The Jazz Cadence of American Culture

by O'Meally, Robert G.

• ISBN13: 9780231104494
• ISBN10: 0231104499
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: COLUMBIA UNIV PRESS

Summary

Taking to heart Ralph Ellison's remark that much in American life is "jazz-shaped," The Jazz Cadence of American Cultureoffers a wide range of eloquent statements about the influence of this art form. Robert G. O'Meally has gathered a comprehensive collection of important essays, speeches, and interviews on the impact of jazz on other arts, on politics, and on the rhythm of everyday life. Focusing mainly on American artistic expression from 1920 to 1970, O'Meally confronts a long era of political and artistic turbulence and change in which American art forms influenced one another in unexpected ways.Organized thematically, these provocative pieces include an essay considering poet and novelist James Weldon Johnson as a cultural critic, an interview with Wynton Marsalis, a speech on the heroic image in jazz, and a newspaper review of a recent melding of jazz music and dance, Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. From Stanley Crouch to August Wilson to Jacqui Malone, the plurality of voices gathered here reflects the variety of expression within jazz.The book's opening section sketches the overall place of jazz in America. Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner unpack the word jazzand its register, Albert Murray considers improvisation in music and life, Amiri Baraka argues that white critics misunderstand jazz, and Stanley Crouch cogently dissects the intersections of jazz and mainstream American democratic institutions. After this, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring jazz and the visual arts, dance, sports, history, memory, and literature. Ann Douglas writes on jazz's influence on the design and construction of skyscrapers in the 1920s and '30s, Zora Neale Hurston considers the significance of African-American dance, Michael Eric Dyson looks at the jazz of Michael Jordan's basketball game, and Hazel Carby takes on the sexual politics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith's blues.The Jazz Cadenceoffers a wealth of insight and information for scholars, students, jazz aficionados, and any reader wishing to know more about this music form that has put its stamp on American culture more profoundly than any other in the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. IX
What is jazz?
Introduction	p. 3
Jazz--The Word	p. 7
Forward Motion: An Interview with Benny Golson	p. 32
Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture	p. 62
Black Music as an Art Form	p. 82
Remembering Thelonious Monk: When the Music Was Happening Then He'd Get Up and Do His Little Dance	p. 102
Improvisation and the Creative Process	p. 111
One nation under a groove, or, the united states of jazzocracy
Introduction	p. 117
What's "American" About America	p. 123
Jazz and the White Critic	p. 137
Duke Ellington: "Music Like a Big Hot Pot of Good Gumbo"	p. 143
Blues to Be Constitutional: A Long Look at the Wild Wherefores of Our Democratic Lives as Symbolized in the Making of Rhythm and Tune	p. 154
The Ellington Programme	p. 166
Jazz lines and colors: the sound i saw
Introduction	p. 175
Art History and Black Memory: Toward a "Blues Aesthetic"	p. 182
Skyscrapers, Airplanes, and Airmindedness: "The Necessary Angel"	p. 196
Profiles: Putting Something Over Something Else	p. 224
Celebration	p. 243
Black Visual Intonation	p. 264
Improvisation in Jazz	p. 269
Jazz is a dance: jazz art in motion
Introduction	p. 273
Jazz Music in Motion: Dancers and Big Bands	p. 278
Characteristics of Negro Expression	p. 298
African Art and Motion	p. 311
Be Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire	p. 372
"Noise" Taps a Historic Route to Joy	p. 381
Tell the story: jazz, history, memory
Introduction	p. 389
Pulp and Circumstance: The Story of Jazz in High Places	p. 393
Jazz and American Culture	p. 431
The Golden Age, Time Past	p. 448
Double V, Double-Time: Bebop's Politics of Style	p. 457
It Jus Be's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues	p. 469
Constructing the Jazz Tradition	p. 483
Other: From Noun to Verb	p. 513
Writing the blues, writing jazz
Introduction	p. 535
The Blues as Folk Poetry	p. 540
Richard Wright's Blues	p. 552
Preface to "Three Plays"	p. 563
The Function of the Heroic Image	p. 569
The Seemingly Eclipsed Window of Form: James Weldon Johnson's Prefaces	p. 580
Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol	p. 602
Sources	p. 629
Index	p. 633
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