Washington explores the work of two distinguished African-American science fiction writers who portray music as a form of technology. Henry Dumas and Samuel R. Delany have imagined music as a tool for avenging social wrongs as well as for creation and healing in several of their works. In both cases, the author's mythical music bears a strong resemblance to the blues for its "brutal honesty" and disregard of polite convention.
Bassist Tatsu Aoki produces Chicago's Asian American Jazz Festival. His work often draws on taiko, a form of folkloric Japanese drumming, as well as experimental jazz. Wong views Aoki's activity as a process of constructing a dynamic, transnational Asian American identity. She argues that Aoki takes his status as a "Shin Issei" (a recent Japanese immigrant) as a starting point, but aims to "become" American on his own terms-an aspiration of the contemporary Asian American community at large.
Dessen focuses on a group of San Francisco Bay Area musicians known as the Asian American Creative Music Movement. Inspired by the musical innovation and explicit political engagement of African-American experimental jazz, these musicians drew on their own ethnic traditions to make a statement about their contemporary situation. Their very success, however, compelled them to resist their cooptation by the media and music industry into an ethnic "ornament" on conventional jazz.
This article discusses the research methods and issues involved in investigating the musical migration from New Orleans to Chicago in the early 20th century and surveys research sources on this period of early jazz. Wang seeks to put several myths to rest, such as that of a musical exodus after the closing of Storyville, New Orleans' red light district, and of a rapid, unidirectional flow of talent between the two cities.
Kelly argues that Thelonious Monk's popular success, along with the emergence of free jazz in the 1960s, changed the terms of critical reception for the previously misunderstood composer and pianist. Conservative critics, and some liberal ones, suddenly embraced Monk as a foil against the free jazz rebellion, while defenders of the avant-garde often sought to claim Monk as one of their own-though these younger musicians sometimes challenged Monk's musical conceptions.
Rowan suggests that improvisation and noise-making are viable elements in urban planning and discusses three urban designers who use them. Whereas rational processes and settled laws are often asserted to be necessary foundations of music as well as urban development, Rowan argues that "spontaneity will inevitably insinuate itself within a plan as creativity, resistance, and response to crisis" and that its embrace is "conducive to the polyrhythm and discord of heterogeneous society."
Just after World War II, American composers and jazz performers were interested in indeterminacy and improvisation. Yet the composers tended to deny the influence or importance of jazz in a tacit move to keep their music "pure" of associations with racial protest then emanating from the jazz sphere. Lewis identifies John Cage and Charlie Parker as representatives of "Eurological" and "Afrological" approaches, respectively, whose differences turn on their attitude toward the expression of race, ethnicity, class, and political ideology in music.
In Ann-Marie MacDonald's novel Fall On Your Knees, women improvisers (including a fictitious character based on Bessie Smith) use their music to transcend both conventional musical practices and gender roles. In Sidall's reading of MacDonald's book, Smith is a viable role model in life as much in fiction, since she "signif[ies] that kind of freedom to imagine, and even create, new communities."
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.
The Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto supports creative improvised music and musicians in the Toronto area through fundraising and generating public awareness. This Roundtable of founding and current AIMToronto Board members discusses the organization's achievements and growth, and reconsiders its goals in light of the challenges the Board has faced.
