Sara Villa, an Italian native whose work deals with jazz and literature, has provided JSO with this reference guide of writings and sources on jazz written Italian. The balance of these materials are on jazz in and of Italy. This bibliography was officially revised and approved by Francesco Martinelli, Head of the Centro Nazionale Studi Sul Jazz Arrigo Polillo in Siena, Italy, where most of these materials may be found.
Jacques Derrida, the influential literary theorist, did not generally address music in his work, let alone jazz. Nevertheless, connections have been made between his ideas about the fundamental ambiguity of texts, of the complexity and instability of systems, and his explicitly radical political project, on one hand; and a form of music that seeks dynamism, surprise, and fundamental change on the other.
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."
