Download or read book Disintegrating the Musical written by Arthur Knight and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the earliest sound films to the present, American cinema has represented African Americans as decidedly musical. Disintegrating the Musical tracks and analyzes this history of musical representations of African Americans, from blacks and whites in blackface to black-cast musicals to jazz shorts, from sorrow songs to show tunes to bebop and beyond. Arthur Knight focuses on American film’s classic sound era, when Hollywood studios made eight all-black-cast musicals—a focus on Afro-America unparalleled in any other genre. It was during this same period that the first black film stars—Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge—emerged, not coincidentally, from the ranks of musical performers. That these films made so much of the connection between African Americans and musicality was somewhat ironic, Knight points out, because they did so in a form (song) and a genre (the musical) celebrating American social integration, community, and the marriage of opposites—even as the films themselves were segregated and played before even more strictly segregated audiences. Disintegrating the Musical covers territory both familiar—Show Boat, Stormy Weather, Porgy and Bess—and obscure—musical films by pioneer black director Oscar Micheaux, Lena Horne’s first film The Duke Is Tops, specialty numbers tucked into better-known features, and lost classics like the short Jammin’ the Blues. It considers the social and cultural contexts from which these films arose and how African American critics and audiences responded to them. Finally, Disintegrating the Musical shows how this history connects with the present practices of contemporary musical films like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Bamboozled.
Download or read book Representing Jazz written by Krin Gabbard and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional jazz studies have tended to see jazz in purely musical terms, as a series of changes in rhythm, tonality, and harmony, or as a parade of great players. But jazz has also entered the cultural mix through its significant impact on novelists, filmmakers, dancers, painters, biographers, and photographers. Representing Jazz explores the "other" history of jazz created by these artists, a history that tells us as much about the meaning of the music as do the many books that narrate the lives of musicians or describe their recordings. Krin Gabbard has gathered essays by distinguished writers from a variety of fields. They provide engaging analyses of films such as Round Midnight, Bird, Mo' Better Blues, Cabin in the Sky, and Jammin' the Blues; the writings of Eudora Welty and Dorothy Baker; the careers of the great lindy hoppers of the 1930s and 1940s; Mura Dehn's extraordinary documentary on jazz dance; the jazz photography of William Claxton; painters of the New York School; the traditions of jazz autobiography; and the art of "vocalese." The contributors to this volume assess the influence of extramusical sources on our knowledge of jazz and suggest that the living contexts of the music must be considered if a more sophisticated jazz scholarship is ever to evolve. Transcending the familiar patterns of jazz history and criticism, Representing Jazz looks at how the music actually has been heard and felt at different levels of American culture. With its companion anthology, Jazz Among the Discourses, this volume will enrich and transform the literature of jazz studies. Its provocative essays will interest both aficionados and potential jazz fans. Contributors. Karen Backstein, Leland H. Chambers, Robert P. Crease, Krin Gabbard, Frederick Garber, Barry K. Grant, Mona Hadler, Christopher Harlos, Michael Jarrett, Adam Knee, Arthur Knight, James Naremore
Download or read book America s Film Legacy written by Daniel Eagan and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of the five hundred films that have been selected, to date, for preservation by the National Film Preservation Board, and are thereby listed in the National Film Registry.
Download or read book Frank Vignola s Complete Jammin the Blues Play Along for Guitar written by Frank Vignola and published by Mel Bay Publications. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive book combines three volumes by jazz guitar great Frank Vignola; 52 choruses of funky, bluesy and bop-oriented guitar solos played over blues changes in common key signatures. Vignola's solos will allow the reader tofeel and hear what it is like to play a well-constructed solo. A companion recording allows the reader to practice the written (and original) solos over rhythm accompaniment at slow and performance tempos. Recorded solos are also included so the reader can practice their accompaniment skills; navigating chordchanges, responding to ideas and supporting the soloist. This is a wonderful book for any jazz guitarist looking to improve their solos and offers the reader manyways to practice their skills. The material is written in standard notation and tablature. Access to the online audio is included
Download or read book Jazz as Visual Language written by Nicolas Pillai and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a timely analysis of the relationship between jazz and recording and broadcast technologies in the early twentieth century. Jazz histories have traditionally privileged qualities such as authenticity, naturalness and spontaneity, but to do so overlooks jazz's status as a modernist, mechanised art form that evolved alongside the moving image and visual cultures. Jazz as Visual Language shows that the moving image is crucial to our understanding of what the materiality of jazz really is. Focusing on Len Lye's direct animation, Gjon Mili's experimental footage of musicians performing and the BBC's Jazz 625 series, this book places emphasis on film and television that conveys the 'sound of surprise' through formal innovation, rather than narrative structure. Nicolas Pillai seeks to refine a critical vocabulary of jazz and visual culture whilst arguing that jazz was never just a new sound; it was also a new way of seeing the world.
