Jazz Studies Research Articles

“Consonance” in Tonal Jazz: A Critical Survey of Its Semantic History

This paper considers the venerable history of efforts to define the terms “consonance” and “dissonance,” and highlights their most relevant meanings for the study of tonal jazz. While one can acknowledge a plurality of semantic diversity, none of the existing definitions taken individually can fully account for how the terms are used in most jazz parlance. Further, normative uses of the term “consonance” in the discipline of music theory can neither account for the stable harmonic sonorities that consist of chords with four or more members, nor account for the variety of chord options that can each fulfill the role of a stable sonority in the musical language of tonal jazz. To resolve the terminological problems, this approach defines consonance and dissonance as stable/passive and unstable/active harmonic entities within the musical grammar of tonal jazz, as influenced by sonorous euphony. This understanding of the terms thus embraces a pluralism of meaning that can account for the specific challenges in jazz such as its improvisational context, stylistic variety, and others. This plurality encompasses resolutions of conceptual dichotomies that have existed in different meanings of the terms since their first uses in ancient Greek sources. The article argues that because of the nature of the music, the definition of “consonance” in particular must be conceived in a relative, harmonic sense. In this approach, the article proffers three categories—or dialects—of consonant chords, based upon a sampling of jazz piano performances and pedagogical sources in jazz theory. In tonal jazz, all consonant chords include a major or minor triad in addition to one of three different possibilities of a fourth chord member: added sixth, minor seventh, or major seventh. Beyond these harmonic dialects of four‐note chords, other possibilities exist for extensions of the ninth and (sharp) eleventh. While these categories have been acknowledged by several pedagogical sources, this literature provides little or no context of harmonic function nor a systematic framework to model how the contextually stable chords behave. The idea that consonance can include chords beyond a triad is contrasted with existing literature in tonal theory, particularly extended Schenkerian theory that has been applied to jazz. While some of this literature acknowledges the stable roles played by the three primary dialect tones, almost all of them do not grant them equal status as the triadic tones in consonant harmonies. The article concludes by supporting the conclusions raised in the survey of jazz pedagogy and Schenkerian theory in a discussion of metaphoric musical meaning of tension and release.

Writing jazz biography

The historical biography has come to be viewed with suspicion by those who recognise that the genre’s literary emplotment and narrative demands can waylay the scholarly search for objective historical “truth”. This article explores these biographical narrative conventions and applications – and proposes new approaches to researching and writing within the biographical format – in the context of historical jazz studies. The piece begins by considering, with reference to several biographies of the saxophonist John Coltrane, both the ways that biographical narratives are constituted from disparate source materials and the ideological agendas and political problems that attend this creative act. The article argues that, in the course of doing biographical work, these issues might begin to be accounted for and dealt with by rethinking of the nature of historical-biographical “research”, and by way of hermeneutic, historical-dialogical method of the kind outlined by Hans-Georg Gadamer; with a theoretical approach delineated (and with reference to the author’s own experiences as a jazz biographer), the article goes on to engage with the processes and politics of this research stage, discussing oral history fieldwork and its textual representation, placing special emphasis on encounters of race so often inherent to jazz research and writing. Finally, the piece returns to the act of biographical writing itself, and outlines what, in light of the foregoing discussion, might be considered as new aims, values and strategies for the jazz biographical narrative, and perhaps for biography more generally.

Review of John Gennari. 2006. Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press

John Gennari’s Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics is a comprehensive history of American jazz criticism since the 1930s, centered on the foremost cultural achievement of the jazz critical field: “jazz’s canonization as an art”. The conceptual and historical framework of Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics originated in Gennari’s 1991 article “Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies,” which was written at a time when the jazz canonization process still seemed incomplete. In the fifteen years or so since Gennari’s assessment, the canonization of jazz has been assure, largely because of the Jazz at Lincoln Center juggernaut and its affiliated critics and cultural output, but also through the intellectual work of what Gennari calls the “new interdisciplinary ‘jazz studies'”. In Blowin’ Hot and Cool, Gennari explains how “critics have been among the most important jazz mediators” between musicians and audiences.

Jazz in Britain: Export Culture, Import Society

Jazz in Britain: Export Culture, Import Society

Is jazz popular music?

