Part II of this talk by Dr. Anne C. Dvinge of the University of Copenhagen includes an exchange between Dr. Dvinge and CJS Director George E. Lewis on the further questions her work raises. For Part I, click here.
As jazz continues to migrate across national, ethnic, and cultural borders, jazz festivals function as physical and symbolic spaces where the dynamics between the vernacular and the cosmopolitan are put into play. In this talk, Dr. Anne C. Dvinge of the University of Copenhagen takes a closer look at jazz festivals, and specifically the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, as manifestations of this double sense of the cosmopolitan and the vernacular, where jazz enters into dialogue with local music cultures.
In this segment, Dr. Knauer responds to questions from the audience after his lecture on Europe's reception and embrace of jazz. He speaks at length about the crucial differences between the infrastructure of support for jazz in Europe and the United States, in terms of government subsidies versus untrammeled market forces, and the changing balance of these forces in Europe. Dr. Knauer also discusses the differences in European and American audiences, and in the very understanding of the word "jazz."
Dr. Wolfram Knauer, Director of Jazzinstitut Darmstadt, reflects on the fact that to play jazz, one must embody a double consciousness: paying respect to the blues and soul of African-American jazz, while finding your own blues and soul. Taking European trumpeters Harry Beckett, Tomasz Stanko and Enrico Rava as examples, Knauer explores the relationship between blues and soul, while responding to an anonymous e-mail query he once received: "Can a German understand what jazz is?" Dr.
Course Name: Jazz in Europe - European Jazz
Columbia University, Department of Music
Instructor: Wolfram Knauer, Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor, Spring 2008
Time: Tuesday, Thursday, 2:40pm - 3:55pm
Course Number: 72600
Points: 3 points
Course Type: Lecture / Seminar
Bulletin Description:
Yale University
Spring 2003
This seminar will undertake critical reading of the earliest commentaries on jazz (including the writings of musicians, literary critics, educators, the popular press, and artists (especially the Futurists, Surrealists, and Dadaists), and of the first attempts at jazz history. Discussion will include the dates and characteristics of the earliest jazz, the role of race in jazz commentary, and the place of jazz in twentieth century discourse. Recordings and films will supplement the readings.
REQUIRED READINGS:
Analysis of jazz solos has often focused on formal coherence. Proponents of this approach have often tried to establish a parallel to the formal rigor of classical music-and thus to uphold jazz' status as an art form (for example, see Sonny Rollins and the Challenge of Thematic Improvisation). Givan argues that close analysis can be instead be used to highlight not continuity in a jazz solo but discontinuity, which has its own creative and symbolic possibilities.
Pickering examines Stratton's popular blackface routine in late 19th century Britain. He argues that Victorian society defined itself as modern and civilized vis-à-vis a stereotyped racial "other"-yet also cynically suppressed awareness of the brutal colonial oppression attending its growing empire. Stratton made "visible for his British audiences what was otherwise evaded or concealed ‘inside themselves'."
One gets the sense that Ben Watson is itching for a fight, given his writerly penchant for polemic and confrontation. Readers of Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation don't have to wade into his 400-plus page biography of the great British guitarist, however, to perceive Watson's put-up-your-dukes method of critical inquiry: The story of "Free Improvisation"?
Despite the favorable environment for jazz in France, African-American musicians’ turn toward using intellectual and formal techniques of European art music during the 1970s met with a cool reception in the French jazz press. Lehman suggests that a genuine fascination with this new music was tempered by received notions about race and musical idiom, which viewed through-notated forms and intellectualism as uniquely French or European.
