African American Studies 108
JAZZ AND THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Robin D. G. Kelley
Office: Bunche 5383
CONTACT: rdkelley@history.ucla.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:30 – 5:00 PM, by appointment; Thurs. 9:30 -11:00 AM, open to
all. For the Tuesday meetings, I will post a google doc to sign up for individual 10 minute
sessions. You can also sign up as a group if you’d like. But Thursday sessions will be like
class in that anyone can show up and join the conversation.
PLACE: On-Line
How has the music popularly known as “jazz” come to symbolize so many different
political tendencies--freedom and democratic values, a threat to order and civil society, the
possibility of integration and racial harmony, Black liberation and nationalism, conservatism,
surrealism, socialism, etc., throughout the 20th century? What is it about jazz that enables
people around the world (not just the U.S.) to read their political aspirations and hopes in
what is primarily instrumental, improvised music? The purpose of this course is to explore
the history of ideas about jazz, specifically how writers, activists, movements, and musicians
themselves understood the “politics” of jazz. This course explores music as an expression of
political imaginations—here and abroad. While much of the focus is on the U.S., we examine
Latin America, Africa, Europe under fascism and the Cold War, and Asia. In particular, we
are interested in jazz and the question of freedom—social freedom, political freedom, bodily
freedom, cultural and artistic freedom.
The specific themes we will cover are listed below. In addition to required and
suggested readings, we will supplement course lectures with selected films and musical
selections. Please note that the week’s readings do not always correspond with the lecture topic.
Therefore, you must make an effort to attend every lecture or find someone willing to share her notes.
ASSIGNMENTS
Students are responsible for keeping up with the reading assignments and
listening/watching two weekly lectures and/or films. The final grade will be based on two
essay assignments, a group research/creative project. The two papers combined account for
50% of your grade, and the project will be worth the other 50% of your grade—however, the
project grade will be divided between my evaluation of the project (30%) and your
participation (20%). IT IS UP TO MEMBERS OF YOUR GROUP TO
COLLECTIVELY DETERMINE EACH STUDENT’S PARTICIPATION GRADE. In
other words, if a group member never shows up, doesn’t participate, or fails to do their share
then they ought to be graded accordingly, but only the group can make that determination.
If everyone carries their weight and contributes, then everyone would share the same grade
(an A for participation). Since we have no discussion sections this is the only way to assess
participation—collective self-assessment. In order to participate fully in class discussions you
must keep abreast of the reading assignments.
Group assignments must be posted by Monday, March 8th, before 9:00 PM (see
below)
I encourage all students to read beyond the assigned readings (particularly from
works on the suggested reading list) and contribute any additional insights or information to
class discussion.
Academic Integrity
•
Students enrolled in this course are obligated to maintain standards of
academic integrity. Violations of academic obligations include unethical
practices and acts of academic dishonesty such as cheating, plagiarism, or the
facilitation of such acts. Cheating includes giving or receiving any
unauthorized aid or giving or receiving any unfair advantage on any form of
academic work. Plagiarism is the use of another’s ideas or words, or both, as if
they were one’s own. The use of ideas or direct quotations from others is
acceptable, with appropriate citation of the source, but direct quotations
should be used sparingly.
Any written assignment must be solely the work of the student who turns it in.
Compiling a written assignment by pasting together extracts from websites is unacceptable
and is a form of plagiarism. Please familiarize yourself with the UCLA websites that explain
plagiarism and proper citation procedures, including:
http://www.deanofstudents.ucla.edu/Academic-Integrity
http://www.deanofstudents.ucla.edu/portals/16/documents/uclacodeofconduct_rev030416.pd
f
History Writing Center
Students struggling with their essays may want to visit the History Writing Center. The
Center is staffed by writing consultants who History graduate students trained to help
undergraduates at any stage in the writing process and with writing assignments from
any history course. Graduate writing consultants tailor appointments to the concerns of
each writer. Because of COVID, the Center will be operating entirely online, although
with fewer staff than usual.
1. Below is a helpful and easy-to-follow video tutorial on how to use the HWC in current
conditions:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sl9fp8jfrhzIHF_M_7faETTrDl7wqvAf/view?usp=shari
ng
2. And here is a link to the flyer, which contains the same information and which is also
posted on the History Department’s website:
https://history.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/fall2020hwc_syllabusannouncement.pdf.
