Latin jazz artist and educator Bobby Sanabria and Columbia Professor of Music Chris Washburne discuss the recent elimination of the Latin jazz Category in the Grammy Awards. Surveying a broad panorama of the struggles and many triumphs of Latin jazz through the last century, they consider the implications of the Grammy Award decision for the future of this vibrant and interculturally expressive music.
Click here for Part I.
Latin jazz artist and educator Bobby Sanabria and Columbia Professor of Music Chris Washburne discuss the recent elimination of the Latin jazz Category in the Grammy Awards. Surveying a broad panorama of the struggles and many triumphs of Latin jazz through the last century, they consider the implications of the Grammy Award decision for the future of this vibrant and interculturally expressive music.
Click here for Part II.
Washburne asks why Latin jazz has been overlooked in histories of jazz and lists of canonical works, explores what it has to teach us about jazz on the whole, and provides an invaluable survey of this influential music and its culture. He argues that the persistent and varied influence of Latin jazz is inconvenient for standard unilinear accounts of jazz' history, but that it ought to be included in the name of diversity and the central role that principle plays in the creation and renewal of jazz.
Miller argues that Caribbean music is central to the emergence and development of jazz. The Caribbean islands were a crucial transfer point to the mainland United States for African rhythms and musical forms from the beginning of the slave trade until the present. Caribbean music was especially important in the development of jazz in New Orleans, America's Caribbean city.
