has demonstrated the way that the music and its community sustain each other. Her book publications include Jazz People (1970), a collection of interviews with 14 American musicians; an autobiography, Mama Said Thered Be Days Like These (1989); The Face of Black Music (1976), a photo-documentary; and As Serious As Your Life (1977), a major free jazz resource. As a member of the advisory board for the 2nd edition of the Grove Dictionary of Jazz, she was responsible for hundreds of additions and corrections to the first edition, and wrote more than 60 of the entries. She has contributed to several other dictionaries and reference sources, most notably the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for which she has written over 35 articles. Her photographs have been published in books, newspapers, journals, album and CD covers throughout the world, and exhibited at galleries and museums. They are held in major public collections in Britain, France, Sweden and the USA. For the past 25 years she has been working on the history of Black British musicians. This comprises dozens of articles on individuals, including obituaries for the Guardian newspaper, and contributing to radio and television documentaries. She has conducted more than 35 oral history interviews for the National Sound Archive of the British Library, and is working on a number of books including a biography of the Guyanese dancer, Ken Snakehips Johnson, leader of the first established Black British band.
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Abstracts
Simon Barber, Birmingham City University
An Ambassador for What?: Pro Helvetias Jazz and Swiss Cultural Diplomacy
If America avidly exported jazz as a sonic secret weapon to win the hearts and minds of Europeans during the Cold War, what motives drive Pro HelvetiaSwitzerlands cultural funding agencyto export Swiss jazz in postCold War Europe? The question reflects the geopolitical transformation that has seen Europeans indigenizing jazz and assuming the role of guardians of freedoms supposedly forsaken by an America fallen from grace. Drawing upon years of ethnographic fieldwork with European jazz communities, my paper
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presents two case studies demonstrating divergent uses of jazz in contemporary Swiss cultural diplomacy. Pro Helvetias use of jazz to construct and export an authentic Swissness involves casting American jazz as t he constitutive other; on the other hand, the Swiss musicians who are excluded from Pro Helvetias vision use jazzs Americanness to further a different set of agendas. I will be arguing that Pro Helvetias Swiss -oriented cultural policies harbor important lessons about the relationships between American and European musical nationalism, European cultural funding, and the use of jazz as cultural export. In Switzerland, the worlds foremost model of direct democracy, jazz musicians often complain that Pro Helvetias emphasis upon novelty and innovation stands in the way of building soul-satisfying jazz communitas in local scenes. Taking a cue from recent studies which have shown that the history of American jazz diplomacy in Europe has been riddled with contradictions and denials, I will demonstrate that Pro Helvetias strategies for Swiss jazz cultural diplomacy belie a host of distinctively Swiss contradictions. Barbara Bleij, Conservatory of Amsterdam
The Stellar Composer: The intersection of musical cultures in Wayne Shorters music
Many of Wayne Shorters mid-60s compositions have become part of the core jazz repertoire. Invariably these compositions are seen as firmly rooted in the hard bop practice of the time. Elements that are not in conformity with this practice, like asymmetrical phrases, atypical form schemes and non functional progressions, are often attributed to Shorters genius. In this way, Shorter is cast as a true jazz classic: the heir to a tradition, which he subsequently transforms in a highly original way, in line with overly familiar jazz narratives. And indeed, unquestionably the hard bop idiom is part of Shorters language. I will argue, however, that Shorter not only drew on jazz traditions but also on musical modernism. Over time, Shorter has consistently alluded to this kind of musical influence: I used to listen to a program every Saturday afternoon, New Ideas in Music, about the evolution of classical music into contemporary and onward. Moreover, the cultural environment of New York City the modernist capital of the world at the time and Shorters college music education provided easy access to contemporary music ideas. Yet none of this has had any real impact on Shorters public image. I will argue that this ties in with the continuous debate about the ownership of jazz as the vehement disputes
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over the alleged classical influences on Gil Evans, Miles Davis and others, attest. This paper traces aspects of modernist thinking in Shorters music. Despite his many utterances, Shorter is notorious for not making any concrete statements about the technical aspects of his music. Invoking the help of music analysis I will discuss examples from three iconic pieces from this period, E.S.P., Virgo and Infant Eyes. I will show that these pieces share a specific type of design that accounts for many of the seemingly original parts of his compositions. In this way, my paper offers a more balanced view on the cultural heritage that Shorter saw as his own, and, by extension, on sources that fed jazz as a whole in a period that shaped so much of jazz to come. Jeri Brown, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
This paper will examine the current position of women in the Austrian jazz scene based on the collation and analysis of comprehensive data concerning gender distribution provided by the national music center, MICA, and student information from Austrian arts universities. Qualitative interviews conducted with experts from different areas of the jazz scene will complement this data, exposing different viewpoints on this multifaceted topic. The results will contribute to the overall description of the current jazz scene in Austria, as well as providing a basis for transnational comparisons. George Burrows, University of Portsmouth
Inspiration and the historical record: Exploring the impact of lived experience on the presentation of data in jazz historiography
One defining stylistic element of post-structuralist ethnographic studies of jazz practice is the acknowledgement that a researchers inherent subjectivity impacts the collection and interpretation of data. Such awareness often leads to an inquiry at least tangentially linked to the researchers lived experience. Approaches in this realm range from the honing of a personal/subjective lens through which vernacular data is interpreted as Ingrid Monson does in the opening pages of Saying Something (1996) to the utilization of the self as subject during the data generation phase of a project, as Paul Berliner does in Thinking in Jazz (1994). Yet it is possible to see a more subtle form of subjectivity embedded in the very core of a supposedly more objective branch of jazz studies: jazz historiography. This critical bent is evident in the simple fact that jazz historians select particular subjects typically movements, events or artists and choose to tell particular stories about these subjects. Often, authors point to experiences of paradox or epiphany within their own lived experience as the inspiration for such investigations. Occasionally, such first-hand familiarity will then colour the presentation of evidence in support of a particular argument. In this paper, I chart the ways in which first-hand familiarity with various developments in jazz seems to have influenced the way in which several jazz historians have told stories about the music they study. Drawing parallels to what Guthrie Ramsey refers to as professional and confessional blackness, I then pose a series of questions about the type of knowledge generated when someone without first-hand lived knowledge about a jazz event endeavours to put forth an historical critique. Such an investigation helps show that all jazz historiography is informed in one-way or another by lived experience but that temporal proximity or distance to events can at times impact the quality although not the value of the data presented.
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Jazz and television in Portugal: TV JAZZ and the presence of Jazz on the Portuguese Television of the 1960s and 70s.
In 1955, when the Portuguese Television Radioteleviso Portuguesawas institutionally created, the minister of Information at the time, Marcello Caetano stated that: Television is an instrument of action, benefic or malefic, according to the criteria that is applied in its utilization. The Government hopes that the leaders of the new public service will know how to use this instrument as a medium of moral and cultural elevation of the Portuguese people (Teves, 1998). The government in charge was a dictatorship, which started in 1933 and ended in 1975 after the April Revolution. And following Caetanos idea, the public channel of the television was used in a direct or in indirect way as the regimes propaganda. In 1963, during the colonial / independence war at the former Portuguese colonies in Africa a new musical television program became responsible for the mass broadcasting of jazz in Portugal, the TV JAZZ series. At the time, Jazz was associated to the American way of life representative of the ideals of freedom and equality belonging to American culture, but totally contraries to the values defended by the colonial "fascist" regime of Estado Novo. The Jazz was obviously associated to the African-American identity and culture. In this context, broadcasting a Jazz series represented an apparent contradiction for television controlled by the State.
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With this paper, which is part of an ongoing work towards a doctoral degree in Ethnomusicology, I intend to contribute to a better understanding of the presence of Jazz music on the Portuguese public television, and the role of TV JAZZ series, as a case study, on the spread of jazz culture in Portugal, during the "fascist" regime of Estado Novo. Scott Currie, University of Minnesota
Improvising Truth to Power: The Collective Poetics and Cultural Politics of 'Avant-Jazz for Peace'
The revolution never ended! This audacious avant-garde cri de coeur led off the manifesto that sought to shape artist and audience constructions of meaning around a week of improvisational performances staged in the early months of the war in Iraq, shortly after the tragically premature declaration of an end to major combat operations. In the face of de facto mass -media selfcensorship that effectively silenced dissenting voices, the artist-organizers of the 2003 Vision Festival made this leap of faith into the performative, in hopes of reclaiming and revitalizing long dormant socio-political connotations of vanguardist jazz, through a synaesthetic call to arms disseminated via programs, t-shirts, and stage announcements. In this paper, I interrogate the performativity of this shared ethos of engaged socio-aesthetic activism, particularly as it arose from grass-roots appeals to counter-cultural memory aimed at reactivating residual articulations to collaborative improvisational practices. Based on over a decade and a half of ethnographic engagement with the artist collective that organizes the festival, I explore members conceptions of the artists role in waging peace, in order to call attention to semiotic processes manifest in the (sub)cultural dynamics of festive self-representations that attempt to define this downtown New York City jazz scene. My main concern here will be to cast light upon the utopian dramaturgical dimensions of the artists extemporaneous musical interactions, enacted through the play of meanings staged within the festivals ritually overdetermining frame. Ultimately, this endeavor should foreground the unique and critical perspectives this collectives improvisational activism offers upon the potential of avant-garde jazz paradigms to create and mobilize cohesive communities of aesthetically empowered agents.
