Books and Writings

Recently Added Writings

A Musical Education: Lee Morgan and the Philadelphia Jazz Scene of the 1950s
The trumpeter's early career.
Barry Ulanov on "Jump for Joy" and "Black, Brown and Beige"
From the first biography of Duke Ellington.
Play -- The First Name (Jacques Derrida)
A literary theorist's view of improvisation.
Review—Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties
On musical analysis and social history combined.
Review—Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop
The intersection of racial identity and musical expression.

Jazz Studies Online presents an eclectic assortment of writings about jazz and related topics, from book chapters to journal articles to original work by emerging scholars.

Constructing the Jazz Tradition

University of Virginia Professor Scott DeVeaux challenges the "accepted historical narrative for jazz," debunking the myth of linear musical heritage and challenging the belief in a "central essence named jazz [that] remains constant throughout all the dramatic transformations that have resulted in modern-day jazz." From The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, edited by Robert G. O'Meally. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Black Music as an Art Form

What else would black music be, if not art? What is "black music," anyway? And what is "art?" Olly Wilson considers these questions in "Black Music as an Art Form," presented courtesy of the Black Music Research Journal, a publication of Columbia College Chicago's Center for Black Music Research.