Book Excerpt

Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-Reality of Creative Music

Author:

Author Graham Lock accompanied Anthony Braxton's classic quartet on a 1985 tour of England, and this book is the result. It includes interviews Lock did with Braxton and other members of his group. These are connected with concert reviews, stories of the tour, and essays on Braxton's ideas on musical languages and notation systems. Braxton candidly discusses his own startlingly innovative work as well his ethical, political, and spiritual beliefs.

Blues for Huckleberry

Author:

Robert G. O'Meally

In his Introduction to the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, O'Meally explores whether the book might be a "blues novel," and whether this quality might be the root of its continuing resonance for us.

The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

Author:

Steven L. Isoardi

Segregation galvanized the African-American community in Central Los Angeles. Its tightyly-knit social structure and cultural ferment nurtured artists who helped lay the groundwork for the avant-garde of the 1950s and inspire the community arts movement from the 1960s to the present in Los Angeles. Isoardi offers a history of this community's growth, development and contribution to jazz.

The Jazz Cadence of American Culture

Excerpts from The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, edited Robert O'Meally. Columbia University Press, 1998.

URL:

The Jazz Cadence of American Culture

Barry Ulanov on "Jump for Joy" and "Black, Brown and Beige"

Author:

Barry Ulanov

This resource presents two chapters from Barry Ulanov's Duke Ellington, the first full biography of the great composer and orchestra leader. They deal with two of the composer's most important extended works: the musical "Jump for Joy" and the concert suite "Black, Brown, and Beige."

Barry Ulanov on "Jump for Joy" and "Black, Brown and Beige"

Author:

Barry Ulanov

This resource presents two chapters from Barry Ulanov's Duke Ellington, the first full biography of the great composer and orchestra leader. They deal with two of the composer's most important extended works: the musical "Jump for Joy" and the concert suite "Black, Brown, and Beige."

Constructing the Jazz Tradition

Author:

Scott Deveaux

This artful survey of interpretations of jazz history is also a challenge to the notion that there can or should be any single one. DeVeaux shows that common claims as to what jazz is about-a form of resistance, a folk art, an autonomous high art-coexist uneasily, and that each has been used to support otherwise antagonistic stylistic agendas. He calls for closer inquiry into the nuanced history of each period and rejects dogmatic assertions of jazz' "essence."

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