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Jazz networking in Europe: building common identity, and struggling economic crisis through music
The present economic downturn has led the European Union to question itself as a viable political, economic and cultural entity. Peripheral countries struggle with the lack of governmental funding. Music, like other art forms, is undercut to favour other priorities. In the midst of this crisis, some jazz musicians are networking and generating new transnational ensembles in order to optimize
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resources: broader audiences, performing opportunities and EU subsidy. Also, several EU official organizations and independent producers are endorsing jazz venues as a way to promote a common multicultural European identity, and jazz a non-European music tradition as a pan-European musical genre. At the same time, musicians websites, P2P music sharing and free download labels are changing the way musicians and audiences relate. This paper brings two examples: the 12 Points Jazz Festival and Sintoma Records. The first is an Ireland-based production that works as an annual itinerant showcase for 12 ensembles, each one from a different European country. The second is an independent free download label, created by a group of Portuguese jazz musicians. Both cases aim collaboration between musicians and the dissemination of their music beyond national borders. This research seeks an insight into contemporary Europe through music. It questions how jazz, as a social practices network (Berliner 1994; Monson 2009), may be contributing to cultural production (Bourdieu 1993; Sassatelli 2009). To what extent can jazz be part of a European development, modernity, globalization and culture as structure model (Giddens 1993)? What is the role of jazz music on the delicate balance between local and global (Mayrowitz 1986; Marcus 1995; Appadurai 2001), space and non-space (Aug 1995), and praxis and discourse in Europe (Leitner 2004)? James Dickenson, freelance musician
postwar Norwegian jazz. I have avoided any attempt to further categorise the 58 selected recordings. All these have been reviewed in jazz journals both in Norway and elsewhere and cover a multitude of styles. Norway today is a thriving multi-cultural land and many of the listed recordings include contributions from non-Norwegian nationals. I took as my starting point that the expression Norwegian jazz can today only mean jazz played in Norway, regardless of the ethnic identity of the performers. It is something of a paradox that the term Nordic Jazz only came into wider use after Scandinavian jazz had become multi-racial. A good example is Garbareks I Took Up The Runes album from 1990 where only two of the eight performers are Norwegian, and one of those is a Sami. In my review of the album I described it as some of the most identifiably Norwegian jazz in existence. There was never any doubt who was the artistic leader here and Garbarek must take the credit for the final work, helped by the sound production of Jan Erik Kongshaug. In the course of my presentation I will argue a case for an increased use of the all-embracing term fraternity which the Collins Cobuild Dictionary defines as a group of people who have the same profession or the same interests and offers a further definition as the quality or activity of showing friendship and support to other people, who you think of as your brothers. Writers such as Stuart Nicholson and Michael Tucker have exhaustively discussed the concept of the Nordic Tone and I will assume that we are now fully aware of its musical implications. We can perhaps with a clear conscience hang the term in the wardrobe along with all the other jazz labels weve collected during the last 100 years or so. My case is that we can and should listen to all music not just to jazz as active participants, and indeed as informed listeners, thanks to the status and influence of musical education worldwide. My paper looks at the recordings on the Lindeman list and attempts an appraisal of their contributions to the building of a jazz fraternity in Norway.
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About the Identity of Jazz. The Gershwin Projects of Andr Previn in Jazz, Film and Art Music
This paper will examine how Andr Previn approached music differently when he worked in the fields of jazz, film music or art music and that he also did so when he dealt with the same musical material and composer at the same time in different fields of Western Music. This analysis allows us to draw at least some conclusions about the identity of jazz in comparison to other fields of Western music and the steadiness of this identity from the perspective of the artists. Using Previns Gershwin projects around 1960 as an example, especially the ones dealing with Porgy and Bess, this paper will examine how Previn keeps Gershwins score intact when he is working with his music in the context o f art music. In the context of film music, Previn (a specialist for the adaptation of Broadway shows for Hollywood in the 1950s/60s, winning four Academy Awards in this genre including one for his score for Otto Premingers 1959 movie version of Porgy and Bess) not only changes the sound but also the dramatic structure of Gershwins score to intensify and clarify/simplify the dramatic effect of the music for the different frame-work of the medium of film (aesthetic dominance of the changing visual perspectives, shorter space of time, spoken dialogue, etc.). Also in 1959 at the peak of his work in West Coast Jazz , Previn created a jazz album with songs from Porgy and Bess. Here, he also revised Gershwins song material heavily, but with a different purpose: not to form music with a more concentrated, simplified dramatic effect but to form music that loses its dramatic contrasts (omitting contrasting parts from songs etc.) to generate songs that can function as a basis for group improvisation and generate new dramatic effects not from the structure of the song but the development of the improvisation. Andrew Dubber, Birmingham City University
Shift Left 95: From Cultural Cringe to the New Aesthetic in Aotearoa New Zealand
The 1990s saw a significant turning point in the development of jazz music in New Zealand. From a scene seemingly lacking its own distinctive identity, borrowing heavily from 80s neo-bop and with its feet (and players) firmly rooted in big band, fusion, hard bop and other (primarily American) imported forms, the latter part of the decade saw the beginnings of an experimentation with British acid jazz-inspired dance music that, for many reasons, very quickly took on a distinctive South Pacific identity.
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The inclusion of rappers, latin percussionists, funk drummers and DJs into what had been a straight-ahead contemporary jazz quartet or quintet line-up coincided with the rise of caf culture, High Street nightlife, a strong influence from dub reggae, and a growing focus on Maori and Polynesian voices in hip hop. The intermingling of stylistic influence as well as cultural encounters within and between different groups of New Zealand society, led to a broadly hybrid musical subgenre with not only a strong and identifiable flavour - but also a wide and popular following. As a result this Urban Pacifican fusion arguably formed the basis of a uniquely New Zealand aesthetic in jazz music, the influence of which can still be heard today and not just in the jazz world, but significantly, across popular music forms that can be thought of as distinctly kiwi, and which have topped sales charts and provided some of New Zealands most successful musical (and broadcasting) exports. This paper describes this phenomenon not only as a historical shift in localised musical practices, but also as a wider cultural event as witnessed from the perspective of a jazz label owner, broadcaster and record producer in Auckland in the late 1990s. Marc Duby, University of South Africa
New ways of being South African: Canon-formation in South African jazz education and elsewhere
As Carol Muller describes events in South African history (2012, 292), ... the first stage of diaspora was a kind of musical surrogacy, an embrace of models and ideas from the outside, harnessed to create a language of musical freedom inside. Muller goes on to suggest that musical practices in early South African jazz indicated how musicians were ... imagining new ways of being South African, both in the world at large, and in a future, more democratic dispensation by restoring a process and history into their music making that was distinctly South African. (ibid, 293, emphasis added) With Jazz Epistle Vol. 1, a landmark jazz recording released in SA in 1960 as a point of departure, I aim to examine some aspects of the long-term connection between SA and American music, a relationship which still plays out today in the repertoire of SA jazz education and the various ways in which contested views of the jazz canon are articulated. Identifying the point of origin of this jazz education canon as simply American or South African does not do justice, in my view, to the multifaceted history of mutual influence between
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South African music and the world at large, thereby marginalising the musical contribution to jazz beyond the borders of South Africa of musicians such as Abdullah Ibrahim and Chris McGregor. Bearing in mind Henry Louis Gates Jrs understanding (1991, 98) of the canon as the commonplace book of our shared culture, I also explore some possible characteristic examples of South African-ness in selected historical recordings. Mario Dunkel, Technische Universitt Dortmund
Marshall W. Stearns, Joachim-Ernst Berendt, and the Politics of German Jazz Historiography
In 2005, Joachim-Ernst Berendts das Jazzbuch (first published in 1953) appeared in its seventh revised edition. Over a period of more than fifty years, it has been translated into twelve languages and has been one of the most successful books on jazz. This paper contextualizes Berendts early jazz historiography, focusing on the relationship between Berendt and the early American jazz historian Marshall W. Stearns. Based on my assessment of a previously unknown correspondence between Berendt and Stearns, I argue that their relationship was much more significant than has been acknowledged in the excellent and pioneering work of Berendts biographer Andrew W. Hurley. Not only did Stearns provide the historiographical framework for Berendts understanding of jazz; he also demonstrated how jazz could serv e as a socially emancipatory force. Stearns usable historiography his sociopolitical employment of jazz historiography as an instrument in the African American struggle for civil rights demonstrated to Berendt how jazz could function as a means of a German liberation from National Socialist ideology. Although Berendts fascination for Stearns may lead one into conceiving of their connection as a teacher-student relationship, it is important to note the reciprocity of their exchange. While Stearns provided Berendt with a conceptual model for the history of jazz and a vision of jazzs socio -political and diplomatic potential, Berendt reaffirmed Stearns belief that jazz was incommensurate with totalitarianism. To Stearns, the young jazz enthusiast from Germany was living evidence of jazzs aptitude as a US -American diplomatic instrument in the Cold War.
