Columbia University
Anthropology, African-American Studies, and American Studies
Fall 2005
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Regular attendance and full participation in the seminar, including a short presentation (15 minutes) in one session
Read the three assigned texts and the xeroxed readings
Write two short papers (3-5 pages)
1) comparing two histories OR two textbooks on jazz chosen from the list on pp. 320-321 of Jazz 101 or in consultation with the instructor
2) comparing two jazz biographies of different musicians OR two autobiographies OR one of each, chosen from the list on pp. 332-333 of Jazz 101 or in consultation with the instructor
Write a final paper of at least 15 pp. on a topic determined after consultation with the instructor
REQUIRED READING
John Szwed, Jazz 101
Robert G. O'Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmin Griffin, eds.,
Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies
David Ake, Jazz Cultures
Xeroxed reading packet
SCHEDULE OF TOPICS
(Note: Readings that are not listed as being in Szwed, Ake or O'Meally, et al. are in the xeroxed readings)
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: No class
Read: John Szwed, pp. xi-75
"Introductory Notes" in O'Meally et al, pp. 1-6
"Compendium: Jazz -- Formal Definitions (1913-99)" from Andrew Clark, Riffs & Choruses
Jed Rasula "The Jazz Audience," from The Cambridge Companion to Jazz (2002), pp.55-68
Clive Bell. "Plus de Jazz," New Republic, 28 (9/21/21), p. 92ff
Ernst-Alexandre Ansemet. "Bechet and Jazz Visit Europe" (1919)
Roger Pryor Dodge. "Negro Jazz," (1929)
Jean-Paul Sartre. "I Discovered Jazz in America" (1947)
Ralph Ellison. "The Golden Age, Time Past"
Ron Welborn. "Ralph Ellison's Territorial Vantage"
Wynton Marsalis. "The Music of Democracy"
Richard Sudhalter. "A Racial Divide That Needn't Be"
Amiri Baraka. "Jazz Criticism and its Effect on the Art Form"
Stanley Crouch. "Jazz Criticism and Its Effect on the Art Form"
Week 3: What is Jazz? Definitions, Improvisation, Origins, Discography, Bibliography
David Sager "History, Myth and Legend: The Problem of Early Jazz" from The Cambridge Companion to Jazz (2002), pp. 270-285
Ingrid Monson "Jazz Improvisation" from The Cambridge Companion to Jazz (2002), pp.114-32
Vijay Iyer. "Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation" in O'Meally et al, pp. 393-403
Week 4: New Orleans (and Elsewhere)
Szwed, pp. 79-125
David Ake, "Blue Horizon: Creole Culture and Early New Orleans Jazz," pp. 10-41
The Swing Era
Szwed, pp. 126-154
David Stowe. "Understanding Swing" from Swing Changes (1994)
Week 5: Bebop
Szwed, pp. 155-174
Eric Lott. "Double V, Double-Time: Bebop's Politics of Style"
Jack Kerouac. "The Birth of Bebop"
Langston Hughes "Bop," (1961)
Dan Burley "Advanced Reading in Jive" (1944)
Mary Lou Williams and Milton Orent "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" (1949
Bernard Gendron. "'Moldy Figs' and Modernists: Jazz at War"
Cool Jazz and Hard Bop
Szwed, pp. 175-206
Anatole Broyard. "Keep Cool, Man: The Negro Rejection of Jazz"
David H. Rosenthal. "Jazz in the Ghetto: 1950-70"
Week 6: Third Stream /Free Jazz
Szwed, pp. 209-259
LeRoi Jones. "The Modern Scene." Blues People, NY, 1963, pp. 175-236
Art Lange. "Third Stream."
George Lewis. "Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM in New York, 1970-1985" in O'Meally et al., pp. 50-101
Ronald M. Radano. "Critical Alchemy: Anthony Braxton and the Imagined Tradition."