Mental Health Services
UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) provides mental health care and
resources for all registered students, including short-term individual and/or group
treatment, urgent services and referrals when needed. Your well-being is the #1 priority
of UCLA CAPS.
Counselors available by phone at (310) 825-0768 24/7. Learn more at
http://www.counseling.ucla.edu
STATEMENT ON SEXUAL ASSAULT
UCLA fosters a campus free of sexual violence including sexual harassment, domestic
violence, dating violence, stalking, and/or any form of sex or gender discrimination. If
you disclose a personal experience as a UCLA student, the course instructor is required
to notify the Dean of Students. If you wish to make a confidential disclosure, a CARE
Advocate can explain your options and answer questions. Talking to the CARE
Advocate doesn't constitute filing an official report about sexual violence. The details of
your experience won't be shared with anyone without your permission. Confidential
advocacy and consultations can be reached by calling CARE Advocates at (310) 2062465 during office hours (Weekdays 8-5) or by email: advocate@careprogram.ucla.edu
REQUIRED READING
(available at UCLA bookstore or most online booksellers)
Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 2002)
Farah Griffin, If You Can’t be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (New York: The Free Press,
2001)
Robin D. G. Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2012) [NOTE: FREE! POSTED ON THE WEBSITE AS A PDF]
In addition to these books, there will be articles posted on line and available in pdf format,
and music. (I may refer to music posted during my lectures or play portions in the lecture itself.)
The assigned reading is listed below each lecture topic, followed by a list of suggested reading.
Please note that the suggested reading will be useful when you begin to research your group project.
One need not possess a background in jazz in order to do well in the course. However, if you
are seeking some general background on the history of this music, you might want to consult the
following: Samuel Floyd, The Power of Black Music (1995); John Szwed, Jazz 101 (2000); Scott
DeVeaux and Gary Giddins, Jazz (2nd ed.) (2015); Robert G. O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and
Farah Jasmine Griffin, eds., Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies (2004); Alyn Shipton, A New
History of Jazz (2001).
LECTURE TOPICS
January 5: Preliminary Notes on “Jazz” and Politics
No reading assigned
FILM: “The Cry of Jazz!” (28 mins.)
SUGGESTED READING:
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians and their Ideas (2001)
Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985)
Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (1977)
David Ake, Jazz Cultures (200
Bohlman, Philip V. 1993. “Musicology as a Political Act,” Journal of Musicology 11, no. 4
(1993), 411-436.
Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble (eds), Rebel Musics: Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the
Politics of Music Making (2003)
January 7: Omar’s Song: The Deep Roots of Jazz
Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle, chapters 1 - 4
SUGGESTED READING:
Samuel Floyd, Jr. The Power of Black Music: Interpreting its History from Africa to the United States
(1995).
Samuel Floyd, Jr., with Guthrie Ramsey and Melanie Zeck, The Transformation of Black Music:
The Rhythms, the Songs, and the Ships of the African Diaspora (2017)
Amiri Baraka, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963)
Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (1987)
Sandra Jean Graham, Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (2018)
Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman, eds., Music and the Racial Imagination (2000).
Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd Ed. (1997)
January 12: Inventing Dixieland: Politics of Race and Class in the Crescent City
Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle, chapters 5 – 8
George Lipsitz, “New Orleans in the World and the World in New Orleans,” Black
Music Research Journal 31, no. 2 (2011)
SUGGESTED READING:
Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (1954)
Danny Barker, A Life in Jazz (1986)
Charles Hersch, Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans (2008)
Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans (2006)
Lawrence Gushee, Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band (2010)
Douglas Henry Daniels, “Vodun and jazz: “Jelly Roll” Morton and Lester “Pres” Young—
Substance and shadow,” Journal of Haitian Studies 9, no. 1 (2003), 110–123.
January 14: Primitives, Criminals, or New Negroes?: Jazz, Race, and Cosmopolitanism
Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle, chapters 9 – 11
Andrew F. Jones, “Black Internationale: Notes on the Chinese Jazz Age,” in E.
Taylor Atkins, ed., Jazz Planet (2003), 225 – 244.
SUGGESTED READING:
Nicholas Evans, Writing Jazz: Race, Nationalism, and Modern Culture in the 1920s (2015)
Kevin Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early 20th
Century (1997)
Graham Lock, Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun
Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (1999).
Hazel Carby, "'It Jus Be's Dat Way Sometime': The Sexual Politics of Women's
Blues," Radical America 20, no. 4 (1987).
