Jazz Matters: Sound, Place, and Time since Bebop

by David Ake

Overview

What, where, and when is jazz? To most of us jazz means small combos, made up mostly of men, performing improvisationally in urban club venues. But jazz has been through many changes in the decades since World War II, emerging in unexpected places and incorporating a wide range of new styles. In this engrossing new book, David Ake expands on the discussion he began in Jazz Cultures, lending his engaging, thoughtful, and stimulating perspective to post-1940s jazz. Ake investigates such issues as improvisational analysis, pedagogy, American exceptionalism, and sense of place in jazz. He uses provocative case studies to illustrate how some of the values ascribed to the postwar jazz culture are reflected in and fundamentally shaped by aspects of sound, location, and time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520266896
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/07/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	325,864
Product dimensions:	3.00(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Ake is Professor and Chair of the Department of Musicology at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction

Part I. Sound and Time

1. Being (and Becoming) John Coltrane: Listening for Jazz “Subjectivity”
2. Musicology beyond the Score and the Performance: Making Sense of the Creak on Miles Davis’s “Old Folks”
3. Sex Mob and the Carnivalesque in Postwar Jazz

Part II. Place and Time

4. Race, Place, and Nostalgia after the Counterculture: Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny on ECM
5. Rethinking Jazz Education
6. Negotiating National Identity among American Jazz Musicians in Paris

Acknowledgments
Appendix 1. Sample of American Jazz Musicians Born Since 1950 Who Studied Jazz at the College Level
Appendix 2. Interview Locations and Dates
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"David Ake doesn't pretend to stand on a mountaintop and deliver the Truth about jazz.
Instead, he takes a wider view, showing that the Truth is really a series of possibilities, each one exciting enough in itself to keep us enthralled by the music no matter how much we think we know."—Blurt

"Along comes a fresh, thoughtful, carefully reasoned book discussing topic that have not been done to death, and one realizes that there may be more left to say on this heavily analyzed musical genre...'Jazz Matters' is one such book."—Generally Eclectic Review

"Jazz Matters will surely benefit the jazz community at large as well as spark interest from interdisciplinary fields of study."—Ethnomusicology Forum

Editorial Reviews

Tells new jazz stories while finding fresh truths in the old.

Peter Kenagyn Music

David Ake doesn't pretend to stand on a mountaintop and deliver the Truth about jazz. Instead, he takes a wider view, showing that the Truth is really a series of possibilities, each one exciting enough in itself to keep us enthralled by the music no matter how much we think we know.

Blurt

Jazz Matters will surely benefit the jazz community at large as well as spark interest from interdisciplinary fields of study.

Ethnomusicology Forum - Michael Donovan

Along comes a fresh, thoughtful, carefully reasoned book discussing topic that have not been done to death, and one realizes that there may be more left to say on this heavily analyzed musical genre...’Jazz Matters’ is one such book.

Generally Eclectic Review

“Tells new jazz stories while finding fresh truths in the old.

American Music - Peter Kenagy

"Ake has made another vibrant contribution to contemporary jazz studies, one that sets very high standards of scholarly rigor and intellectual versatility, and that will continually spur readers of many disciplinary persuasions to question what they think they know."

Society for American Music - Benjamin Givan

"David Ake doesn't pretend to stand on a mountaintop and deliver the Truth about jazz. Instead, he takes a wider view, showing that the Truth is really a series of possibilities, each one exciting enough in itself to keep us enthralled by the music no matter how much we think we know."--Blurt

"Along comes a fresh, thoughtful, carefully reasoned book discussing topic that have not been done to death, and one realizes that there may be more left to say on this heavily analyzed musical genre...'Jazz Matters' is one such book."--Generally Eclectic Review

"Jazz Matters will surely benefit the jazz community at large as well as spark interest from interdisciplinary fields of study."--Ethnomusicology Forum

"Tells new jazz stories while finding fresh truths in the old."--American Music

From the Publisher