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Jazz Musicians, Jazz Fans and Existentialist Cellar Clubs in Saint-Germain-des-Prs (Paris), 1945-1960
After WWII, Saint-Germain-des-Prs was described as the Harlem of Paris because of his active jazz community mixing local and foreign musicians. This famous Paris district was also associated to existentialism, since Jean -Paul Sartre was supposed to be a regular in the existentialist cellar clubs, which in fact was not the case. Furthermore, in the 1940s and 1950s, jazz music and the existentialist youth inspired filmmakers and TV shows producers who always associated both with open sexuality, alcohol, drugs, thefts, speed, even death. Finally, the jazz scene of Saint-Germain-des-Prs was inseparable of the famous Rats the cave (the French jitterbug dancers). Contrary to what have been said and written since 60 years, jazzmen were not working so actively in postwar Paris. In fact, they were often unemployed and the competition between them to get gigs was very harsh. Amateur musicians were often hired instead of professional musicians. This situation was strongly condemned by the Paris Musician Union. French jazzmen were also critical of the fact that jazz fans and cellar clubs owners were more interested to listen and hire Afro-Americans players, because they were supposed to be better musicians, than Frenchmen. This paper will also tell the history of the famous jazz existentialist cellar clubs of the district such as Le Lorientais, Le Tabou, Le Club Saint-Germain, Le Vieux-Colombier and La Rose Rouge. The working conditions of the musicians in these cellar clubs will also be considered. Finally, we will see that jazz music was getting less popular at the end of the period, thats why some cellar clubs had to close their doors. Anne Dvinge, University of Copenhagen
language to a vernacular is one of action and performance: the process and indeed the performance of translation, the desire to make a dialect: to vernacularize is to dialectize as a process. Jazz improvisation, as George Lewis notes, is a transcultural practice whilst simultaneously a situation where ones own sound becomes a carrier of complex identities. Sound becomes identifiable, not with timbre alone, but with the expression of personality, the assertion of agency, the assumption of responsibility, and an encounter with history, memory and identity. As a musical practice it critically engages with definitions of the personal, the local, and the global. Thus, I suggest that jazz as a cosmopolitan vernacular performs a double movement: While it as an American art form is a domestic or a domesticized cosmopolitan that becomes vernacularized, translated into say Danish or Chinese dialect, it is at the same time also the vernacular that displaces and disrupts the - Danish or Chinese domestic, releasing cosmopolitanism and the vernacular from both dichotomies and synchronizations. Jonathan Eato, University of York
You Aint Gonna Hear Me Cause You Think You Hear Me: South African jazzs struggle against European clich
In the introduction to Maxine McGregors book Chris McGregor and the Brotherhood of Breath, Denis-Constant Martin recalled the Blue Notes European debut at the 1964 Antibes festival in memorable terms: They were fire, modernity with roots and fragrance, feeling and emotion; they were moved by an incredible energy which made their disappearance backstage almost painful. These musicians, in less than a decade, were to exercise a major influence on the evolution of jazz in Europe; but that could not yet be foreseen; nor is the extent of that influence always realised today. Eighteen years on from Martins statement, and forty -nine years after the performance he describes, acknowledgement of the impact that the Blue Notes as well as their subsequent groups had on jazz in Europe continues to gain momentum. However in attempting to identify the musical nature of this influence, we run in to difficulties. A large part of it seems to depend on a perceived South African sonic cultural identity that, in Martins terms, infused modern jazz in Europe with South African roots and fragrances. These traits
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are often tagged as South African or township but it is not at all clear that there was a consensus regarding what was being heard as South African. Reviewing the Brotherhood of Breaths Country Cooking in a 1988 issue of The Wire magazine, Tony Herrington stated that McGregors late Brotherhood of Breath work had become more and more distanced from the earlier radical, cross-cultural hybrid he so clearly admired, instead becoming part of an overcrowded European mainstream. However, McGregor regarded this album as more successfully South African than his earlier work in Europe. Using McGregors late Brotherhood of Breath work as a case study, this pap er will question what was being heard as sonically South African in late twentiethcentury European jazz circles. Richard Ekins, University of Ulster
Authenticity as Authenticating in New Orleans Jazz Revivalism: Adapting Authenticity and the Case of Dan Pawsons Artesian Hall Stompers (1960-2002)
This paper is part of the authors ongoing grounded theory work on the basic social process of authenticating in the substantive area of early jazz and world-wide New Orleans jazz revivalism (Ekins, 2010; 2011; 2012). It argues that to pay the proper respect to authenticity and authenticating in this substantive research arena entails detailed study of how authenticities emerge, ebb and flow within a number of interrelated sub-processes identified as constructing, reconstructing, resuming, adopting, adapting, abandoning and progressing authenticity, with particular reference to the major dimensions of each sub-process identified as style, repertoire, instrumentation and personnel. In particular, it illustrates my trajectories of authenticating conceptual framework by focusing on my empirical work with the English trumpet player and New Orleans revivalist bandleader Dan Pawson and his leadership of the Artesian Hall Stompers between 1960 and 2002. After a brief period of adopting the reconstructed authenticity phase of Bill Russells American Music label of the mid-1940s and early 1950s associated, in particular, with the stay at home New Orleans jazz pioneers such as Bunk Johnson and George Lewis the Artesian Hall Stompers focused on what became known by the mid-1960s as contemporary New Orleans jazz, which entailed their adapting the music of second wave New Orleans jazz revivalism in contemporary New Orleans in a variety of British contexts, including those of jazz clubs, working mens clubs and jazz festivals. The paper shows how Pawsons repeated visits to New Orleans from the 1960s through to the 1980s
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led him to develop a particular sound and ideology that established him at the forefront of a particular variant of authentic New Orleans jazz revivalism. Damian Evans, Conservatory of Music and Drama, Dublin Institute of Technology/Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media
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The performative aspects of contemporary space: Negotiating new rooms in improvised music
This is a case study based on the Anglo/Norwegian trio The Geordie Approach performing improvised music within the compounds of European kulturfabrikker/kultrny uzol (cultural factories). The decades old phenomenon of derelict and abandoned factories attracting the creative, subcultural and deviant aspects of the underground scenes within our urban environments is as vibrant as ever within European art scenes. Indeed, even such dispersed authorities as local councils, national funding agencies and the EU are diverting funding towards these bustling cultural centres, often justified within a large spectre of cultural policies ranging from arts funding (local sustainability), regeneration (gentrification) and branding (cultural capital and image building). The attraction for the experimental arts towards the hard grind production environments of derelict factories seems obvious. These large spaces represent an attractive array of possibilities for arts-production, attached from commerciality and with opportunities for building a home for the local underground scene. Performing such spaces is a curious experience, where musicians often encounter a whole new set of expectations, norms and codes outside the established divisions of musical genre. For improvised music this often fuels new musical outcomes, as musicians are able to work outside the restrictions often encountered in heavily branded venues like a jazz- or a rock club. Relevant issues are: Voluntary work, idealism and hidden economies Radical thinking, politics and aesthetics Subcultural belonging and musical communities Performance perspectives, musical codes and audience response Subsequently this paper will deal with the particular fusion between improvised music and cultural factories, and see how the trio The Geordie Approach manoeuvred and negotiated the performative, cultural- and political aspects of these spaces; ranging from an old (still functional) train station (Stanica) to an abandoned tobacco factory (Tabacka), via a long closed brewery (Tou Scene).