Nathan Huggins, The Harlem Renaissance (1971)
Ann Douglass, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (1995)
Ted Vincent, Keep Cool: The Black Activists Who Built the Jazz Age (1995).
David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (1981).
Reid Badger, A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe (1995).
January 19: Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, and World Revolution in Music
Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle, chapters 12 – 13
Michael H. Kater, “Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich,” American Historical Review,
94, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), 11-43
Jonathan Bakan, Jazz and the ‘‘Popular Front’’: ‘‘Swing’’ Musicians and the Left-Wing
Movement of the 1930s–1940s,” Jazz Perspectives 3, no. 1 (2009), 35–56
SUGGESTED READING:
David Stowe, Swing Changes: Big Band Jazz and New Deal America (1994).
Tad Hershorn, Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice (2011)
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front (1996)
Michael Denning, Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution (2015)
Robin D. Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–
1940 (1997)
Lewis Erenberg, Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Re-Birth of American Culture (1998)
Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (1983).
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the
Swing Era (2000)
Barry Singer, Black and Blue: The Life and Lyrics of Andy Razaf (1992)
George McKay, Circular Breathing: The Cultural politics of Jazz in Britain (Durham and London:
Duke University Press, 2004)
Michael H. Kater, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (1992).
E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001).
Peter Keppy, “Southeast Asia in the Age of Jazz: Locating Popular Culture in the Colonial
Philippines and Indonesia,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 44, no. 3 (2013),
January 21: Double V, Double Time: “Bebop” and the Political Imagination
Bechet, Treat it Gentle, chapters 13 – 14
Eric Porter, “Dizzy Atmosphere: The Challenge of Bebop,” American Music, 17, No. 4
(Winter 1999), 422-446.
Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery, Preface to Chapter 1.
SUGGESTED READING:
Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (1997).
Robin D. G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009).
Guthrie Ramsey, The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop
(2013).
Jesse Stewart, “No Boundary Line to Art: "Bebop" as Afro-Modernist Discourse,” American
Music 29 no. 3 (Fall 2011), pp. 332-352
Martin Torgoff, Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs (2017)
Elaine M. Hayes, Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan (2017)
Stanley Crouch, Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker (2013)
Ira Gitler, Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940’s (1985).
George Lipsitz A Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (1994).
Lewis McAdams, Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde (2012)
Ingrid Monson, “The Problem with White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions
in Jazz Historical Discourse,” Journal of American Musicological Society 18, no. 3 (Fall
1995), 396-422.
FIRST ESSAY PROMPT – DUE FRIDAY JANUARY 29TH
SUBMIT TO TURNITIN BEFORE 11:59 PM
January 26: The Promise and Perils of “Jazzocracy”: Cold War and Civil Rights
Lisa Davenport, “Chapter 4: The Paradox of Jazz Diplomacy” from Jazz Diplomacy
Kelley, “Introduction,” Africa Speaks, America Answers
Scott Saul, “Outrageous Freedom: Charles Mingus and the Invention of the Jazz
Workshop,” American Quarterly (Sep., 2001), 387-419, PDF
SUGGESTED READING:
Lisa Davenport, Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War (2009)
Stephen A. Crist, “Jazz as Democracy? Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics,” Journal of
Musicology 26, no. 2 (Spring 2009), 133-174.
Frank Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (1970).
Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (2004).
Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (2007).
Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog (1971)
Nichole Rustin-Paschal, The Kind of Man I Am: Jazzmasculinity and the World of Charles Mingus,
Jr. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2017)
Krin Gabbard, Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus (2016)
Sue Graham Mingus, Tonight at Noon: A Love Story (New York: De Capo Press, 2000)
Brian Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography (1982)
Scott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2003)
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians and their Ideas (2001)
January 28: Jazz in the Age of African Decolonization
Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers, Chapters 1 and 2
SUGGESTED READING:
Randy Weston, with Willard Jenkins, African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy
Weston (2010).
Chief Bassey Ita, Jazz in Nigeria: An Outline Cultural History (1984)
Gerhard Kubik, Africa and the Blues (1999)
Timothy R. Mangin, “Notes on Jazz in Senegal,” in Uptown Conversations: The New
Jazz Studies (2004)
Michael Veal, Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon (2000).
Norman Weinstein, A Night in Tunisia (1993)
Steven Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana (2012).
NOTE: FIRST PAPER DUE NEXT DAY, FRIDAY JANUARY 29TH
February 2: Billie Holiday: The Politics of Authenticity in the Mythic World of Jazz I
Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery, Chapters 2 – 4.
