Download or read book Soul on Soul written by Tammy L. Kernodle and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First time in paperback and e-book! The jazz musician-composer-arranger Mary Lou Williams spent her sixty-year career working in—and stretching beyond—a dizzying range of musical styles. Her integration of classical music into her works helped expand jazz's compositional language. Her generosity made her a valued friend and mentor to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Her late-in-life flowering of faith saw her embrace a spiritual jazz oriented toward advancing the civil rights struggle and helping wounded souls. Tammy L. Kernodle details Williams's life in music against the backdrop of controversies over women's place in jazz and bitter arguments over the music's evolution. Williams repeatedly asserted her artistic and personal independence to carve out a place despite widespread bafflement that a woman exhibited such genius. Embracing Williams's contradictions and complexities, Kernodle also explores a personal life troubled by lukewarm professional acceptance, loneliness, relentless poverty, bad business deals, and difficult marriages. In-depth and epic in scope, Soul on Soul restores a pioneering African American woman to her rightful place in jazz history.
Download or read book Mary Lou Williams written by Deanna Witkowski and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul, Deanna Witkowski brings a fresh perspective to the life and music of the legendary jazz pianist-composer Mary Lou Williams (1910-81). As a fellow jazz pianist-composer, adult convert to Catholicism, and liturgical composer, Witkowski offers unique insight gleaned from a twenty-year journey with Williams as her chosen musical and spiritual mentor. Viewing Williams’s musical and corporal acts of mercy as part of a singular effort to create community no matter the context, Witkowski examines how Williams created networks of support and friendship through her decades long letter correspondence with various women religious, her charitable work, and her tireless efforts to perform jazz in churches, community centers, concert halls, and schools. Throughout this fascinating story told with equal amounts of deep love and scholarly research, Witkowski illumines Williams’s passionate mantra that “jazz is healing to the soul.”
Download or read book Some Liked It Hot written by Kristin A. McGee and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women have been involved with jazz since its inception, but all too often their achievements were not as well known as those of their male counterparts. Some Liked It Hot looks at all-girl bands and jazz women from the 1920s through the 1950s and how they fit into the nascent mass culture, particularly film and television, to uncover some of the historical motivations for excluding women from the now firmly established jazz canon. This well-illustrated book chronicles who appeared where and when in over 80 performances, captured in both popular Hollywood productions and in relatively unknown films and television shows. As McGee shows, these performances reflected complex racial attitudes emerging in American culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Her analysis illuminates the heavily mediated representational strategies that jazz women adopted, highlighting the role that race played in constituting public performances of various styles of jazz from "swing" to "hot" and "sweet." The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Hazel Scott, the Ingenues, Peggy Lee, and Paul Whiteman are just a few of the performers covered in the book, which also includes a detailed filmography.
Download or read book Queen of Bebop written by Elaine M. Hayes and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017 Washington Post Best Book of 2017 Amazon Editors' Top 100 Pick of the Year Amazon Best Humor and Entertainment Pick of the Year Booklist Top Ten Arts Book Queen of Bebop brilliantly chronicles the life of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the twentieth century and a pioneer of women’s and civil rights Sarah Vaughan, a pivotal figure in the formation of bebop, influenced a broad array of singers who followed in her wake, yet the breadth and depth of her impact—not just as an artist, but also as an African-American woman—remain overlooked. Drawing from a wealth of sources as well as on exclusive interviews with Vaughan’s friends and former colleagues, Queen of Bebop unravels the many myths and misunderstandings that have surrounded Vaughan while offering insights into this notoriously private woman, her creative process, and, ultimately, her genius. Hayes deftly traces the influence that Vaughan’s singing had on the perception and appreciation of vocalists—not to mention women—in jazz. She reveals how, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Vaughan helped desegregate American airwaves, opening doors for future African-American artists seeking mainstream success, while also setting the stage for the civil rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. She follows Vaughan from her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and her first performances at the Apollo, to the Waldorf Astoria and on to the world stage, breathing life into a thrilling time in American music nearly lost to us today. Equal parts biography, criticism, and good old-fashioned American success story, Queen of Bebop is the definitive biography of a hugely influential artist. This absorbing and sensitive treatment of a singular personality updates and corrects the historical record on Vaughan and elevates her status as a jazz great.
Download or read book As Serious As Your Life written by Valerie Wilmer and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Big Ears written by Nichole T. Rustin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-07 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In jazz circles, players and listeners with “big ears” hear and engage complexity in the moment, as it unfolds. Taking gender as part of the intricate, unpredictable action in jazz culture, this interdisciplinary collection explores the terrain opened up by listening, with big ears, for gender in jazz. Essays range from a reflection on the female boogie-woogie pianists who played at Café Society in New York during the 1930s and 1940s to interpretations of how the jazzman is represented in Dorothy Baker’s novel Young Man with a Horn (1938) and Michael Curtiz’s film adaptation (1950). Taken together, the essays enrich the field of jazz studies by showing how gender dynamics have shaped the production, reception, and criticism of jazz culture. Scholars of music, ethnomusicology, American studies, literature, anthropology, and cultural studies approach the question of gender in jazz from multiple perspectives. One contributor scrutinizes the tendency of jazz historiography to treat singing as subordinate to the predominantly male domain of instrumental music, while another reflects on her doubly inappropriate position as a female trumpet player and a white jazz musician and scholar. Other essays explore the composer George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept as a critique of mid-twentieth-century discourses of embodiment, madness, and black masculinity; performances of “female hysteria” by Les Diaboliques, a feminist improvising trio; and the BBC radio broadcasts of Ivy Benson and Her Ladies’ Dance Orchestra during the Second World War. By incorporating gender analysis into jazz studies, Big Ears transforms ideas of who counts as a subject of study and even of what counts as jazz. Contributors: Christina Baade, Jayna Brown, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Monica Hairston, Kristin McGee, Tracy McMullen, Ingrid Monson, Lara Pellegrinelli, Eric Porter, Nichole T. Rustin, Ursel Schlicht, Julie Dawn Smith, Jeffrey Taylor, Sherrie Tucker, João H. Costa Vargas
Download or read book The Meaning of Soul written by Emily J. Lordi and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices—inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role played by black women in this musical-intellectual tradition.