Download or read book Being Prez written by Dave Gelly and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-18 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lester Young was one of the great jazz masters, and his impact on the course of the art form was profound. He fundamentally changed the way the saxophone was played--his long, flowing lines brought new levels of expressiveness and subtlety to the jazz language, setting the standard for all modern players. In Being Prez, renowned British critic Dave Gelly follows Lester Young through his life in a rapidly changing world, showing how the music of this exceptionally sensitive man was shaped by his experiences. The reader meets a complicated, vulnerable, gentle individual who was brought up in his father's traveling carnival band. His early career was spent in the nightclubs and dancehalls of Kansas City and the Southwest, and he made his landmark recording debut at the peak of the Swing Era. But at the height of his powers, he was drafted into the US Army, where racism and his own unworldliness landed him in military prison. Following these events, Young grew increasingly withdrawn and suspicious, changes in his character reflected in the darkening mood of his music. Gelly, himself a jazz saxophonist, examines many of Young's classic recordings in illuminating detail. He reveals how as a saxophonist--and as major contributor to the Count Basie band--Young created a strong personal voice, a cool modernism, and a new rhythmic flexibility in the freely dancing rhythms of 4-beat swing. With his sax jutting oddly to one side, his bizarre oblique use of language, and his unique musical rapport with Billie Holiday (who famously nicknamed him "Prez"), Lester Young has become an icon and a cult figure. This marvelous biography illuminates the life and work of this giant of jazz.
Download or read book Watching Jazz written by Björn Heile and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen is the first systematic study of jazz on screen media, covering its role across a plethora of technologies from film and television to recent developments in online media, and featuring the music of such legends as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Pat Metheny.
Download or read book Music Makes Me written by Todd Decker and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Astaire: one of the great jazz artists of the twentieth century? Astaire is best known for his brilliant dancing in the movie musicals of the 1930s, but in Music Makes Me, Todd Decker argues that Astaire’s work as a dancer and choreographer —particularly in the realm of tap dancing—made a significant contribution to the art of jazz. Decker examines the full range of Astaire’s work in filmed and recorded media, from a 1926 recording with George Gershwin to his 1970 blues stylings on television, and analyzes Astaire’s creative relationships with the greats, including George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer. He also highlights Astaire’s collaborations with African American musicians and his work with lesser known professionals—arrangers, musicians, dance directors, and performers.
Download or read book Norman Granz written by Tad Hershorn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The JAZZ AT THE PHILHARMONIC concerts were a turning point in my life. My fellow Californian Norman Granz figured it out. This biography lays out, in impressive detail and insight, the incredible contribution of Mr. Granz to the world of music and art. The deed of the vast recordings of ART TATUM says it all.” —Clint Eastwood “Norman Granz was one of the most important people in the world of jazz. He did more to escalate respect for jazz and raise our salaries than anybody else. He absolutely loved jazz and jazz musicians. I’m honored to have shared a beautiful friendship with Norman for many, many years. Hopefully, with this incredible book by Tad Hershorn, the world will have a chance to learn about Norman, and his phenomenal contribution to our beloved music—jazz.”—Clark Terry, author of Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry “Tad Hershorn’s Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice is a relentlessly readable, rigorously researched, deeply empathic portrait of the complex and heroic man who was arguably the greatest champion of this great American art form—and its great artists. Essential reading for anyone who loves jazz.” —James Kaplan, author of Frank: The Voice “Norman Granz was renowned as a vivid force in jazz history, both as a producer of invaluable classic recordings by many of the music’s most original performers and also for his world-wide, all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic tours. Moreover, he broke the color line dividing jazz audiences by mandating the end of segregated seating his continually popular concerts. Yet until this magisterial, deeply researched biography of Granz by Tad Hershorn, there has been no full-scale inside account of the achievement and combats of this often larger-than-life personality who, without playing an instrument, was so swingingly instrumental in making jazz an international language.” —Nat Hentoff, author of At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene “Norman Granz, one of the most significant non-musicians in jazz history, took gutsy public stands but remained a private person. Tad Hershorn's years of dedicated research reveal the man behind the lasting legacy, on which he sheds new light as well.. This great American story is a must read—and not just for jazz fans!” —Dan Morgenstern, author of Living with Jazz “Norman Granz was an institution in jazz. He was loved by some, hated by others, often controversial, and always fearless. But Granz was also elusive and, until now, sometimes came across as more symbol than man. Tad Hershorn has changed all that in this stunning, beautiful biography of the music's most relentless advocate of social justice.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original “Norman Granz was an important man, and Tad Hershorn tells his story with a fearless compassion grounded in yeoman research. Imperious, vain, and rude, Granz was also generous, inventive, and brave. He fought valiantly for jazz and civil rights, made pots of money, and never failed to bet it on his passions and beliefs. If you do not know him, you couldn't ask for a better introduction than Hershorn's judicious portrait; if you think you do know him, you are in for more than a few surprises.” —Gary Giddins, author of Visions of Jazz "You're probably smarter than you present yourself." —Norman Granz to author, 2001
Download or read book LIFE written by and published by . This book was released on 1945-01-22 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.