SUGGESTED READING:
Robert O’Meally, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (1991).
Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998).
Billie Holiday, with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues (1956).
John Szwed, Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth (2015).
Linda Dahl, Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen (1984).
Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: All Girl Bands of the 1940s (2004).
Tammy Kernodle, Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (2004)
Sally Placksin, Jazzwomen, 1900 to the Present: Their Words, Lives, and Music (1985).
Susan Cavin. "Missing Women: On the Voodoo Trail to Jazz," Journal of Jazz Studies 3, no. 1
(Autumn 1975).
February 4: Billie Holiday: The Politics of Authenticity in the Mythic World of Jazz II
Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery, Chapters 5 – 6.
FILM: “Lady Sings the Blues” [EXCERPTS]
February 9: Abbey Lincoln: The Price of Freedom
Farah Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery, Chapter 7 and Coda
SUGGESTED READING
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz, chap. 4
Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (2007).
Amiri Baraka, Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music (2009)
February 11: The Revolts of Hazel Scott and Nina Simone: Contrasts in Struggle
Ruth Feldstein, “’I Don’t Trust You Anymore’: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in
the 1960s,” Journal of American History (March 2005), 1349-1379, PDF
Nichole Rustin-Paschal, “Eclipse: Jazzmasculinity, Race Womanhood, and the Hazel Scott
Incident,” The Kind of Man I Am, Chapter 4. PDF
SUGGESTED READING
Alan Light, What Happened, Miss Simone? (2016)
Nadine Cohodas, Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone (2012)
Ruth Feldstein, “’I Don’t Trust You Anymore’: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in
the 1960s,” Journal of American History (March 2005), 1349 - 1379
Shana Redmond, Anthem: The Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (2013)
Karen Chilton, Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist, from Café Society to Hollywood
to HUAC (2010)
Monica Hairston, “Gender, Jazz and the Popular Front,” in Nichole Rustin and Sherrie
Tucker, eds., Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies (2008)
February 16: Soweto Blues: Music and Politics in South Africa
Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers, Chapter 4
SUGGESTED READING:
Carol Muller and Sathima Ibrahim, Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking in
Jazz (2011)
Gwen Ansell, Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and Politics in South Africa (2005)
David Coplan, In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre (2008).
Christopher Ballantine, Marabi Nights: Early South African Jazz and Vaudeville (1993)
Michael F. Titlestad, Making the Changes: Jazz in South African Literature and Reportage
(2005)
Ruth Feldstein, “Screening Antiapartheid: Miriam Makeba, "Come Back, Africa,"
and the Transnational Circulation of Black Culture and Politics,” Feminist
Studies 39 no. 1 (2013), 12-39.
February 18: Samba, Mambo, Chano and Che: The Politics of Jazz in Brazil and Cuba
David Treece, “Guns and Roses: Bossa Nova and Brazil's Music of Popular Protest, 195868,” Popular Music 16, no. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 1-29
Jason Borge, “The Hazards of Hybridity: Afro-Cuban Jazz, Mambo, and Revolution,” from
Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz (2018)
SUGGESTED READING:
Leonardo Acosta, Cubano Be, Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba (2003).
Jason Borge, Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz (2018).
Florencia Garramuño, Primitive Modernities: Tango, Samba, and Nation (2011).
Micol Seigel, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States (2009).
David Treece, “Guns and Roses: Bossa Nova and Brazil’s Music of Popular Protest, 1958–
68,” Popular Music 16, no. 1 (January 1997),1–29.
Robin D. Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana: 1920–
1940 (1997).
Robin D. Moore, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (2006)
Charles Hiroshi Garrett, Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century
(2008).
Marc A. Hertzman, Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (2013).
Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (2005).
Carol A. Hess, Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream
(2013).
Darien Davis, White Face, Black Mask: Africaneity and the Early Social History of Popular Music in
Brazil (2009).
Matthew Karush, Musicians in Transit: Argentina and the Globalization of Popular Music (2017).
Matthew Karush, “Reinventing the Latin in Latin Jazz: The Music and Career of Gato
Barbieri,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 25, no. 3 (2016), 379–96.
February 23: A Joyful Noise: Jazz as Spiritual Journey
Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers, Chapter 3
Alex Zamalin, “Sun Ra and Cosmic Blackness,” in Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from
Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (2019), 96-109, PDF
SUGGESTED READING
Jason C. Bivins, Spirits Rejoice!: Jazz and American Religion (2015).
