Synopses & Reviews
Many regard jazz as the soundtrack of America, born and raised in its cities and echoing throughout its tumultuous century of progress. So when Ernest Hemingway wrote about seeing jazz in 1920s Paris, and when British colonial officials danced to jazz in the clubs of Calcutta in the waning years of the Raj, how, exactly, had it gotten there?
Jazz Worlds/World Jazz aims to answer these questions and more, bringing together voices from countries as far flung as Azerbaijan, Armenia, and India to show that the story of jazz is not trapped in American history books but alive in global modernity.
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Monumental in scope, this book explores the relationship between jazz and culture and how they influence each other across a range of themes and settings. Contributors offer an analysis of the social meaning of jazz in Iran, a look at the genesis of Ethiopian jazz and at Indian fusion, and chapters on jazz diplomacy, Balkan swing, and that French export par excellence: Django Reinhardt. Altogether the contributors approach jazzandmdash;in these global iterationsandmdash;through the themes that have always characterized it at home: place, history, mobility, media, and race. The result is a first-of-its-kind map of jazz around the globe that pays tribute to the players who have given the form its seemingly infinite possibilities.and#160;
Review
andquot;Steven Feld has written an astonishing book: at once a sweetly told adventure story, biographies of some very important but virtually unknown African musicians, a shrewd look at the world we live in and think we know, and hidden within it all, a sly critique of the history of jazz.andquot;andmdash;John F. Szwed, Director, Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University
Review
andquot;How to evoke the brilliant insight and empathy of Steven Feld's acoustemological memoir of music and musicians in Accra? To start, imagine E. T. Mensah, Shirley Temple, John Coltrane, and Ludwig van Beethoven riding (quasi-legally) in the back of a vividly motto-festooned Ghanaian trotro truck, cool-running a memory-drenched, complexly overlapping soundscape of highlife evergreens, Afriphonic jazz hollers, hallelujah choruses, ratcheting sewer toads, and honking India-rubber bulb horns. Centered on the voices, stories, and ambitions of a compelling cast of charactersandmdash;Ghanaian musicians whose diversely linked experiences chart the layered, contradictory flows and deep reefs of globalizationandmdash;Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is a fundamental and stimulating contribution to the literature on musical cosmopolitanism and the study of contemporary urban culture in Africa.andrdquo;andmdash;Christopher Waterman, Dean, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture
Review
andldquo;The chapters in which Feld listens and retells the stories of these mercurial musicians are compelling, and throw up original and profound material. . . . Feld is brilliant at articulating the multiple overlapping narratives and experiences that both obfuscate and animate diasporic dialogues, and in that process his book attains its own world-historical significance.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;A successful fusion of anthropology and aesthetics that illuminates the musical and cultural linksandmdash;and differencesandmdash;between African and American jazz, this is also a fascinating memoir of one personandrsquo;s attempt to understand the urban culture of Ghana in an age of globalization.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[A] vital statement about the infinitely nuanced nature of cultural exchange between Africa and America, and how our fullest understanding of jazz history might be furthered by enquiries like this.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This fascinating book opens up jazz from the African perspective. Whether heandrsquo;s discussing with Nortey the Africanization of his saxophone and his absolute dedication to the music of John Coltrane or explaining Ghanabaandrsquo;s musical relationship with Max Roach, Feld brings a full picture to the broadening cultural aspects of Africans playing their own type of jazz.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In addition to his effective usage of the storytelling mode, Feld provides an exemplary illustration of the seamless integration of multiple roles as a documentary filmmaker, musician, anthropologist, historian, and tour promoter. . . . Feld realizes that not all Ghanaians would view these musicians as cosmopolitans, but that fact seems to actually reinforce his discussion of the discourse on cosmopolitanism and its relationship to race, class, and other structures of power. Indeed, he opens many doors for his readers and tells us stories of why these types of music making are important beyond Ghana. He leads us to a more refined understanding of cosmopolitanism, not to provide a series of answers, but to provoke in each of us more thoughtful questions about our music, our research, and ourselves.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Feld reveals the high degree of cosmopolitanism in jazz-pop relatedand#160;musics and the huge role that race and class play in constraining the players. Deciphering the intertextuality of African American life and music requires an expert like Steven Feld. He has done a masterful job.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;With rich and diverse examples, Feld demonstrates the pervasiveness of cosmopolitan outlooks among jazz musicians in Accra, whether mobile or immobile, socially powerful or powerless, rich or poorandhellip; Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is an important theoretical intervention in andlsquo;cosmopolitanism from belowandrsquo; and a powerful narrative about jazz as an African diasporic art form from the standpoint of musicians in Accra.andrdquo;and#160;
Review
andldquo;Jazz Cosmopolitanism is a lively and important book, one that uses the vehicles of dialogue and sound to unearth the complex cultural and political dynamics that connect a group of urban Africans to the diaspora and wider world. It is a fun, invigorating, and worthwhile read. . . . Jazz and#160;Cosmopolitanism is a book that continues to resonate when finally put down. I highly recommend picking it up.andrdquo;and#160;
Review
andldquo;A thoroughly humane and endearing narrative account of Feldandrsquo;s attempt in Ghana, encumbered by the title andlsquo;prof,andrsquo; recording and photographic equipment, a car, and many of the resources one expects from a citizen of the wealthiest nation on earth,to try and engage with and understand Accraandrsquo;s musical landscape and especially those aspects of it which relate to jazz. Itandrsquo;s a joy to read. . . .andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Feldandrsquo;s brilliant work should have a broad impact and appeal, offering significant contributions and interventions to interdisciplinary discourses on jazz, Ghanaian music, cosmopolitanism, as well as (urban) Africa and its diaspora.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;An absolute delight. . . . Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra will not only become one of the most important studies in jazz scholarship; it will also provide a provocative indication of where and how culturally oriented music studies might develop.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Ethnographic memoir that describes the jazz scene in Accra between 2005 and 2010, highlighting its cosmopolitan and global dimensions.
