The Uncrowned King Of Swing

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The Uncrowned King of Swing

Author : Jeffrey Magee
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195358148
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (581 download)

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Book Synopsis The Uncrowned King of Swing by : Jeffrey Magee

Download or read book The Uncrowned King of Swing written by Jeffrey Magee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If Benny Goodman was the "King of Swing," then Fletcher Henderson was the power behind the throne. Now Jeffrey Magee offers a fascinating account of Henderson's musical career, throwing new light on the emergence of modern jazz and the world that created it. Drawing on an unprecedented combination of sources, including sound recordings and hundreds of scores that have been available only since Goodman's death, Magee illuminates Henderson's musical output, from his early work as a New York bandleader, to his pivotal role in building the Kingdom of Swing. He shows how Henderson, standing at the forefront of the New York jazz scene during the 1920s and '30s, assembled the era's best musicians, simultaneously preserving jazz's distinctiveness and performing popular dance music that reached a wide audience. Magee reveals how, in Henderson's largely segregated musical world, black and white musicians worked together to establish jazz, how Henderson's style rose out of collaborations with many key players, how these players deftly combined improvised and written music, and how their work negotiated artistic and commercial impulses. Whether placing Henderson's life in the context of the Harlem Renaissance or describing how the savvy use of network radio made the Henderson-Goodman style a national standard, Jeffrey Magee brings to life a monumental musician who helped to shape an era. "An invaluable survey of Henderson's life and music." --Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times "Magee has written an important book, illuminating an era too often reduced to its most familiar names. Goodman might have been the King of Swing, but Henderson here emerges as that kingdom's chief architect." --Boston Globe "Excellent.... Jazz fans have waited 30 years for a trained musicologist...to evaluate Henderson's strengths and weaknesses and attempt to place him in the history of American music." --Will Friedwald, New York Sun

Annual Review of Jazz Studies 13: 2003

Author : Edward Berger
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
ISBN 13 : 9780810859456
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (594 download)

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Book Synopsis Annual Review of Jazz Studies 13: 2003 by : Edward Berger

Download or read book Annual Review of Jazz Studies 13: 2003 written by Edward Berger and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2007-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 13th issue of the ARJS includes an extensive study of the saxophonist Sonny Red, an analysis of a composition by Steve Swallow, a new perspective on John Coltrane's compositional approach, and an examination of Miles Davis's classic 'Walkin', ' plus book reviews and a continuing bibliography of scholarly articles about jazz in non-jazz journals

Jazz and Culture in a Global Age

Author : Stuart Nicholson
Publisher : Northeastern University Press
ISBN 13 : 1555538444
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (555 download)

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Book Synopsis Jazz and Culture in a Global Age by : Stuart Nicholson

Download or read book Jazz and Culture in a Global Age written by Stuart Nicholson and published by Northeastern University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted jazz scholar, biographer, and critic Stuart Nicholson has written an entertaining and enlightening consideration of the music's global past, present, and future. Jazz's emergence on the world scene coincided with America's rise as a major global power. The uniqueness of jazz's origins--America's singularly original gift of art to the world, developed by African Americans--adds a level of complexity to any appreciation of jazz's global presence. In this volume, Nicholson covers such diverse and controversial topics as jazz in the iPod musical economy, issues of globalization and authenticity, jazz and American exceptionalism, jazz as colonial tip of the sword, global interpretation, and the limits of jazz as a genre. Nicholson caps the volume with fascinating and anecdote-rich discussions of jazz as a form of "modernism" in the twentieth century, the history of jazz fads (such as the cakewalk) that elicited very different reactions among American and European audiences, and a hearty defense of Paul Whiteman and his efforts to legitimize jazz as art. Stuart Nicholson has written a thought-provoking and opinionated work that should equally engage and enrage all manner of jazz lovers, scholars, and aficionados.

Creating the Jazz Solo

Author : Vic Hobson
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496819810
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Creating the Jazz Solo by : Vic Hobson

Download or read book Creating the Jazz Solo written by Vic Hobson and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his life, Louis Armstrong tried to explain how singing with a barbershop quartet on the streets of New Orleans was foundational to his musicianship. Until now, there has been no in-depth inquiry into what he meant when he said, “I figure singing and playing is the same,” or, “Singing was more into my blood than the trumpet.” Creating the Jazz Solo: Louis Armstrong and Barbershop Harmony shows that Armstrong understood exactly the relationship between what he sang and what he played, and that he meant these comments to be taken literally: he was singing through his horn. To describe the relationship between what Armstrong sang and played, author Vic Hobson discusses elements of music theory with a style accessible even to readers with little or no musical background. Jazz is a music that is often performed by people with limited formal musical education. Armstrong did not analyze what he played in theoretical terms. Instead, he thought about it in terms of the voices in a barbershop quartet. Understanding how Armstrong, and other pioneer jazz musicians of his generation, learned to play jazz and how he used his background of singing in a quartet to develop the jazz solo has fundamental implications for the teaching of jazz history and performance today. This assertive book provides an approachable foundation for current musicians to unlock the magic and understand jazz the Louis Armstrong way.