Week 7: Fusion, Jazz-Rock, European Improvised Music, Punk Jazz, World Jazz, Psychedelic Jazz, Neo-Traditionalism, Downtown, Acid Jazz, etc.
Szwed, pp. 251-292
Stanley Crouch. "On the Corner: The Sellout of Miles Davis"
Peter Watrous. "Old Jazz is Out, New Jazz is Older"
Jackson Griffith. "Business Jazz Reconsidered"
Robin D.G. Kelley. "Beneath the Underground: Exploring New Currents in 'Jazz'," in O'Meally et al, pp. 404-420
Jazz Dance
Robert P. Crease "Jazz and Dance," from The Cambridge Companion to Jazz (2002), pp.69-80
John Szwed and Morton Marks. "The Afro-American Transformation of European Set Dances and Dance Suites"
Jacqui Malone. "Jazz Music in Motion: Dancers and Big Bands"
Week 8: Jazz Historiography
George Lipsitz. "Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz" in O'Meally et al, pp. 9-26
David Ake. "Jazz Historiography and the Problem of Louis Jordan, pp. 42-61
David Ake. "Jazz Traditioning: Setting Standards at Century's End," pp. 146-176
Scottt DeVeaux. "Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography," Black American Literature Forum, 25, 3 (Fall, 1991), pp. 525-31 (excerpt)
SHORT PAPER ON 2 TEXTBOOKS OR 2 HISTORIES DUE IN CLASS TODAY
Week 9: Jazz Singing/Jazz Poetry
Szwed, pp. 293-299
Farah Jasmine Griffin. "When Malindy Sings: A Meditation of Black Women's Vocality," O'Meally et al, pp. 102-125
William J. Harris, "'How You Sound??' Amiri Baraka Writes Free Jazz," O'Meally et al, pp. 312-325
Travis Jackson. "'Always New and Centuries Old': Jazz, Poetry, and Tradition as Creative Adaptation," in O'Meally et al, pp. 357-373
Allen Ginsberg. "Howl"
John Hollander. Review of Howl and Other Poems
Alan Ginsberg. Letter to John Hollander (in Jane Kramer, Allen Ginsberg in America)
Week 10: The Jazz Life
John Szwed. "The Man," in O'Meally et al., 166-186
David Ake. "Regendering Jazz: Ornette Coleman and the New York Scene in the Late 1950s," pp. 62-82
David Ake. "Body and Soul: Performing Deep Jazz," pp. 83-111
Kevin Gaines. "Artistic Othering in Black Diaspora Musics: Preliminary Thoughts on Time, Culture, and Politics," in O'Meally, pp. 204-223
Penny M. Von Eschen "The Real Ambassadors," O'Meally, et al, pp. 189-203
SHORT PAPER ON BIOGRAPHIES OR AUTOBIOGRAPHIES DUE IN CLASS TODAY
Week 11: Jazz Photography, Art, and Advertising
Mona Hadler. "Jazz and the New York School."
Michael Jarrett. "The Tenor's Vehicle: Reading Way Out West"
Diedra Harris-Kelley. "Revisiting Romare Bearden's Art of Improvising," O'Meally et al, pp. 249-255
Jorge Daniel Veneciano. "Louis Armstrong, Bricolage, and the Aesthetics of Swing," in O'Meally et al, pp. 256-277
Jazz on Film
Szwed, pp. 314-317
Frederick Garber. "Fabulating Jazz"
Robert G. O'Meally, "Checking Our Balances: Louis Armstrong, Ralph Ellison, and Betty Boop" in O'Meally et al., pp. 278-296
Krin Gabbard. "Paris Blues: Ellington, Armstrong, and Saying It With Music," O'Meally et al., pp. 297-311
Week 12: Jazz Fiction
Jason Berry. "Jazz Literature"
Willie G. (Bunk) Johnson. "The Bunk Johnson Story"
John Szwed. "Josef Škvorecký and the Tradition of Jazz Literature"
Donald Barthelme "The King of Jazz" (1977)