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Suburban Jazz Meets Cosmopolitan Country: Earl Klugh, Chet Atkins, and George Benson
This paper investigates the relationships among the guitarists Earl Klugh, Chet Atkins, and George Benson as part of a long history of black and white musical crossings across the color line that have been obscured by the particular racialization of jazz and country music. Earl Klugh is an anomaly in popular music as a guitarist who has built a career by performing fingerstyle guitar on a nylon string Spanish, or classical, acoustic guitar. Citing Chet Atkins as his primary influence and defining pop music as an inclusive rather than a benighted genre, Klugh insists that he is a pop music instrumentalist and that jazz is a limiting race-coded term. Atkins faced criticism for his part in creating the cosmopolitan country music that incorporated elements from jazz that would come to dominate Nashville production in the 1950s through the 1970s. George Benson, who mentored Klugh early in the younger guitarists career, cites Hank Garland as a major influence, a guitarist more closely associated with country music than jazz despite recording a number of Nashville jazz recordings in the early 1960s (including two releases with a young vibraphonist named Gary Burton). The music the three guitarists produced individually and with one another not only contested the racialization of jazz and country but also reminds us that conventional jazz histories often ignore Western swing artists such as Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and that country music histories often ignore early African American country music stars such as DeFord Bailey and Peg Leg Howell. Most significantly, the three guitarists collaborative work demonstrates that creative interactions between jazz and country musicians can often reveal the compatibilities across difference. Peter Freeman. University of Queensland
romanticism or amateurish experimentation. Julia Bullard also highlight s the historical negative connotations previously associated with the term crossover, the combination of classical and jazz styles. Most music education institutions providing training in jazz in Australia (and to my knowledge overseas) do not include string players, either as solo instrumentalists or in string sections. I propose solutions to some of the more obvious practical problems of integration, such as the lack of improvisational understanding and rhythmic feel amongst many string players and an occasional lack of musical literacy on behalf of jazz players. The key feature of this approach is choice of repertoire, but there are many aspects and challenges that stem from this choice that require careful attention and a sympahetic understanding of individual capabilities and aspirations. This holistic approach results in a more comprehensive understanding of the idiosyncracies inherent in this instrumental integration that not only provides a broader musical palette for jazz artists but also a dissolution of some of the cultural barriers that prevent the discoveries and rewards of an eclectic attitude towards music. Gerry Godley, 12 Points!
is becoming a disruptive influence on traditional channels for transmission and performance of the music. Liz Haddon, University of York
Reds, Blacks and the Blues: Left Filmmakers and the Representation of Jazz in Cold War America
In the 1950s the US State Department adopted jazz as a Cold War propaganda weapon, sponsoring international tours which showcased the music as a uniquely American art and the cultural form that best defined liberal capitalist democracy. Yet for three decades prior to its appropriation by the state, jazz had been a vehicle through which American leftists analysed and explored the complex relationship between culture, class and race in their struggle to develop a progressive political movement. This tradition of cultural analysis
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and debate on the left informed the work of radicals within the film industry. Though the imposition of the anti-communist blacklist in Hollywood from 1947 onwards severely constrained the expressive range of movie radicals, curtailing the careers of many, stories about jazz served as one of the few areas in which they found it possible to continue to articulate a left-wing cultural and political vision. This paper looks at three important examples of movie treatments of jazz made by Communists, blacklistees and fellow travellers in the high Cold War epoch. New Orleans (1947), Young Man with a Horn (1950), and Paris Blues (1961) stand as exceptions to the customary Hollywood representation of jazz in so far as they seriously engage with the questions of race and class that arise from any proper consideration of the musics social origins and cultural significance. Moreover, they use narratives about jazz to develop sharp critiques of bourgeois culture and of American whiteness that, alongside the films visions of posited interracial solidarity, echoed the attacks on segregation and American racism being mounted elsewhere by Civil Rights activists and white bohemians alike. Nikko Higgins, Columbia University
transnational circulation enables and blocks, and has important implications for future directions in jazz studies and world jazz. John Howland, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim
Hot Buttered Soul and Billboard Jazz: The Curious Case of Isaac Hayes and the Intersections of Jazz and Soul, 1969-1973
This paper explores genre, hybridization, and industry questions around intersections of jazz and soul across 1969 to 1973. Core attention is placed on soul albums by Isaac HayesHot Buttered Soul, the Shaft soundtrack, etc. which topped both Billboards jazz and soul charts. While soul jazz is part of this cross-charts trend, it is striking how long Hayess decidedly soul-centered albums resided on the Best Selling Jazz LPs charts, and how they vied with, and outlasted, the period chart sales of such jazz releases as the albums of Miles Davis. Hayes even won the recording industry Top Jazz Artist award of 1971. By extension, in Downbeat of the era, there is considerable coverage of soul, including an extended Hayes interview and reviews of albums and performances. This reflects Quincy Joness 1967 remark that jazz magazines seem to be writing about everything but jazz. That said, in 1972, Billboard arguedwith support from artiststhat jazz is souls cousin. Jazz historiography has mostly avoided examinations of such muddied cross-charts jazz/soul trends. In a 1972 Billboard issue on jazz, Atlantics jazz producer described his releases, from Roland Kirk to soul artists like Donny Hathaway, as simply adult black music. Indeed, this cross -charts repertory was based on the adult-focused LP medium, and this description read ily captures this musics core audience. The same issue includes the article Looking for Freshness on a Pop Date? Hire a Jazz Sideman. This latter trend of jazz -trained musicians lending their instruments and arranging to pop production is highly relevant to both Hayes-influenced symphonic soul and related blaxploitation soundtracks, where jazz-trained musicians were major contributors. In sum, my research focuses on cross-genre idioms in this family of music, the growing roles of jazz musicians in pop production, and the elevated production sound of jazzrelated textures in 1970s soul.