Synopsis
The distinguished scholar Steven Feld shaped the field of the anthropology of sound and music. In this new work, he looks at the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a group of jazz players in Ghana, including some who have traveled widely, played with American
Synopsis
The distinguished scholar Steven Feld shaped the field of the anthropology of sound and music. In this new work, he looks at the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a group of jazz players in Ghana, including some who have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended Coltrane with local instruments and philosophy. He describes their cosmopolitan outlook as an accoustemology, a way of knowing the world through sound. Feld combines memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, telling a story of diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests both American nationalist and Afrocentric narrations of jazz history.
Synopsis
In this remarkable book, Steven Feld, pioneer of the anthropology of sound, listens to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of jazz players in Ghana. Some have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended the innovations of John Coltrane with local instruments and worldviews. Combining memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, Feld conveys a diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests American nationalist and Afrocentric narratives of jazz history. His stories of Accra's jazz cosmopolitanism feature Ghanaba/Guy Warren (1923andndash;2008), the eccentric drummer who befriended the likes of Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Thelonious Monk in the United States in the 1950s, only to return, embittered, to Ghana, where he became the country's leading experimentalist. Others whose stories figure prominently are Nii Noi Nortey, who fuses the legacies of the black avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s with pan-African philosophy in sculptural shrines to Coltrane and musical improvisations inspired by his work; the percussionist Nii Otoo Annan, a traditional master inspired by Coltrane's drummers Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali; and a union of Accra truck and minibus drivers whose squeeze-bulb honk-horn music for drivers' funerals recalls the jazz funerals of New Orleans. Feld describes these artists' cosmopolitan outlook as an andquot;acoustemology,andquot; a way of knowing the world through sound.
Synopsis
In many peopleand#8217;s minds, jazz is the soundtrack of America.and#160; Planted in the southern soil alongside cotton and tobacco and nurtured in urban meccas such as New York, Kansas City, and Chicagoand#151;jazz is the music of industry, protest, and change.and#160; But jazz is also a global music.and#160; As long as there have been jazz musicians, there has been jazz in all corners of the world, from Shanghai and Delhi to Havana and Rio.and#160; There were even jazz bands such as the Ghetto Swingers in Nazi concentration camps.and#160; Ernest Hemingway wrote about walking into clubs in Paris in the 1920s and seeing jazz.and#160; How did it get there?
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Jazz Worlds/World Jazz aims to answer that question as well as the broader question of the international presence of jazz: How does jazz participate in globalization?and#160; Explored via the major themes of place, history, media, globalization/indigenization, and race, volume editors Phil Bohlman and Goffredo Plastino have assembled a premiere group of authors whose sites of study range from Azerbaijan to Armenia to India.
About the Author
Philip V. Bohlman is the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is the author or editor of many books, including
Jewish Musical Modernism and
Music and the Racial Imagination, and coeditor of the Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology series, all published by the University of Chicago Press.
Goffredo Plastino is a reader in ethnomusicology in the school of arts and cultures at Newcastle University. He is the editor of
Mediterranean Mosaic and coeditor of
Made in Italy and
Neapolitan Postcards.and#160;
Table of Contents
Opus xi
andlt;bandgt;Four-Bar Introandlt;/bandgt;
andquot;The Shape of Jazz to Comeandquot; 1
Vamp In, Headandlt;/bandgt;
Acoustemology in Accra: On Jazz Cosmopolitanism 11
First Chorus, with Transposition
Guy Warren / Ghanaba: From Afro-Jazz to Handel via Max Roach 51
Second Chorus, Blow Free
Nii Noi Nortey: From Pan-Africanism to Afrifones via John Coltrane 87
Third Chorus, Back Insideandlt;/bandgt;
Nii Otoo Annan: From Toads to Polyrhythm via Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali 119
Fourth Chorus, Shout to the Grooveandlt;/bandgt;
Por Por: From Honk Horns to Jazz Funerals via New Orleans 159
Head Again, Vamp Out
Beyond Diasporic Intimacy 199
andquot;Dedicated to Youandquot; 245
Horn Backgrounds, Riffs Underneath 249
Themes, Players 299