This paper addresses a paradox: as a matter of cultural and musical history jazz was clearly the most significant form of twentieth-century popular music and yet within the academy ‘popular music studies’ and ‘jazz studies’ are quite distinct scholarly associations and approaches. How can we account for this? Three lines of enquiry are followed: the history of popular music studies as a scholarly field; the current status of jazz in the marketplace; the attitude of jazz musicians and writers to ‘the popular’. It is concluded that if jazz scholars regard popular music studies as irrelevant to their concerns then for that very reason popular music scholars need to take account of jazz.

Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity (review)

JAZZ STUDIES Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity. By Paul Austerlitz. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. [xxii, 260 p. ISBN 08195-6781-7. $24.95.] Videography, discography, bibliography, index. We ask lot from jazz. To some commentators, is definitive of twentieth-century Americanness, with Ralph Ellison characterizing American life as jazz-based. To others, is epitome of musical avant-garde, indeed central to the great modernist tradition in arts (Alfred Appel, Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002], 7). During Cold War, was United States' secret sonic weapon, as touring musicians helped proselytize Third World domino countries to counter perceptions of American racism (Penny von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up World: Ambassadors Play Cold War [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004]). And in music's early decades, was at once, to many young white Americans, marker of earthy, streetwise hipness, and, to some cosmopolitan urbanites in other parts of Americas, emblematic of sophisticated North American savoir faire. Paul Austerlitz seeks to thicken this well-seasoned stew further with Jazz. Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity, which takes jazz's multivalence as foundational premise. The book's somewhat portentous title accords with Austerlitz's ambitious aims. The theoretical touchstone of his project is often-cited passage from W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk that casts African Americans as gifted with double born of their status as both black and American. As Austerlitz deploys concept, however, Du Boisian doubleness is actually tripleness: is African American, American, and transnational. These discrete but overlapping layers of identity are brought into dialogue through concept of consciousness, which Austerlitz introduces as something like Weltanschauung, or as he puts it, an awareness, mind-set, worldview (p. xiii). Jazz he argues in his introduction, creates virtual space where we can confront, learn from, and even heal contradictions resulting from social rupture (p. xvi). The book's odyssey very much tracks author's own, which he describes as a scholar-musician's journey. At very early age, Finnish-born Austerlitz moved to United States, where he grew up listening to both European- and African American-influenced musics. He later became active as saxophonist, clarinetist, and bass clarinetist and was inspired by Black Nationalist politics of free movement. Austerlitz, trained as an ethnomusicologist, is also an active performer and scholar of Latin music, with several publications on popular musics from Afro-Caribbean and especially Dominican Republic, including his first book, Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997). The various thematic strands of Austerlitz's biography-Afro-diasporic musicality and musical politics, intersection of and Latin American musical styles, Finnish cultural identity, relationship between musical and academic performative spaces-parallel structure, content, and argument of Consciousness. Austerlitz outlines book's theoretical framework in his first chapter, an exploration of the larger phenomenon of North American consciousness (p. 1). The windup to this pitch is slightly plodding survey of some fairly well-trodden terrain: difficulty of denning jazz and musicians' ambivalence toward label itself; social constructedness of American and African American national identities; and creolization in United States and its consequences. Austerlitz seeks to establish that in country whose diversity has produced both social antagonism and unparalleled opportunity for cross-cultural exchange, is singular vehicle for elevation of individual and collective consciousness. …

You Can't Hurry Love: Patience, Perseverance, and a Positive Attitude Move a Music Library