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It Dont Mean A Thing: Race and Considerations of Hot and Cool in the Music of Lennie Tristano
Though in many ways an under-researched figure, pianist Lennie Tristano has frequently figured in discussions surrounding the racial dimensions of jazz in America. Invariably, the debate turns on a few recurrent themes, chief of which is the way that Tristano employed the rhythm section. This employment, which should perhaps be more broadly considered as a creative choice, becomes a flashpoint for discussions of racial essence and musical ownership due to the politically charged space occupied by the drums; an instrument long coded as black in cultural and musical discourse. Tied closely to this issue are considerations of identity formation in jazz, and the role which race plays in such discourse, both actively and passively. In exploring Tristanos artistic ethos, scholars hip by both Paul Gilroy and Ronald Radano will help to (re)define and (re)contextualize the ways in which modes of musical expression have historically been racially coded; a process which seeks to deny the validity of such racial essentialism. We are then left with a novel theoretical basis for a shared cultural participation in jazz by elements of the white population (Tristano et al) for whom it both held and served to express meaning. Tristanos artistic ethos, expressed through musical and pedagogical practices often coded as white, may be seen to have served as a means by which Tristano could seek a form of jazz expression which was, in its escape of expressive features coded as black, authentic to his experience of the American cultural landscape. Aaron Johnson, Columbia University
Shifting boundaries or "Man, _____'s a total sellout": The Battle for Jazz on 1970s Radio
For many today, jazz is jazz; acoustic instruments, a cool vibe, bewildering improvisation, swinging syncopation, and a lot of saxophone. While there are somehow other styles coupled to jazz vocals, Dixieland, big band, smooth, and way-out mainstream jazz doesn't even need the "mainstream" any more. Jazz is now neatly defined. Of course this is not really the case today anymore than at any time in its history. Jazz discourse has always hosted a contest over content. Today American jazz is sheltered in a small, cozy corner of the music industry propped up by non-profit institutions backstopping its small commercial footprint, and this situation has favored the ever vigilant jazz purists on the discursive battlefield. However in the 1970s, while the foundations of these institutional fortifications were being poured, jazz was
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fighting for relevance in the marketplace and on the radio, and its boundaries were very much in contention. This paper considers commercial jazz radio as one of the arenas where the music industry, which not only dominated the supply of musical content to the stations but was also a prime source of their advertising revenue, could have influence comparable to the purists. In the 1970s a number of jazz musicians experimented in the directions of soulinfluenced and electric jazz and jazz radio responded with access to the airwaves. Usually these musicians were accused of selling-out, but musicians approached this more commercial music from a number of positions. Some were established jazz artists merely trying to remain relevant while others had a sincere and genuine interest in soul/funk. Most neglected by jazz and popular music history are jazz-leaning commercial musicians who enjoyed the greater creative freedom and stature as jazz musicians these projects allowed. Michael Kahr, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz
Out of nowhere: The role of jazz institutions in Graz in the formation of jazz identity
The Jazz Institute at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, founded in 1965, has built a reputation as one of the first academic jazz institutions in Europe. Since its subdivision into a pedagogical and scientific branch in 1971, the Institute for Jazz Research in Graz emerged as a European forerunner regarding the systematic study of jazz. In sum, the academic jazz activities in Graz have not only shaped the local music scene but have also projected abroad by contributing to the internationalization and professionalization of several generations of local and foreign students, many of whom have become leaders at various international, academic and nonacademic jazz institutions. This paper seeks to explore how the jazz institutions in the rather small city of Graz participated in the formation of jazz identity, both on a local and on an international level. The examination refers to the structure of the jazz institutions in Graz, their role in the preservation of traditions and development of innovations, the impact of local practice collectives and the factors of globalization. The tension between traditions and innovative approaches as a source of conflict and striving force in the formation of identity is particularly considered. Based on the analyses of interviews and studies of historical sources, this paper sketches a case study on identity formation in relation to academic jazz institutions and seeks to construct an explanatory model for similar aspects of jazz identity in other places. The study reflects results of the research project
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Jazz & the City, which has been conducted in Graz since 2011 through a research grant of the Austrian Science Fund FWF. Alexander Kan, Europe Hub, BBC World Service
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Performing sonic cultural identities: New Orleans brass band music as sonic practice
This paper studies the ways in which contemporary New Orleans brass band music performs sonic cultural identities. Following contemporary understanding of identity, sonic cultural identities are viewed as processual and performative. Drawing from sonic studies and spatial theory, sonic practices are viewed broadly as simultaneously sonic (e.g. acoustic, perceptual), spatial (e.g. physical/real, socio-cultural, theoretical/imagined), temporal (e.g. historical, prospective) and discursive (e.g. historical, representational, reefing). Music is here conceived of in a broad practicecentred sense taking the cue from Christopher Smalls musicking and J.L Austins criteria for performativity are used for analysing the processes, agendas and agencies involved in performing sonic cultural identities. Although the New Orleans brass band music has evolved to serve contemporary audiences and the relation to jazz might be hard to establish in formal terms, musicians often name improvisation a performance practice as the common element maintaining the musics relation to jazz. Contemporary brass bands perform in communal events similar to those their early twentieth century predecessors performed in, but they also perform at other venues attracting different audiences, creating new sonic communities. This connection is recognised by various agents attempting to capitalise on New Orleans status as the birth place of jazz. The brass band musicians are featured in festival postures and publicity acts but rarely get the prime spots, and therefore miss out on the economical benefits of their status as culturebearers. Identification through New Orleans brass band music is found to be performed largely by negotiating the musics historical, musical and discursive relation to jazz, whether as a music genre or marketing category, and to different social groups in a space simultaneously sonic, social, and discursive. Various sonic cultural identities emerge out of these processes on individual, local/neighbourhood, national and international levels with significant social, economical and political elements.
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The paper will focus on three important examples. The first is the work of Christopher Logue and Tony Kinsey, to be found on the recording Red Bird Dancing on Ivory, produced by George Martin and in the song album Loguerhythms featuring Annie Ross. Next there is the collaboration between Michael Garrick and a group of poets led by Jeremy Robson. Finally, the work of Michael Horovitz and Pete Brown, especially their lengthy opus Blues for the Hitchhiking Dead with the New Departures band, which included Stan Tracey and Bobby Wellins. Although the Robson-Garrick project continued sporadically for several decades, the poetry and music nexus was to pass later in the 1960s to the field of rock music and the paper will reference the work of such figures as Pete Brown with Cream, the Liverpool Scene and Pete Atkin, whose songs were settings of lyrics by the poet and critic (and jazz fan) Clive James. Bob Lawson-Peebles, University of Exeter
The Grave Disease: the Depiction of Jazz in some Interwar British Novels.
This paper will discuss a group of interwar British novels that portray Jazz in terms of pathology. Its starting point is the notorious 1919 speech by the senior Anglican cleric, Arthur Hislop Drummond, that Jazz dancing was a very grave disease which was infesting the country. Drummonds warning will be used to indicate problems in defining the term Jazz; and to highlight attitudes to the music in novels by John Buchan, Aldous Huxley, Eric Linklater, J. B. Priestley and Aelfrida Tillyard (the sister of a founder of Cambridge English). Despite their greatly differing political, social, racial and biological agendas, these writers depict Jazz as a symptom of a mass-produced, anaesthetised, sex-ridden culture that is overwhelming an ageing European culture, fatally weakened by the First World War. The paper aims to show that Entartete Musik, the 1938 Nazi exhibition held in Dsseldorf, is simply the most salient example of perceptions of Jazz that were widespread and that have proved difficult to eradicate. The conclusion of the paper will briefly contrast detective novels of John Harvey and Cathi Unsworth to show that the music is still sometimes regarded as a pathogen.
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"Charlie and His Orchestra": Rise and Fall of Jazz in Nazi Germany
In the 1920s, jazz was present everywhere in Germany. In these years especially Berlin was the European Mecca of the genre. However, during the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945 jazz music has been massively suppressed by the political system. Jewish and black musicians were banned from stage. On radio this music was prohibited since 1935 and both british and american records were difficult to buy at least since 1939. Nevertheless there were a few areas in which jazz was present until the fall of Regime. For example, with Charlie and His Orchestra the Nazis established in 1940 even a band that offered first-class jazz but not for the German population, but for the front.
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The Swing Youth in Hamburg identified with jazz to isolate oneself of the Hitler Youth and even in concentration camps jazz music was played. In my presentation I will look at the changeful use of jazz in the Third Reich, which fluctuated constantly between restriction and promotion. Haftor Medbe, Napier University
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Taking referential starting-points from Steve Reichs use of sampled speech and the spoken word manipulations of pianist Henry Hey, this paper will be presented through the use of pre-recorded speech and live electronic looping of guitar. Tony Mitchell, University of Technology, Sydney
Australian jazz, fits more comfortably into what Nicholson calls the Nordic tone than into outmoded, outdated US norms, as demonstrated by Litweilers review of the Necks. Darren Mueller, Duke University
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We must expand jazz so that we never have to leave it: Andr Hodeirs contested territories
The French writer and composer Andr Hodeir (1921-2011) produced what is commonly acknowledged as some of the most important jazz criticism of the post-war period. In formation and outlook Hodeir was positioned with unusual equilibrium between classical music and jazz worlds; in the wake of bebop and through the 1950s, jazz, though still a popular, commercial music, would take on more and more of the trappings of art proper, and Hodeir would emerge as a key figure in the international attempt to translate jazz practice into an extant system of bourgeois artistic values. At the end of the 20thcentury, Hodeir would again be routinely cited, this time in scholarly critiques
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of what had come to be seen as a disreputable, Eurocentric approach to understanding jazz. These critiques focused on Hodeirs u se of musical analysis, but this paper which examines the Frenchmans now-rarely discussed music as well as his critical writing shows that Hodeirs project to shift the centre of jazz creativity from American culture industry to European art music tradition was far more thoroughgoing than that; though the agenda was hidden in his writing, it was overt in his composition. The contemporary, scholarly rethinking of jazz often equates to the demand that the musics histories become more global in scope. But the troubling cultural politics of Hodeirs putative European transplantation of jazz creativity and its valorization should give us to reflect more critically on that project. Ari Poutiainen, University of Helsinki and Sibelius Academy
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Neo-Classic? Neo-Conservative? Neo-Colonialist? Jazzs Shifting Geo-Political Discourse in the Early 21st Century
In a 2004 article in The Guardian, Israeli-born saxophonist and critic Gilad Atzmon suggested that jazz serves as a vital critique of American hegemony and neo-conservative politics. For me, he wrote, to play jazz is to fight the BBS (Bush, Blair and Sharon) world order[and] the new American colonialism. Comments such as Atzmons, in which jazz is used to ques tion or critique aspects of American identity and culture, resonate with the ideas of Yui Soichi (quoted in Atkins 2003), who pointed to the use of jazz as a way to be free of America. Such perspectives run counter prevailing perspectives on jazz as an exemplar of American identity. This paper opens with an examination of the relationships between jazz neoclassicism and political neo-conservatism, and between American cultural ideals and jazzs critical discourses. I highlight important parallels betwee n dominant jazz institutions such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the ascendant political discourses of American Exceptionalism. Expressions of jazzs American-ness resonate with neo-conservative ideologies regarding Americas identity in global culture. Such ideas have long played a role in American jazz diplomacy; the parallel expressions of jazz as a metaphor for American democracy and as Americas greatest contribution to world culture are central to this discussion. The second thrust of this paper examines efforts by musicians and critics to situate jazz as resistance to perceived American neo-colonialism. Using the writings and music of Atzmon as a point of departure, I illuminate the development and limitations of such counter-discourses. Atzmons arguments reflect an inversion of the America-centered jazz narrative; yet his criticisms of neo-conservative geo-politics and American-led globalization are framed within his self-identification as a bop player. In invoking a mainstream jazz identity to critique neo-conservative politics, such statements reflect the complicated and conflicted nature of jazzs identity within contemporary political landscapes.
