Musicology & Ethnomusicology
Matt Sakakeeny is an ethnomusicologist and journalist, New Orleans resident and musician. This talk is on a thriving brass band tradition, in New Orleans today young black Americans continue to perform, listen, and dance to jazz. Brass band musicians are celebrated as cultural icons for upholding the proud traditions of the jazz funeral and the second line parade, yet they remain subject to the perils of poverty, racial marginalization, and urban violence that characterize life for many black Americans.
Alice Coltrane was a composer, performer, guru, and the widow of John Coltrane. Over the course of her musical life, she synthesized a wide range of musical genres including gospel, rhythm and blues, bebop, free jazz, Indian devotional song, and Western art music. Franya Berkman's book, Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane (Wesleyan University Press, 2010), illuminates her music and explores American religious practices in the second half of the twentieth century. The talk by Dr.
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.
The attached report was prepared by Ithaka S+R for the J-DISC project in May 2013. The project, and this study, was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This JSO page serves as a briefing document for attendees at the upcoming conference on the Center for Jazz Studies' online discography, J-DISC.
After Professor Carol Rovane's introduction to the panelists and theme of the conversation, the keynote speaker, philosopher Arnold Davidson, presents his views on improvisation and ethics. Davidson's interest lies not only in how ethics bears on improvisation, but what improvisation can tell us about ethics. He makes reference to the ancient tradition of self-realization through rational inquiry, or "care of the self," to explore the relation between self and other in the process of collective improvisation.
Arnold Davidson continues his discussion of the ethical implications of improvisation, illustrating his points with audio and video excerpts. The first of these is a duo performance by George E. Lewis and Evan Parker; the second is the Duke Ellington Trio.
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