Robert A. Seal put it best when he wrote, Few issues in academic librarianship inspire as much controversy as branch or departmental library. At center of this controversy is question of whether or not collections should be centralized in main university library or located in part in separate branch libraries. (1) Although Seal wrote these words almost two decades ago, his words still hold true. Many articles have been written about controversy, and issue has been discussed with much passion and concern on electronic discussion list of Music Library Association (MLA-L), at library conferences, backroom meetings, and even over drinks among colleagues. This remains a concern today not only for librarians in charge of those branch libraries, but also for faculty and students they serve. As Olivia M. A. Madison, Sally A. Fry, and David Gregory stated in 1994, the mere mention of a branch library review will bring faculty members out in full force--some to 'defend' their branch facilities, others in an obvious posture of 'attack.' (2) Faculty and students generally cite loss of proximity, convenience, and prestige in their arguments against centralization of music services and collections. Music librarians are threatened by loss of specialization of services, fearing that library administration will forget about needs of music users if collections and services are located in a larger main library. In December 2003, Loyola University, New Orleans, closed its music branch library and moved music collections and services into five-year-old J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library. This move was culmination of a major collaboration of library faculty with music faculty and students that resulted in a design for housing and offering music collections and services that satisfies all of major stakeholders. The move had support of all of librarians, including those librarians who were most closely involved with music collections and services, and no pressure was placed on librarians by library administration to accomplish move. We shall describe planning and negotiation process for Loyola's music library move and success achieved in new space. Further, we shall analyze our case in context of Association of College and Research Libraries' guidelines for branch libraries in colleges and universities. We hope to show that, although it requires patience and perseverance, working in a collaborative model with music students and faculty can bring about a final outcome that will be beneficial to both library and its users. BACKGROUND Loyola University is a medium-size comprehensive Jesuit Catholic university. The urban campus sits on twenty-four acres in two locations in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. The undergraduate enrollment is approximately 3,800 and total enrollment, including School of Law, is about 5,900. The College of Music offers programs or degrees in jazz studies, music composition, music education, music industry studies, music in liberal arts, music theory, music therapy, music with elective studies, instrumental performance, vocal performance, piano pedagogy, and ballet. The College of Music enrollment in 2003-4 comprised 327 undergraduate and 26 graduate students. The J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library, which opened its doors in January 1999, is 150,000 square feet and includes more than 700 study spaces. Its teaching and learning spaces include two multimedia classrooms, four seminar rooms, fourteen group study rooms, an instruction lab, Multimedia Macintosh Lab, newly created Information Literacy Living Room and Lab, and an art gallery. The library works closely with departments of Information Technology and Visual Arts, College of Music, and Lindy Boggs National Center for Community Literacy. The library's collection offers 356,644 volumes, 27,037 e-books, 21,500 full-text e-journals, and 103 online information resources. …

Review Essay: Lullaby for Broadway?

Latecomers to high culture, Americans are obsessed with identifying and canonizing indigenous art forms. In recent years, much of this attention has been lavished on jazz. One challenge in the study of both jazz and musical theater is locating the specific historical moment or the precise works in which the genres assume an identity, especially an ”American” one, distinct from their influences. For musical theater, those sources would include European operetta of the later nineteenth century-specifically the works of Johann Strauss, Offenbach, and Gilbert and Sullivan-as well as vaudeville, burlesque, revue, minstrel shows, variety shows, melodrama, and British musical comedy. In the first few years of the twentieth century, these traditions coalesced in the works of Victor Herbert (notably his Babes in Toyland, 1903) and George M. Cohan (his first big hit, Little Johnny Jones, 1904). Herbert (1859-1924) had been born in Ireland, raised in London, and trained in Germany, but arrived in the United States in 1886 and made his career in this country. Cohan (1878-1942) was a Yankee Doodle Dandy from the start, born, as the world knows, on (or near) July 4 in Rhode Island. The historiography of the American musical also exhibits a special tension, not shared by other art forms, between the whole and the part, between the shows (or movies) and the individual numbers. In general, the highest value has been placed on the “book” musical, one in which the elements are subsumed within an overall musico-dramatic design. Yet for many people, the songs, not the framework, embody the American musical. Indeed, although a musical is the product of many collaborators, we usually (as I have done above) identify it by its composer, or by composer and lyricist. Tin Pan Alley, the popular song industry that flourished in New York from the last decade of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth, became intimately connected, but not completely coextensive, with staged shows. Harold Arlen never wrote a hit show (his music was featured in several successful movies), but is rightly acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of American popular music. Another tension in the scholarly treatment of the American musical, as in much writing about other American art forms (including the novel and film), arises between what might be called internalist and contextualist approaches. Internalists tend to look at the works (or individual songs) for their structural and expressive qualities. Contextualists seek to embed the works and their creators within the American social, cultural, and political milieu. Since many musicologists are formalists at heart (we fetishize our objects, as one ethnomusicologist tartly remarked some years ago), the internalist approach has dominated in writing on American musicals. Of course, these perspectives are not mutually exclusive: scholars and commentators will often move back and forth from work to context. The authors of the studies under review here handle these tensions in different ways according to their backgrounds and scholarly temperaments. Mark Grant describes himself as a writer and “composer [of] concert music and theater pieces”; his previous book was a history of classical musical criticism in America (1998). Steve Swayne is a young academic who received his PhD in 1999 and teaches at Dartmouth College; this book is a comprehensively revised version of his dissertation. Raymond Knapp is a senior musicologist at UCLA who has written extensively on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European concert music; his book has grown out of an undergraduate course that he teaches.