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Brett Pyper, NYU & Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, South Africa
On Jazz, listening and sociality among South African jazz appreciation societies
Among the contrasting post-colonial music scenes to have emerged in South Africa during the transition from apartheid, voluntary associations of jazz lovers known as clubs, stokvels or appreciation societies remain a relatively under-documented aspect of township musical life, operating at some remove from the formal jazz club and festival circuits that characterise the contemporary neoliberal public sphere. Yet on any given weekend, in a variety of locales ranging from working-class private homes to local taverns to larger community halls, groups of formally constituted jazz aficionados criss-cross urban and rural spaces to attend listening sessions, where globally circulating jazz recordings, and sometimes live performances, are reinscribed with a range of local meanings through various performative practices. In this paper, which draws on my doctoral ethnographic research, I examine the particular ways in which jazz is (re)appropriated and reframed in this milieu as sounds with their immediate origins in places like New York, Chicago, Copenhagen, Tokyo, or indeed South Africa, are harmonised with vernacular local soundscapes and aesthetics. In doing so, my study of the social life of jazz in these contexts takes its cue from general calls for a more ethnographically grounded cultural and historical contextualisation of musical listening. I consider the ways in which listening to jazz, no less than musical performance itself, is socially enacted, culturally and historically contingent, and implicated in the transformations occasioned by modernisation, musical commodification and transnational circulation. Heli Reiman, University of Helsinki
instance, can have various implications in the context of culturally dispersed jazz cultures. There is a thin coherence between different jazz cultures as William Sewell would say. In light of this, my paper tries to rethink some established constructs in the context of Soviet jazz culture in general and Soviet Estonian jazz culture in particular. Referring here to Mieke Bals notion of travelling conceptions, which relies on concepts of the flexibility to travel between disciplines, between individual scholars, between historical periods and between different geographical academic communities, this study discusses the issues of race, autonomy, resistance, authenticity and art versus popular binary. Rdiger Ritter, University of Bremen
Broadcasting Jazz into the Eastern Bloc Cold War Weapon or Cultural Exchange? The Example of Willis Conover
Willis Conovers VOA broadcast Music USA Jazz hour helped significantly to crush down the East Bloc, as the myth will make us believe really? Or did jazz fans in the socialist countries rather use the jazz broadcasts from abroad as a kind of valve to let off steam in order to cope with grey socialist reality? Did jazz broadcasts even stabilize the system? This paper discusses this question by focusing of the radio listener. The comparison of sources from both sides listeners surveys by Western radio stations, Socialist official institutions, secret police sources, written memories and oral reports - demonstrates that listeners acted as autonomous individuals using the broadcasts for their own goals. Jazz served as a means of cultural transfer, but it did not work out as Cold War weapon as intended. Vast discourse areas remained separated, e.g. the understanding of freedom (political liberation or social niche), the complex of coloured people and black music or the Jewish topic in jazz, which led to productive misunderstandings. Socialist officials tried to benefit from this, implementing a great variety of measures ranging from repression to intensive encouragement of jazz listening, including the creation of own jazz programs. Sometimes, the parallels between Socialist propaganda measures and US cultural diplomacy are striking. The paper looks on the situation in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union by focusing on several case studies.
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Jazz Criticism as "Paracritical Hinge": The Anti-Canonical Project of Nathaniel Mackey's Bedouin Hornbook
While numerous scholars study the construction of the jazz canon, further inquiry of criticism that presents fundamental challenges to the canon is needed. The need for the analysis of such criticism is amplified considering that most who write it represent marginal subject positions. This paper argues that Nathaniel Mackey's epistolary novel Bedouin Hornbook is a significant form of jazz criticism that questions the validity of the jazz canon and the values that shape it. It shows how Bedouin Hornbook functions as what Mackey calls a "paracritical hinge," in that its writing, which transcends genre and style, is a literary representation of the musical and cultural values it espouses. Via the novel's narrator N. and his letters to the Angel of Dust, Mackey eschews the idea of a jazz canon in favor of a collection of music that is unbounded stylistically, but bound by common cultural values and history. For N., who plays reeds in the Mystic Horn Society, jazz and improvised music is soaked with cultural meaning, and as such, Mackey's work reaffirms the racial and cultural insularity of what could be called jazz and improvised music. Mackey's inclusion of a discography of the music N. mentions throughout the book challenges the relevancy of the jazz canon and explodes the concept of genre insularity. By accepting some forms of music dismissed by the jazz canon and challenging genre hierarchy N., who one could argue is a jazz musician, suggests that genre boundaries and distinctions between "high" and "low" are irrelevant. Interpreting Bedouin Hornbook as a performative form of jazz criticism has several implications for how we conceptualize jazz criticism and its cultural work. Doing so calls into question what counts as jazz criticism, who can be a jazz critic, and the validity of genre boundaries. Johanna Rohlf, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin
Jazz on a Journey: The African-American music and its influence on Germany in the 1920s
One can weep, one can tremble with rage or one can evenmindedly make a historic entry New York achieved a major victory over Berlin yesterday. With this quote, the author from a Berlin newspaper referred to the opening of the show Sam Wooding and the Chocolate Kiddies in May 1925 in Berlins Admiralspalace. Ever since jazz had arrived in Germany in the early 1920s the music and its connotations not only influenced the artistic scene, they also had a great impact on cultural life and contributed to an era that is now referred to as the Golden Age. During the 1920s the use of the term jazz was often lacking a clear understanding of the music behind it. Yet, it immediately caused
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a lively discussion: What is jazz? In how far does it offer possibilities to transform the popular music scene in Germany? To what extent would this African-American music have to be adapted by art musicians first in order to be taken seriously? Should it have any impact on German culture at all? The Sam Wooding show from May 1925 gives a vivid impression of this conflict between enthusiasm on the one hand and disapproval on the other hand. The reactions not only reveal many different dimensions of the jazz reception in Germany, they also provide a springboard for further questions on German jazz concerning its cultural role and the actual music behind this so passionately discussed word jazz. Loes Rusch, University of Amsterdam
How jazz changed the Netherlands - how the Netherlands changed jazz
The year 1966 was pivotal in the development of jazz in the Netherlands. With its unconventional line-up, social-political theme and the use of largely precomposed material, the performance of Willem Breukers experimental Litany for the 14th of June, 1966 at the finals of the Loosdrecht Jazz Competition provoked a scandal and spread discord within the jazz scene. The event marked the beginning of the growing tensions between established modern jazz musicians (vocalist Rita Reys, pianist Frans Elsen, among others) and the emerging group of Amsterdam-based improvising musicians (Breuker, pianist Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink), a battle that became known as the richtingenstrijd. During the years their conflicting views in terms of aesthetics and social-political issues created a dichotomy within the Dutch jazz scene that not only shaped jazzs musico-cultural developments, but also deeply impacted the further institutionalization and organization of Dutch jazz. Furthermore, the battle contributed significantly to the development of Dutch jazz narratives, against which individual musicians, bands and performances are positioned and valued. By examining crucial developments and debates in post-war jazz in the Netherlands and by exposing their underlying ideologies, this paper explores the construction of local narratives in jazz and its interplay with local jazz infrastructures. Ultimately, by studying both the musical and extramusical implications of jazz within its local socio-political context, it will demonstrate, in the words of Taylor Atkins, the transformative powers and adaptive capabilities of jazz.