Download or read book Jazz written by Eddie S. Meadows and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz: Research and Pedagogy is the third edition of an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of jazz. Since the publication of the 2nd edition in 1995, the quantity and quality of books on jazz research, performance, and teaching materials have increased. Although the 1995 book was the most comprehensive annotated jazz bibliography published to that date, several books on research, performance, and teaching materials were omitted. In addition, given the proliferation of new books in all jazz areas since 1995, the need for a new, comprehensive, and annotated reference book on jazz is apparent. Multiply indexed, this book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared in the field over the last decade.
Download or read book Jazz on Film and Video in the Library of Congress written by Rebecca D. Clear and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jammin at the Margins written by Krin Gabbard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-05-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface Introduction: Whose Jazz, Whose Cinema? 1: The Ethnic Oedipus: The Jazz Singer and Its Remakes 2: Black and Tan Fantasies: The Jazz Biopic 3: Jazz Becomes Art 4: Signifyin(g) the Phallus: Representations of the Jazz Trumpet 5: Duke's Place: Visualizing a Jazz Composer 6: "Actor and Musician": Louis Armstrong and His Films 7: Nat King Cole, Hoagy Carmichael, and the Fate of the Jazz Actor Conclusion: New York, New York and Short Cuts Notes Bibliography Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book Miles Davis written by Clarence Bernard Henry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research and information guide provides a wide range of scholarship on the life, career, and musical legacy of Miles Davis, and is compiled for an interdisciplinary audience of scholars in jazz and popular music, musicology, and cultural studies. It serves as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field.
Download or read book Collected Works written by Whitney Balliett and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-04-15 with total page 892 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz critic for The New Yorker since 1957 and the author of some fifteen books, Whitney Balliett has spent a lifetime listening to and writing about jazz. "All first-rate criticism," he once wrote in a review, "first defines what we are confronting." He could as easily have been describing his own work. For nearly half a century, Balliett has been telling us, in his widely acclaimed pitch-perfect prose, what we are confronting when we listen to America's greatest—and perhaps only original—musical form. Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001 is a monumental achievement, capturing the full range and register of the jazz scene, from the very first Newport Jazz Festival to recent performances (in clubs and on CDs) by a rising generation of musicians. Here are definitive portraits of such major figures as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Django Reinhardt, Martha Raye, Buddy Rich, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, Art Tatum, Bessie Smith, and Earl Hines—a list that barely scratches the surface. Generations of readers have learned to listen to the music with Balliett's graceful guidance. For five decades he has captured those moments during which jazz history is made. Though Balliett's knowledge is an encyclopedic treasure, he has always written as if he were listening for the first time. Since its beginnings in New Orleans at the turn of the century, jazz has been restlessly and relentlessly evolving. This is an art form based on improvising, experimenting, shapeshifting—a constant work in progress of sounds and tonal shades, from swing and Dixieland, through boogie-woogie, bebop, and hard bop, to the "new thing," free jazz, abstract jazz, and atonal jazz. Yet, in all its forms, the music is forever sustained by what Balliett calls a "secret emotional center," an "aural elixir" that "reveals itself when an improvised phrase or an entire solo or even a complete number catches you by surprise." Balliett's celebrated essays invariably capture the so-called "sound of surprise"—and then share this sound with general readers, music students, jazz lovers, and popular American culture buffs everywhere. As The Los Angeles Times Book Review has observed, "Few people can write as well about anything as Balliett writes about jazz."
Download or read book Blutopia written by Graham Lock and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the portrayal of African American life, history, and possibility in the work of three important jazz composers.
Download or read book Blue Notes written by Sam V. H. Reese and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2019-09-11 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz can be uplifting, stimulating, sensual, and spiritual. Yet when writers turn to this form of music, they almost always imagine it in terms of loneliness. In Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness, Sam V. H. Reese investigates literary representations of jazz and the cultural narratives often associated with it, noting how they have, in turn, shaped readers’ judgments and assumptions about the music. This illuminating critical study contemplates the relationship between jazz and literature from a perspective that musicians themselves regularly call upon to characterize their performances: that of the conversation. Reese traces the tradition of literary appropriations of jazz, both as subject matter and as aesthetic structure, in order to show how writers turn to this genre of music as an avenue for exploring aspects of human loneliness. In turn, jazz musicians have often looked to literature—sometimes obliquely, sometimes centrally—for inspiration. Reese devotes particular attention to how several revolutionary jazz artists used the written word as a way to express, in concrete terms, something their music could only allude to or affectively evoke. By analyzing these exchanges between music and literature, Blue Notes refines and expands the cultural meaning of being alone, stressing how loneliness can create beauty, empathy, and understanding. Reese analyzes a body of prose writings that includes Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and midcentury short fiction by James Baldwin, Julio Cortázar, Langston Hughes, and Eudora Welty. Alongside this vibrant tradition of jazz literature, Reese considers the autobiographies of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, as well as works by a range of contemporary writers including Geoff Dyer, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and Zadie Smith. Throughout, Blue Notes offers original perspectives on the disparate ways in which writers acknowledge the expansive side of loneliness, reimagining solitude through narratives of connected isolation.