Jazz

Author : Stuart Nicholson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1780749996
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (87 download)

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Book Synopsis Jazz by : Stuart Nicholson

Download or read book Jazz written by Stuart Nicholson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive guide includes a unique chapter-by-chapter playlist for the reader. Jazz: A Beginner’s Guide is a lively and highly accessible introduction to a global musical phenomenon. Award-winning music journalist and author Stuart Nicholson takes the reader on an entertaining journey from jazz's early stirrings in America’s south through to the present day, when almost every country in the world has its own vibrant jazz scene. En route we meet a host of jazz heroes past and present, from Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis, to Keith Jarrett and Kamasi Washington. Each chapter is accompanied by a playlist designed to provide a stimulating and enjoyable entry point to what has been described as the most exciting art form of all.

Between Beats

Author : Christi Jay Wells
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197559271
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis Between Beats by : Christi Jay Wells

Download or read book Between Beats written by Christi Jay Wells and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Jazz Tradition and Black Vernacular Dance explores the complex intersections between jazz music and popular dance over the last hundred-plus years. It aims to show how popular entertainment and cultures of social dancing were crucial to jazz music's formation and development, but it also investigates the processes through which jazz music came to earn a reputation as a "legitimate" art form better suited for still, seated listening. Through the concept of "choreographies of listening," the book explores amateur and professional jazz dancers' relationships with jazz music and musicians as jazz's soundscapes and choreoscapes were forged through close contact and mutual creative exchange. The book's later chapters also critically unpack the aesthetic and political negotiations through which jazz music supposedly distanced itself from dancing bodies. As musicians and critics sought to secure institutional space for jazz within America's body-averse academic and high-art cultures, an intentional severance from the dancing body proved crucial to jazz's re-positioning as a form of autonomous, elite art. Fusing little-discussed material from diverse historical and contemporary sources with the author's own years of experience as a social jazz dancer, this book seeks to advance participatory dance and embodied practice as central topics of analysis in jazz studies. As it tells the rich, untold story of jazz as popular dance music, this book also exposes how American anxieties about bodies and a broad cultural privileging of the cerebral over the corporeal have shaped efforts to "elevate" expressive forms such as jazz to elite status"--

Swingin' the Dream

Author : Lewis A. Erenberg
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226215180
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis Swingin' the Dream by : Lewis A. Erenberg

Download or read book Swingin' the Dream written by Lewis A. Erenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999-09-08 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1930s, swing bands combined jazz and popular music to create large-scale dreams for the Depression generation, capturing the imagination of America's young people, music critics, and the music business. Swingin' the Dream explores that world, looking at the racial mixing-up and musical swinging-out that shook the nation and has kept people dancing ever since. "Swingin' the Dream is an intelligent, provocative study of the big band era, chiefly during its golden hours in the 1930s; not merely does Lewis A. Erenberg give the music its full due, but he places it in a larger context and makes, for the most part, a plausible case for its importance."—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World "An absorbing read for fans and an insightful view of the impact of an important homegrown art form."—Publishers Weekly "[A] fascinating celebration of the decade or so in which American popular music basked in the sunlight of a seemingly endless high noon."—Tony Russell, Times Literary Supplement

Love for Sale

Author : David Hajdu
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0374170533
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (741 download)

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Book Synopsis Love for Sale by : David Hajdu

Download or read book Love for Sale written by David Hajdu and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A personal, idiosyncratic history of pop music traces the sheet-music era at the end of the nineteenth century and the invention of records through favorite chart-topping songs and the ways his mother shaped him as an aficionado.

Historical Dictionary of Jazz

Author : John S. Davis
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538128152
Total Pages : 559 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Jazz by : John S. Davis

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Jazz written by John S. Davis and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz is a music born in the United States and formed by a combination of influences. In its infancy, jazz was a melting pot of military brass bands, work songs and field hollers of the United States slaves during the 19th century, European harmonies and forms, and the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean. Later, the blues and the influence of Spanish and French Creoles with European classical training nudged jazz further along in its development. As it moved through the swing era of the 1930s, bebop of the 1940s, and cool jazz of the 1950s, jazz continued to serve as a reflection of societal changes. During the turbulent 1960s, freedom and unrest were expressed through Free Jazz and the Avant Garde. Popular and world music have been incorporated and continue to expand the impact and reach of jazz. Today, jazz is truly an international art form. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Jazz contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,500 cross-referenced entries on musicians, styles of jazz, instruments, recording labels, bands and band leaders, and more. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Jazz.