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Jazz as Material Culture: Mediating Objects in the Performance Practice of the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra
When you hear music, after its over, its gone, in the air. You ca n never capture it again. Eric Dolphys famous words define music as something immaterial and intangible. However, as material culture scholars have shown, even the immaterial is always mediated by objects. Dolphy himself is a good example: his words came to us via a recording of one of his last concerts and his artistry is remembered both because of his compositions and his experiments with bass clarinet and flute. The attitude expressed by Dolphy is shared more widely in jazz studies. Ingrid Monson has shown how jazz musicians enact and comment on culture, but her idea of improvisation as saying something implies an ideal of unmediated personal expression. However, an improvisers voice in Monsons conversation is mediated and made possible by a creative engagement with his or her instrument, the contours of a composition and recordings of other improvisers. Objects are not stable entities, but active participants in behaviour Dolphy redefined the bass clarinet just as it redefined him. This implies that the social in jazz is not one thing, but (to use the terminology of Actor-Network Theory) an effect of a mediating network of human and nonhuman actors. In my paper I present some results of my fieldwork with Dutch improvising collective the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra. As their name implies, the relation between improvisation and composition, between immateriality and materiality, is an important aspect of their musical practice. I will present several examples of how their instruments and scores (conceived as actors in my ethnography) mediate the interaction among the musicians as well as the broader jazz culture in which they are embedded. Sebastian Scotney, Editor, LondonJazz
discussing the development of the site. Drawing on statistics about readership, for example, I explores ways in which the community works and shed light on the role and value of the site. Alyn Shipton, Royal Academy of Music/BBC
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Understanding Distracted Engagement at Wallys Jazz Club: Nightlife and the Jazz Club Imaginary
The phenomena at Wallys jazz club in Boston a packed house of young people for jazz and the predominance of a distracted or divided mode of engagement are problematic in light of jazzs status as both niche music and listening music. How can we understand why audiences come to Wallys and how they engage when they come? In this paper, I argue that the presence of so many people, engaged in different activities and engaged in divided activity, dovetails with a historically complex pattern of social behavior and ideology associated with both jazz and with the spaces in which it is taken in. Understanding the appeal of Wallys and the predominance of distracted engagement requires attention to the ideational and associational valences that jazz and live music have historically in connection with the imagined histories of jazz clubs and speakeasies, and in connection with the specific history of Wallys. It also requires an engagement with the physical, spatial, and behavioral aspects of the club. Based on fieldwork conducted in March and April 2012, I use patrons responses to investigate how their ideas and expectations surrounding the history of Wallys; imaginary notions of jazz clubs and speakeasies; and ideas about jazz, acoustic, and improvised music are fulfilled in their experience of the club. Jonty Stockdale, University of West London
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sense of the inevitable: that the dominant musical inclinations, and industry attitudes will prevail regardless? To inform this debate, analysis of data from on-line content-streams will be used to provide insight to the collective listening habits of remote listeners, and to consider how this on-going accumulation of individual response is already changing perceptions of jazz, and disturbing extant processes of canon formation. Marcel Swiboda. University of Leeds
The Uses and Abuses of Jazz and Improvisation in an Age of Hyper-Medial Reproduction
Against the grain of the decades-old proclamations of jazzs death, jazz and improvisation have recently re-entered mainstream media and cultural discourse. On appearances, the recent remobilization of jazz figures and tropes in popular culture parallel to but at the same time beyond jazzs niche status as radio-friendly smooth music doubtless implies a form of shopworn postmodern nostalgia. Consider, for example, the big-band swing trappings that accompanied the pop-soul singer Justin Timberlake s appearance at the Grammy Awards in February 2013, or the use of jazz references as narrative features of the highly successful TV series Homeland, as just two among numerous cases in point. Less innocuously, one might also consider the entirely negative take-up of the term improvisation in contemporary media discussions surrounding terrorism and insurgency as another case of rhetorical remobilization of jazz-related tropes. Rather than assume these jazz- and improvisation-based mobilizations of image, sound and text to be entirely superficial or arbitrary, this paper will consider them as symptomatic of the growing need for a renewed sense of criticality in contemporary culture and to consider what resources a more substantive return to jazz and improvisation in cultural production and reception might proffer in the way of critical culture: an expression simultaneously used by the anthropologist and sociologist Frank A. Salamone as a characterisation of jazz musics inherent criticality and in a different yet related context by the philosopher Bernard Stiegler in his tracking of the potential inherent in contemporary analogico -digital technologies to engender a new culture of reception. The paper will undertake a reading of the recent take-up of jazz and improvisation in media and cultural discourse as symptomatic of the critical
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impasses facing contemporary culture (academic culture included) and as providing potential material for addressing these impasses. The means by which the paper proposes to redress these impasses is to consider some of the ways in which jazz, improvisation and technologies of mediation can be brought an affirmative critical conjuncture in particular in the context of the epochal technological, epistemic and cultural shifts current taking place, between twentieth-century analogue modes of mass mediality and twenty first century digital modes of hypermediality, and their analogico -digital interfaces. Reference will be made to specific case-based examples of the recent mobilizations of jazz and improvisation in both analogue and digital modalities and their contemporary imbrication. Tom Sykes, University of Salford
Jazz in the Big Society: participatory cultures and local jazz scenes in Britain
Jazz has had a place in British culture since the beginning of jazz itself. Since the end of the ban on visiting American musicians, jazz has enjoyed periods of relative popularity in Britain, and has maintained a cultural presence up to the present day. However, its coverage by the mass media, state funding and support from the larger music industry appears to be declining. At the same time, digital technology facilitates the creation of participatory cultures (as theorised by Henry Jenkins) by individual musicians, jazz promoters, independent record labels and jazz fans how is this technology affecting the local jazz scenes in the UK? Would such scenes function or even survive without email, video sharing sites and social networking? Local scenes have been an essential part of jazz culture in Britain for many years, many of them dependent on small-scale promoters and unpaid enthusiasts (Review of Jazz in England Consultative Green Paper, Arts Council of England, 1995). Using case studies from current local jazz scenes in northwest England, this paper will investigate the use of digital networks in fostering and maintaining jazz at grassroots level, at a time when a do -ityourself approach seems not only to be desirable, but increasingly necessary. Catherine Tackley, Open University
have not yet been subject to the same degree of critical scrutiny as manuscripts. Historical recordings, including several with Gershwin himself at the piano, rather than scores, preserve certain details that have been influential on interpretative approaches. In addition to Ferde Grofs orchestrations, many arrangements have been recorded which adhere to the stylistic conventions of particular genres, including jazz, progressive rock, and easy listening, and also cross freely between them. These versions have both popularised and problematised the identity of the work which has resultantly attained novelty status with regard to the jazz and classical canons, and has been subject to sustained criticism from those engaged in their formation. Rhapsody in Blue has had a particularly problematic musical and critical relationship with jazz. This paper illuminates the multifarious ideas of jazz which are active in nearly a century of renditions by exploring the performance history and practices of the Rhapsody through the analysis of recordings. These encompass the improvisation in Gershwins own performances, ideas of jazz that are brought to bear on the work by many classical performers, and the relatively wide adoption of the Rhapsody (holistically, but in particular the central slow theme) by jazz musicians. These performances invite reconsideration of the Rhapsodys inherent properties and the established boundaries between interpretation, arrangement, composition and improvisation while simultaneously contributing to debates surrounding race, genre and American cultural identity. Jasmin Taylor, Goldsmiths, University of London
whom. For example, close readings of material on Holiday reveal that jam sessions often took place in domestic environments and/or female only suppers could steer a song towards being taken up and recorded. This approach makes it possible to recover womens culture and women as historical actors and also challenge a dominant jazz discourse where the contributions of women have often been erased or misrepresented. Like Sherrie Tucker (2002), the intention is not only to argue how jazz sounds and spaces are gendered whether women are in within them or not but also to see what we can learn when we theorise from the representations and experiences of women in this area of music. Robin Thomas, University of Huddersfield
The Evolution of the Jazz Vocal Song: What comes after the Great American Song Book?