Download or read book If You Can t be Free be a Mystery written by Farah Jasmine Griffin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The threads of Billie Holiday's mystique are unraveled in this study of a woman who needed to create art at any cost. Griffin liberates Holiday from stereotypes of black women and pries her away from the male tradition of jazz criticism while presenting Holiday's independent spirit. of photos.
Download or read book Soul Covers written by Michael Awkward and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVCultural and literary study of the construction of racial and artistic identity in soul cover albums of three popular artists--Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Phoebe Snow./div
Download or read book Black Women and Music written by Eileen M. Hayes and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features a collection of essays that detail black women's experiences in various forms of music and details such topics as black authenticity, sexual politics, access, racial uplift through music, and the challenges of writing black feminist biographies.
Download or read book The Lady Swings written by Dottie Dodgion and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2021-03-29 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dottie Dodgion is a jazz drummer who played with the best. A survivor, she lived an entire lifetime before she was seventeen. Undeterred by hardships she defied the odds and earned a seat as a woman in the exclusive men’s club of jazz. Her dues-paying path as a musician took her from early work with Charles Mingus to being hired by Benny Goodman at Basin Street East on her first day in New York. From there she broke new ground as a woman who played a “man’s instrument” in first-string, all-male New York City jazz bands. Her inspiring memoir talks frankly about her music and the challenges she faced, and shines a light into the jazz world of the 1960s and 1970s. Vivid and always entertaining, The Lady Swings tells Dottie Dodgion's story with the same verve and straight-ahead honesty that powered her playing. A Variety Best Music Book of 2021
Download or read book She Bop II written by Lucy O'Brien and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular music grew out of ragtime, vaudeville and the blues to become global mass entertainment. Women like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were the original pop divas, yet eighty years after they blazed a trail, have their successors achieved the recognition and affirmation they deserve? Or has the only was to success been to slot into saleable images of the cute baby or sexy chanteuse? Lucy O'Brien has written the ultimate hands-on history of women in rock, pop, and soul. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dusty Springfield, Patti Smith, Madonna, Joni Mitchell, whitney Houston, Courtney Love, Alanis Morissette, Destiny's child - all the key names are here. But She Bop II refuses to look at women artists simply as personalities, problems or victims. From dream babes to rock chicks, riot grrrls and ragamuffins, girlpower, Lilith Fair rock and the rise of the corporate diva, She Bop II is the uncompromising story of women as creators and innovators. Lucy O'Brien is the author of two previous books: the bestsellers Annie Lennox (1991) and Dusty (1989). She has contributed to the Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, Marie Claire, New Musical Express and The Face, and worked extensively in TV and radio, as both guest pundit and producer.
Download or read book Blue Like Jazz written by Donald Miller and published by Thomas Nelson Inc. This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This contemporary classic gets a limited edition makeover with movie art and a new preface from Donald Miller. In print for nearly a decade, Blue Like Jazz has earned a coveted spot on readers' shelves and in their hearts. Many have said that Donald Miller expressed exactly what they were feeling but couldn't find the words to say themselves. In this landmark book that changed what people expected from Christian writers, that changed what people needed for their spiritual journeys, Donald Miller takes readers through a real life striving to understand relationship with God. Heartwarming and hilarious, poignant and unexpected, Blue Like Jazz has become a contemporary classic. For anyone wondering if the Christian faith is still relevant in a postmodern culture, thirsting for a genuine encounter with a God who is real, or yearning for a renewed sense of passion in life . . . Blue Like Jazz is a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption.
Download or read book Hole in Our Soul written by Martha Bayles and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-05-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Queen Latifa to Count Basie, Madonna to Monk, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music traces popular music back to its roots in jazz, blues, country, and gospel through the rise in rock 'n' roll and the emergence of heavy metal, punk, and rap. Yet despite the vigor and balance of these musical origins, Martha Bayles argues, something has gone seriously wrong, both with the sound of popular music and the sensibility it expresses. Bayles defends the tough, affirmative spirit of Afro-American music against the strain of artistic modernism she calls 'perverse.' She describes how perverse modernism was grafted onto popular music in the late 1960s, and argues that the result has been a cult of brutality and obscenity that is profoundly anti-musical. Unlike other recent critics of popular music, Bayles does not blame the problem on commerce. She argues that culture shapes the market and not the other way around. Finding censorship of popular music "both a practical and a constitutional impossibility," Bayles insists that "an informed shift in public tastes may be our only hope of reversing the current malignant mood."
Download or read book So You Want To Be A Singer written by Diva Joan Cartwright and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2008-12-09 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Manual for up-and coming Divas, musicians and composers on the how-tos of the music business and performance.
Download or read book Jazzwomen written by Wayne Enstice and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers interviews of twenty-one women who are respected in the male-dominated world of jazz, including pianist Marilyn Crispell and singer-pianist Diana Krall.
Download or read book Wild Women of Song written by Rebeca Mauleón and published by . This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