Before Elvis

Author : Larry Birnbaum
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
ISBN 13 : 0810886294
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Before Elvis by : Larry Birnbaum

Download or read book Before Elvis written by Larry Birnbaum and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012-12-14 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential work for rock fans and scholars, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ‘n’ Roll surveys the origins of rock ’n’ roll from the minstrel era to the emergence of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley. Unlike other histories of rock, Before Elvis offers a far broader and deeper analysis of the influences on rock music. Dispelling common misconceptions, it examines rock’s origins in hokum songs and big-band boogies as well as Delta blues, detailing the embrace by white artists of African-American styles long before rock ’n’ roll appeared. This unique study ranges far and wide, highlighting not only the contributions of obscure but key precursors like Hardrock Gunter and Sam Theard but also the influence of celebrity performers like Gene Autry and Ella Fitzgerald. Too often, rock historians treat the genesis of rock ’n’ roll as a bolt from the blue, an overnight revolution provoked by the bland pop music that immediately preceded it and created through the white appropriation of music till then played only by and for black audiences. In Before Elvis, Birnbaum daringly argues a more complicated history of rock’s evolution from a heady mix of ragtime, boogie-woogie, swing, country music, mainstream pop, and rhythm-and-blues—a melange that influenced one another along the way, from the absorption of blues and boogies into jazz and pop to the integration of country and Caribbean music into rhythm-and-blues. Written in an easy style, Before Elvis presents a bold argument about rock’s origins and required reading for fans and scholars of rock ’n’ roll history.

Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings

Author : Steve Sullivan
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442254491
Total Pages : 830 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings by : Steve Sullivan

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings written by Steve Sullivan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-17 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volumes 3 and 4 of the The Encyclopedia of More Great Popular Song Recordings provides the stories behind approximately 1,700 more of the greatest song recordings in the history of the music industry, from 1890 to today. In this masterful survey, all genres of popular music are covered, from pop, rock, soul, and country to jazz, blues, classic vocals, hip-hop, folk, gospel, and ethnic/world music. Collectors will find detailed discographical data—recording dates, record numbers, Billboard chart data, and personnel—while music lovers will appreciate the detailed commentaries and deep research on the songs, their recording, and the artists. Readers who revel in pop cultural history will savor each chapter as it plunges deeply into key events—in music, society, and the world—from each era of the past 125 years. Following in the wake of the first two volumes of his original Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, this follow-up work covers not only more beloved classic performances in pop music history, but many lesser -known but exceptional recordings that—in the modern digital world of “long tail” listening, re-mastered recordings, and “lost but found” possibilities—Sullivan mines from modern recording history. The Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volumes 3 and 4 lets the readers discover, and, through their playlist services, from such as iTunes toand Spotify, build a truly deepcomprehensive catalog of classic performances that deserve to be a part of every passionate music lover’s life. Sullivan organizes songs in chronological order, starting in 1890 and continuing all the way throughto the present to include modern gems from June 2016. In each chapter, Sullivanhe immerses readers, era by era, in the popular music recordings of the time, noting key events that occurred at the time to painting a comprehensive picture in music history of each periodfor each song. Moreover, Sullivan includes for context bulleted lists noting key events that occurred during the song’s recording

Some of These Days

Author : James Donald
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199354022
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Some of These Days by : James Donald

Download or read book Some of These Days written by James Donald and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With peerless talent and unrivalled international presence, few stars shone brighter in the heady firmament of the Jazz Age than Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. Electric, charismatic, and unforgettable, both ignited the modern imaginations of cosmopolitan centers across Europe. Unabashedly themselves, they inspired poets, architects, novelists, and filmmakers across London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna with their indomitable artistic energy. But Some of These Days extends beyond pure dual biography to recreate the rich community of artists who interacted with-and were influenced by-Baker and Robeson. James Donald highlights how the sense of excitement and artistic renewal ushered in with the 'New Negro Movement' reverberated far beyond Harlem. Throughout this chronicle, Donald underscores the relationship of African American aesthetics to the modernist movement that flourished from the 1920s until the end of World War II. Vivid portraits of artists like T. S. Eliot, HD, Carl Van Vechten, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Gabin, and Adolf Loos, among others, animate the study. Traversing countries and artforms, Some of These Days illustrates the immense cross-cultural collaboration of film, song, dance, and literature that coalesced to create modernist culture-where the new rhythms of the machine age were gleefully embraced, allowing art to consider the new possibilities of cosmopolitanism in a modern world. Engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, Some of These Days recovers not just the romance, excitement, and uncertainty of Baker and Robeson's storied rise to stardom but also the political and cultural legacy of the movement that they embodied.

Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams

Author : Andrew S. Berish
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226044963
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams by : Andrew S. Berish

Download or read book Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams written by Andrew S. Berish and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-02-06 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. In Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s, Andrew Berish attempts to right this wrong, showcasing how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, Berish bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering not only a new reading of swing era jazz but an entirely new framework for musical analysis in general, one that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound. Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma City, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries—from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban—and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.

Historical Dictionary of Popular Music

Author : Norman Abjorensen
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538102153
Total Pages : 695 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Popular Music by : Norman Abjorensen

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Popular Music written by Norman Abjorensen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to trace the rise of popular music, identify its key figures and track the origins and development of its multiple genres and styles, all the while seeking to establish historical context. It is, fundamentally, a ready reference guide to the broad field of popular music over the past two centuries. It has become a truism that popular music, so pervasive in the modern world, constitutes a soundtrack to our lives – a constant though changing presence as we cross thresholds and grow from children to teenagers to adults. But it has become more than a soundtrack; it has become a narrative. Not just an accompaniment to our daily lives but incorporating our lives, our sense of identity, our lived experiences, into it. We have become part of the music just as the music has become part of us. The Historical Dictionary of Popular Music contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on major figures across genres, definitions of genres, technical innovations and surveys of countries and regions. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about popular music.

Frontiers of Creative Industries

Author : Candace Jones
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1787437744
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (874 download)

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Book Synopsis Frontiers of Creative Industries by : Candace Jones

Download or read book Frontiers of Creative Industries written by Candace Jones and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creative industries are a growing and globally important area for both economic vitality and cultural expression of industrialized nations. This volume examines their institutional, categorical and structural dynamics to provide an overview of new trends and emerging issues in scholarship on this topic.

Cuttin' Up

Author : Court Carney
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700618899
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Cuttin' Up by : Court Carney

Download or read book Cuttin' Up written by Court Carney and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of jazz out of New Orleans is part of the American story, but the creation of this music was more than a regional phenomenon: it also crossed geographical, cultural, and technological lines. Court Carney takes a new look at the spread and acceptance of jazz in America, going beyond the familiar accounts of music historians and documentarians to show how jazz paralleled and propelled the broader changes taking place in America's economy, society, politics, and culture. Cuttin' Up takes readers back to the 1920s and early 1930s to describe how jazz musicians navigated the rocky racial terrain of the music business-and how new media like the phonograph, radio, and film accelerated its diffusion and contributed to variations in its styles. The first history of jazz to emphasize the connections between these disseminating technologies and specific locales, it describes the distinctive styles that developed in four cities and tells how the opportunities of each influenced both musicians' choices and the marketing of their music. Carney begins his journey in New Orleans, where pioneers like Jelly Roll Morton and Buddy Bolden set the tone for the new music, then takes readers up the river to Chicago, where Joe Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, featuring a young Louis Armstrong, first put jazz on record. The genre received a major boost in New York through radio's live broadcasts from venues like the Cotton Club, then came to a national audience when Los Angeles put it in the movies, starting with the appearance of Duke Ellington's orchestra in Check and Double Check. As Carney shows, the journey of jazz had its racial component as well, ranging from New Orleans' melting pot to Chicago's segregated music culture, from Harlem clubs catering to white clienteles to Hollywood's reinforcement of stereotypes. And by pinpointing specific cultural turns in the process of bringing jazz to a national audience, he shows how jazz opens a window on the creation of a modernist spirit in America. A 1930 tune called "Cuttin' Up" captured the freewheeling spirit of this new music-an expression that also reflects the impact jazz and its diffusion had on the nation as it crossed geographic and social boundaries and integrated an array of styles into an exciting new hybrid. Deftly blending music history, urban history, and race studies, Cuttin' Up recaptures the essence of jazz in its earliest days.

Sun Ra's Chicago

Author : William Sites
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022673224X
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis Sun Ra's Chicago by : William Sites

Download or read book Sun Ra's Chicago written by William Sites and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Sites provides crucial context on how Chicago’s Afrocentrist philosophy, religion, and jazz scenes helped turn Blount into Sun Ra.” —Chicago Reader Sun Ra (1914–93) was one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his Arkestra appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, the keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology that claimed the planet Saturn as his true home. In Sun Ra’s Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back to earth—specifically to the city’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 he lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways. “Four stars . . . Sites makes the engaging argument that the idiosyncratic jazz legend’s penchant for interplanetary journeys and African American utopia was in fact inspired by urban life right on Earth.” —Spectrum Culture