Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice

by Heble,Ajay

• ISBN13: 9780415923491
• ISBN10: 0415923492
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-11-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Jazz is perhaps the most cerebral and most unpredictable of musical forms. Miles Davis transforms the simplest tune and structure into wildly imaginative improvisations. Thelonious Monk made dissonance glorious. And as Duke Ellington said, "Dissonance is our way of life in America. We are something apart, yet an integral part." InLanding on the Wrong Note,Ajay Heble provides a groundbreaking analysis of jazz in its cultural context and a lucid exploration of the musical form itself: its dissonant riffs and resistance to traditional interpretations are emblematic of the social struggles surrounding the jazz scene and the people who created it. Drawing on personal anecdote, observation, conversations with jazz artists, and cultural theory, Heble demonstrates that although jazz may be free-form, its rich and varied history makes it an important point of entry into some of the most hotly contested issues of our era -- power, identity, representation, history, ethics, and social change. Asartistic director of a jazz festival and noted critic, he has unique insight into the gap between critical interpretation and the reality of performance. An imaginative and passionate synthesis of form and function,Landing on the Wrong Notegoes beyond mainstream jazz criticism, outlining a new poetics of jazz that emerges not from the ivory tower but from the clubs, performances, and lives of today's jazz musicians.

Author Biography

Ajay Heble is Associate Professor in the School of Literatures and Performances in English at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(28)
The Poetics of Jazz: From Symbolic to Semiotic	29	(34)
The Rehistoricizing of Jazz: Chicago's ``Urban Bushmen'' and the Problem of Representation	63	(26)
Performing Identity: Jazz Autobiography and the Politics of Literary Improvisation	89	(28)
``Space Is the Place'': Jazz, Voice, and Resistance	117	(24)
Nice Work If You Can Get It: Women in Jazz	141	(26)
Gillian Siddall
Capitulating to Barbarism: Jazz and/as Popular Culture	167	(32)
Up for Grabs: The Ethicopolitical Authority of Jazz	199	(40)
Conclusion: Alternative Public Spheres	229	(10)
Works Cited	239	(12)
Sound and Video Recordings Consulted	251	(2)
Index	253