Birth of the school: discursive methodologies in jazz education

Over recent years, jazz as an academic discipline has grown in volume and stature—indeed, jazz studies now plays a significant role in a number of higher education music programmes within the university and conservatoire sector. The proliferation of jazz education programmes has, inevitably, brought about the publication of specific pedagogical methodologies; from the development of jazz examinations to the widespread dissemination of Jamey Aebersold jazz ‘playalongs’, and the work of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE)—jazz pedagogy is big business. However, whilst providing musicians with opportunities to cultivate and benchmark their skills, the majority of pedagogical publications do not encourage critical engagement with the educators’ methodologies or, indeed, offer dialogues on the nature of jazz education itself. This article begins by examining the politics of music education, the implications of canon forming and icon development in pedagogical practice, and critical attempts to open up the field of study to broader cultural analysis. In this context, I discuss the unique problems faced by jazz education and suggest that these issues are inherently linked to the nature of the music itself. I focus on three areas of significance, which feed off opposing positions in jazz: the ‘value’ of jazz education, geographical divides, and the perceived difference between jazz practice and social theory. My examination of the difficult social and cultural space occupied by education highlights the potential for educational methodologies to disrupt dominant ideologies, and to uncover related cultural myths.

Astral Caption (after an etching by Howardena Pindell, Cassiopeia, Andromeda [2003

Astral Caption:(After an etching by Howardena Pindell, Cassiopeia, Andromeda [2003]) Brent Hayes Edwards (bio) I write to snatch the light away the way the stars bleed white from the rims of their sockets, the faint afterflash of how many dark paths of departure I write to intuit what trifles or looms beyond my vision, as a map is always a fanciful concatenation of what can't be known at once: Laventille, Ouagadougou, Takoradi, Newark, Belém. The map is many maps: capped turrets and cannonballs, spent, a charged symposium of gametes; bird tracks at dusk on a beach of volcanic sand; an archive of confused attack, index and cipher, sluice and retreat; a graveyard of chain links (uncoupled, tossed without ceremony) and hoes (dropped after digging); a blueprint of chutes and spires; glow worms trapped in tar. The stars migrate in tides of disarray. A constellation is a pack of incandescents traversing the plain. It is only susceptible to capture in the faint incisions it left as it came undone. [End Page 32] I write to ask the copper what it saw: a needle point slicing beeswax, it whispers, goose down on my skin . . . An astrologer is a humble tailor, stitching the closest fit for a body that died thousands of years ago. How does the night share its secrets? Taunting, indirection, the fugitive's black craft: The stars have left us. I write to constellate a leaving in a script only acid can read. Ink irrigates the furrows. And what gets hung? A window on the wall, a scribbled deposit of wounds. Brent Hayes Edwards Brent Hayes Edwards is an associate professor in the English Department at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. He is the author of The Practice of Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2003) and co-editor of Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004). He is an associate editor of Callaloo. Copyright © 2006 Charles H. Rowell

Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (review)

Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams. By Tammy L. Kernodle. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004. [328 p. ISBN 155553-609-9. $30.] Illustrations, bibliography, discography, index. This is second biographical monograph to appear on Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981), jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. Lately there seems to be a Williams revival, and a reaffirmation in print of her music and writings. Along with two biographies and several unpublished dissertations, we also have Williams' remarkable 11-article series on her early career that originally appeared in Melody Maker (10 April-12 June 1954, later collected by Max Jones as My Life With Kings of Jazz, most recently reprinted in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb [New York: Pantheon, 1996]). Her voluminous papers, which include various attempts at autobiographical writing, are now maintained at Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark NJ; an online description of those materials may be accessed at http://newarkwww.rutgers .edu/ijs/mlw/collectionIJS.html (accessed 23 February 2005). Williams was born out of wedlock as Mary Lou Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia in 1910, and from 1915 she was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She began playing keyboard at age 3 or 4, in imitation of harmonium lessons her mother was taking. Developing her own piano technique and learning to play songs by ear became ways for growing girl to withdraw from her alcoholic mother. By age 8 she was playing piano around various local spotsincluding a brothel-and before long she became known as the little piano girl of East Liberty, her Pittsburgh neighborhood. In 1925, she dropped out of high school and joined a black vaudeville troupe in which she met her first husband, saxophonist John Williams, whose last name she would adopt. Three years later John Williams joined The Dark Clouds of Joy, which later renamed itself as Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy. Today listeners of jazz and black popular music prize 1929-41 Clouds of Joy records for Mary Lou Williams's contributions as pianist and arranger. Yet, it should be noted that Kirk was reluctant, even hesitant, to make use of her talents, and that he did so only at urging of Brunswick Records producer Jack Kapp at Clouds' first recording session. Through 1930s Williams was a regular member of Clouds, especially when they were based in Kansas City, and she proved to be most valuable and versa tile musician of group, pounding out boogie-woogie blues and negotiating most chromatic 32-measure ballads. In 1943 Williams established herself in New York City. Within three years she had written several notable arrangements for Duke Ellington, composed Zodiac Suite (1945-46), played a regular gig at Cafe Society Downtown, hosted a radio series on WNEW in New York, and had a small but significant recording contract with Moe Asch. She also responded favorably to new bebop style, becoming a mentor to Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, and a lifelong friend with Dizzy Gillespie. Personal problems-including a failed second marriage to trumpet player Harold Shorty Baker, and her ongoing drama with her mother in Pittsburgh-as well as mounting debts gnawed at her success, and a 1952-54 European stay provided neither escape nor solutions. Instead, while in France in 1954, she experienced an ecstatic vision of Virgin Mary, whereupon she resolved to leave music, return to New York City, and devote herself to sick and poor, including jazz musicians addicted to narcotic drugs. On returning to United States in 1955, she concentrated on finding spiritual peace in Roman Catholicism, assisted many musicians in her Harlem neighborhood, but also passed up many opportunities to perform. …

Deconstructing the Jazz Tradition

From its first publication in Black Literature Forum in 1991, through and beyond its reprinting in Robert O’Meally’s edited volume The Jazz Cadence of American Culture in 1998, Scott DeVeaux’s ‘Constructing the Jazz Tradition’ remains one of the most influential essays in academic jazz studies. So frequently do jazz studies scholars jumpstart their journal articles, book introductions, and dissertations with gestures toward DeVeaux’s analysis of the ‘Jazz Tradition’ as an interested narrative - rather than an objective account of a linear jazz past - that one could characterize much current work in New Jazz Studies under the rubric: ‘Deconstructing the Jazz Tradition’.

Uptown conversation: the new jazz studies

Uptown conversation: the new jazz studies

Fabula and Culture: Case Study of Toni Morrison's Jazz

Fabula and Culture: Case Study of Toni Morrison's Jazz

Interest, Talent, and Opportunity: Nicholas Gerren's Music Education from Elementary School through the Moscow Conservatory

Introduction Opportunities for African Americans to attain and display academic excellence were less abundant at the beginning of the twentieth century than they are now. During the first half of the century, the same community produced several students who would later have successful careers as music educators: Nicholas Gerren (1912-2002), dean of the music department at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio; William P. Foster (1919-), director of bands emeritus at Florida A and M University; and Reginald Buckner (1938-1990), chair of the Jazz Studies Department at the University of Minnesota. All three came from the northeast community of Kansas City, Kansas. They are outstanding products of the training and support that those neighborhoods provided to the resident children. These three men lived in the community at different times, but they received similar opportunities to develop their talents there. They attended the same junior and senior high schools and had some of the same teachers. Their interest in music, their talent, and opportunities to develop that talent converged with support from their families, schools, and community to allow them to become successful music educators in spite of the limitations commonly imposed on African Americans at that time. They were trained and poised to take advantage of whatever opportunities were presented to them and to seek out alternative avenues to success when the options open to Caucasian students were closed to them. Students thrive academically in an environment where parents, teachers, educational administrators, civic leaders, and community residents work collaboratively. Several recent books have popularized the old African proverb that it takes a village to raise child. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her book It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, and Terry Casey, in her volume Pride and Joy: The Lives and Passions of Women Without Children, both used this proverb as the starting place for their philosophies. They both believe that everyone in a community must contribute to a child's development if they expect him or her to develop social responsibility, emotional health, and productive citizenship. (1) Investigating the educational experiences of Nicholas Gerren, one of these successful music students from Kansas City, Kansas, will help to validate or discount the importance of family, community, and school to the success of students in general, of the children of the northeast section of that city, and of Nicholas Gerren specifically. Nicholas Gerren was particularly successful as a music student. What was it about his music education, in addition to the influence and support of his family, school, and community, that allowed him to succeed against the odds? Gerren was the oldest of the three prominent music educators who emerged from the northeast community. Until his death on December 10, 2002, he remained in Wilberforce, Ohio, close to Central State University where he had retired as dean of the music department in 1977. Gerren himself, during interviews with the author during 2000-2002, discounted the effect of racial discrimination on his career, and yet the roadblocks were clearly present as he described the lack of opportunity for employment with symphony orchestras. He chose instead to concentrate on the opportunities he was given, such as being the first African American student to play in the orchestra at the University of Kansas. (2) Gerren's music teachers played a major role in his success. Throughout his career, Gerren credited his music teachers with providing inspiration to pursue a career in music, appreciation for classical music, grounding in his instrument, encouragement to develop his talent, and opportunities to study and perform. Gerren appreciated these opportunities and prepared himself to take advantage of them. Who was Nicholas Gerren? Nicholas Gerren was a concert violinist. …

Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies and The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue.

Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies and The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue.

Leadership lessons from jazz improvisation

The ability to improvise has often been viewed as a semi‐instinctive set of skills that result from an innate gift or talent that allows the improviser to respond to changing conditions. In the past, this was the contention of jazz improvisers and jazz aficionados alike. In recent years, however, the entry of jazz studies into the academy has demonstrated that jazz and improvisation can be taught and, more importantly, it can be learned. Organizational theorists have suggested that jazz and improvisation are useful metaphors for leadership and leadership development. This article explores jazz improvisation as a model for the development of improvisation in leadership, which includes the concepts of leadership patterns, theory, leading by ear, and risk taking. The second part of this article conceptualizes leadership in terms of jazz accompaniment, which is a unique model that incorporates the models of shared leadership and leadership as support.

Appalachian Jazz: Some Preliminary Notes

It hardly seems necessary to justify the study of jazz and jazz musicians, in this case Americans of African descent, in any effort to understand this music as the product of real individuals, people who belong to a place and who are formed in some measure by the place where they live and work. The Americans here to be considered are roughly 11 percent of the American people; the place to be considered is the Appalachian region, which makes up a sizable part of eastern America. As for the music, it is hardly possible to discuss jazz without considering the role of black America in its origins and evolution. Although no racial or ethnic group is likely to be distributed evenly over the American landscape, common sense tells us that, given the size of Appalachia and the number of Americans who originally came from Africa, a good many of them will be found in this area. Furthermore, given the genius of these people for the improvisational music that we call jazz, a certain number of them will be jazz musicians. So we begin with a people, a place, and a vital part of American musical culture. The first step is easy, although no thoughtful consideration of the topic at hand is likely to remain easy for long. One way to begin is to establish what is intended in the following consideration of jazz and its creators. Another article in this issue discusses the blues (Pearson 2005). This form of musical expression tends to overlap with jazz, particularly because it is found among black Americans; but since this musical topic is treated elsewhere, it will not be addressed here. We make no attempt at historiography-the origins of jazz or earliest manifestations in Appalachia; rather, we consider the melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically complex music, frequently spontaneous TODD WRIGHT is Director of Jazz Studies in the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University. He is a professional musician who plays frequent club dates. He feels that his playing has in some measure been formed by his admiration for Cannonball Adderley. JOHN HIGBY, an amateur musician, taught English at Appalachian State University from 1967 to 2001. He has a particular interest in, and admiration for, piano players.

Introduction

This special issue conducts an interdisciplinary sampling of recent takes on jazz poetics: work that attends from a variety of angles to the convergences of music and poetics in black expressive culture. Our aim in compiling the collection is not simply documentary. The issue attempts more broadly to constellate what the editors view as an emerging field of jazz studies through its approaches to literature.

Jazz noir: listening to music from Phantom lady to The last seduction

Preface Introduction Kind of Jazz: Themes in the Study of Film Noir, Film Music, and Jazz All God's Chillun' Got Rhythm: The Influence of Racial Myths, Dualisms, and Ideology on Early Representations of Jazz Absolutely Funtional? Jazz in 1940s Film Noir Touch of Kenton: Jazz in 1950s Film Noir The Last Syncopation: Jazz in Contemporary Noir Reminiscing in Chiaroscuro: Concluding Comments and Thoughts for Further Work Filmography Bibliography Development of Jazz and Film Noir