The American Songbook is still dominant in the jazz vocal repertoire. However, there are a number of trends to show that some singers are keen to develop new ideas. Gretchen Parlatto has a very adventurous approach to material, rhythm and improvisation. Theo Bleckman uses electronics and looping with unusual song vehicles, and a simple, pared down approach. Norwegian singer, Solveig Sletahjell uses popular songs, but in a slow- moving and intense style. A similar approach is seen in the work of New York-based Kate McGarry. Kurt Elling, possibly the leading male jazz singer at present, uses a variety of approaches, including scat, vocalese, and recently composed material. The work of Robert Glasper is also of great interest in that he fuses various pop and rap influences with a sophisticated jazz approach. The paper will therefore focus on a critical examination of vocal jazz music which moves away from the American songbook. Mikkel Vad, Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Denmark
phenomenon. At the core of this musical practice are an imagined jazz tradition and the canonical jazz icon (be it a person, an album or a historical event). As such the tribute concert is a case of showing or playing history rather than telling or writing it. In reception and critical discussion these concerts have been considered by some to be aesthetically suspect in their necrophilia and hagiographic representation of jazz icons. On the other hand they have had success in creating a living history where musicians and audiences interact with history in the present. These different positions on the subject will be discussed, not so much as questions of what the jazz tradition is and consists of, but rather how it should be preserved, represented and literally played and performed. Walter van de Leur, University of Amsterdam
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Developing a local scene by self-organized concert series: relations between performing venue and the development of (Jazz) music
As opportunities for playing jazz and/or improvised music become less and less there is a necessity for musicians to organize concerts by themselves. This was/is done by the AACM in Chicago, similar ideas turned up in many other cities, mostly in very specific ways. The traditional jazz club is obviously not the right place for combinations of techno and jazz/improvisation or electronic music, noise and jazz/improvised music, etc. The venues have changed a lot. Indeed, it is common for improvising musicians to play in galleries, churches, former factories, theatres. Obviously the variety of venues has an influence on the music: the acoustic of a church can change the sound concept of a musician or a group. In a gallery cooperation between improvisers and artists or dancers (if there is enough space) is possible, this may include videoinstallations etc. Using my experiences as an improvising (jazz) musician and organizer of a weekly improvisation series in a small gallery I would like to give an insight to the concept of the "Shopping Music" series, its advantages and difficulties and the influence of the venue on the development of the local scene. The relatively small amount of musicians in the university town of Goettingen encourages cooperation of musicians from very different fields: "free Jazz", symphony orchestra and contemporary music players, electronic wizards, rock and punk freaks, musicians from other cultures (Brazil, India, Japan, Africa, Latin America), and dancers. All kinds of cooperation developed from the weekly music series and new groups were formed crossing very different styles. Finally, I would like to initiate an exchange of experiences with colleagues who organize concerts in a similar way and exchange views about the development in musical concepts in local communities in relationship to the kind of venues.
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Newport Up! Liveness, artifacts, and the seductive menace of jazz recordings revisited
Jed Rasulas compelling analysis of the construction of jazz history through the seductive menace of recordings opens up man y questions about the nature of jazz records as historical artifacts. The idea that a live jazz recording can fix in time a seemingly spontaneous moment of improvisation is problematic in itself, and the way that these recordings are reified, collected and studied by jazz fans, musicians and scholars imbues them with cultural heft. I use the Duke Ellington Orchestras infamous performance at the Newport Festival in 1956 as a case study with which to investigate the place of the live recording in jazz. Although Ellington had agreed with Columbia Records to release the live version of the performance, mic placement on the night meant that the recording was unsuitable. The performance released a few days later was a hastily assembled studio re-creation of the live gig. In this paper, I translate Philip Auslanders ideas of liveness in popular music into a jazz setting, theorizing the implication of the deception of a generation of jazz followers. Rasulas seductive menace is thrown further into question as I compare the 1956 Newport recording with remotely recorded versions of the original performance discovered and released in 1999. I use the Ellington Orchestras 1956 performances and recordings as a springboard with which to explore the construction of a globally accepted jazz narrative, suggesting that a revision of jazz history may be in order. Lawrence Woof, freelance musician
of History flying backwards - recouping the whole of the past in the everpresent moment - that Derrida refashions in his own remarkable rethinking of Das Kapital, also provide a model for thinking about improvisation? The paper concludes with a consideration in the light of the above of that existential balance between the past, the present and the future that is from a performative point of view - conjured into existence at the moment of improvisation. Per Zanussi, University of Stavanger
Composition for improvising musicians - with particular focus on Asian compositional techniques as structures for improvisation
This papers starting point is a desire for artistic research which organizes music with a high degree of improvisation. I have chosen to focus primarily on the use of compositional techniques, from asian music mixed with techniques from western music, as effective structures for improvisation. I will start by using approaches from the Korean Sinawi genre mixed with Western compositional techniques as a basis for etudes, compositions and musical "guidelines" and systems for improvising performers. I plan to test these both solo and in large and small ensemble formats, as well as in teaching situations. I want to see if they can be used as effective structures for improvisation, as preparation for free improvisation etc. How can you keep a high level of composition while still providing improvising performers a sense of being able to express themselves "freely" in the musical context? How do you balance the composer's material and the improviser's personal material, arsenal of techniques, her understanding of form etc? I also want to see whether there are new ways of organizing (free)improvisation that do not necessarily end up as music without melodic, tonal or rhythmic foundation, but that can include these elements. The goal of the project is therefore to create music with new approaches to the organization and execution of improvisation by studying a mix of older Asian folk music and western art music. When it comes to Western techniques I am interested in using free tonal and serial techniques, conceptual composition, modal techniques, graphical composition (e.g.Cardew), "game" techniques (e.g. John Zorn's "Cobra"), instrument independent and approximated composition, conducting techniques (e.g. Sound Painting and Barry Guy). Sinawi is a scale based/heterophonic modal music with rules for appogiatura, vibrato, trills, etc. that are different for each note of the scale. There are also
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certain rules for rhythmic and melodic development within each piece. At the same time, it is very open to the personal expression of the performer and has some aspects in common with improvised jazz. In ensemble situations collective improvisation within the rules is the main focus. Asian music (and especially the Korean form Sinawi) is interesting to me in this context because I think its organization and systems can be transferred to several genres without necessarily sounding like Asian music. I do not want to create "World Music" or exotica, but rather develop tools that can be used within multiple genres where composition and improvisation are combined and as preparation for "free" improvisation. The building blocks of the music and how they work is what I'm interested in, not necessarily the aesthetic expression. The basic components will be the base of my artistic research.
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Poster Presentations
Poster presentations will be delivered during lunch breaks on Friday and Saturday. Please the poster boards in reception over the two days and talk to researchers about their work! Alison Eales, University of Glasgow
The European influences of Bill Evans: Reassessing their impact on Kind of Blue through musical analysis
Bill Evans played for the Miles Davis Sextet for only a matter of months, yet his impact on the group was profound, culminating in the seminal recording Kind of Blue (1959). Evans brought a deep love of classical music to the group, introducing Davis to the works of many European (and Soviet) composers. Davis acknowledged his influence and European music appears to surface in the impressionistic Blue in Green and Iberian Flamenco Sketches. Evans claims to have composed the former and co-written the latter, despite Davis being formally credited with the entire album. This paper attempts to measure the impact of his European influences on Kind of Blue (1959) by assessing the validity of his compositional claims. Using musical analysis it reaches two key conclusions: (1) Evans was involved with the composition of both pieces; (2) Davis was conceptually more advanced.
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Two comparative analyses will be presented examining (1) the improvised lines of Flamenco Sketches and (2) the melody of Blue in Green. The first compares how each musician approached the Phrygian section of Flamenco Sketches (which provides the piece with its characteristic Iberian flavour). The second compares the distinctive use in Blue in Green of extended notes in its melody with other recent tunes composed by Davis and Evans. The study concludes that although the impressionist piano style of Evans was integral to the success of Kind of Blue (1959) compositionally its European influences stem from Davis. Only he improvised fluently using the Phrygian mode and had composed using extended tones. This finding enriches our view of how culture moves between musical traditions, demonstrating how obvious sources of influence can oversimplify complex processes. Matthias Heyman, University of Antwerp & Royal Conservatory Antwerp
researching musicians and their playing styles, and argues for a truly holistic approach when revising jazz history. Joseph McLaren, Hosftra University, New York
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One LP: Jack Bruce - L'Ascension by Olivier Messiaen Photographed at Band on the Wall, Manchester, 24th March 2011 ------------------------"It's called L'Ascension by Olivier Messiaen who was a French composer I have loved for most of my life. Why I love his compositions is he shows that music has always existed. Humans only stole it - we borrowed it - but it's in nature. It holds the universe together, ask any skylark or ask any blackbird they'll tell you." Jack Bruce
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Project Partners
Rhythm Changes is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme (www.heranet.info) which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.
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