John Szwed. Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. (1997).
Paul Youngquist, A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism (2016)
Norman Weinstein, A Night in Tunisia (1993)
Christopher W. Chase, “Prophetics in the Key of Allah: Towards an Understanding
of Islam in Jazz,” Jazz Perspectives 4, no. 2 (August 2010).
Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection
(2005)
Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam (2002).
Richard Turner, Islam in the African American Experience (1997).
Hisham D. Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture (2014)
John Corbett, Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (1994).
Leonard Brown, ed., John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality
and the Music (2010)
FILM: “Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise”
February 25: Free Jazz! Music and Black Liberation
Amiri Baraka, “The Changing Same (R&B and the New Black Music)”
Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers, Coda
Michael Heller, “Freedom” from Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s (2017)
SUGGESTED READING:
A.B. Spellman, Four Lives in the Bebop Business (1985).
Amiri Baraka, Black Music (1967).
Amiri Baraka, Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music (2009)
Frank Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (1970).
Michael C. Heller, Loft Jazz: Improvising New York City in the 1970s (2016)
Paul Steinbeck, Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago (2017)
Iain Anderson, This is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture (2012)
Robert K. McMichael, "We Insist-Freedom Now!": Black Moral Authority, Jazz, and the
Changeable Shape of Whiteness,” American Music 16, no. 4 (Winter 1998), 375-416.
John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958 (1984)
Valerie Wilmer, As Serious as Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz (1977).
Nicholas Gebhardt and Tony Whyton, eds., The Cultural Politics of Jazz Collectives: This Is Our
Music (2015)
Scott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties (2003)
Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians and their Ideas (2001)
Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli. Free Jazz/Black Power (1971).
James Hall, Mercy, Mercy Me: African American Culture and the American Sixties (2001).
Leonard Brown, ed., John Coltrane and Black America’s Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the
Music (2010).
Ronald Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (1993).
Daniel Kreiss, “Appropriating the Master’s Tools: Sun Ra, the Black Panthers, and
Black Consciousness, 1952–1973,” Black Music Research Journal 28, No. 1, (Spring
2008), 57-81.
March 2: J@LC: Racial Dignity, Democracy, and Neoliberal Culture
Albert Murray, “Improvisation and the Creative Process”
Stanley Crouch, “Blues to Be Constitutional”
Mark Laver, “Freedom of Choice: Jazz, Neoliberalism, and the Lincoln Center,” Popular
Music and Society, 37, no. 5 (2014), 538-556
FINAL ESSAY PROMPT DUE MONDAY, MARCH 15TH- POST ON TURNITIN
SUGGESTED READING:
Dale Chapman, The Jazz Bubble: Neoclassical Jazz in Neoliberal Culture (2018)
Robert O’Meally, ed., Ralph Ellison: Living with Music (2001)
Stanley Crouch, Notes of a Hanging Judge (1990)
Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans: Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture (1970).
Herman Gray, Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation (2005).
Mark Laver, Jazz Sells: Music, Marketing, and Meaning (2014).
Tracy McMullen, “Identity for Sale: Glenn Miller, Wynton Marsalis, and Cultural Replay in
Music,” in Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, edited by Nichole Rustin and
Sherrie Tucker (2008), 129–56.
GROUP PROJECTS MUST BE POSTED MONDAY, MARCH 8TH BY 9:00 PM
March 4: The Changing Same: American Nostalgia vs Afro-Futures
Bechet, Treat it Gentle, chapter 16
Fred Ho, “What Makes "Jazz" the Revolutionary Music of the 20th Century, and
will it Be Revolutionary for the 21st Century.”
Cisco Bradley, “Interview: Nicole Mitchell,” Jazz Right Now (May 8, 2017),
https://jazzrightnow.com/2017/05/08/interview-nicole-mitchell/
Giovanni Russonello, “Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music: Can it Meet this
Moment?” New York Times, September 3, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/arts/music/jazz-protest-academia.html
Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science, Tiny Desk Concert (NPR),
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/04/811650594/terri-lyne-carrington-social-sciencetiny-desk-concert
SUGGESTED READING:
Nate Chinen, Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century (2018)
George Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads (1994)
Ajay Heble and Rob Wallace, eds., People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz Is Now! (2013)
Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble and George Lipsitz, eds., The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation,
Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (2013)
March 9 - 11: GROUP PROJECT PRESENTATIONS, 9:30 – 11:00 - LIVE