Description
Book SynopsisJazz musicians, scholars, and journalists emphasize how the political consciousness that infused jazz in the 1960s and 1970s has continued to animate the avant-garde, Free Jazz, fusion, and other forms of this lively, always-evolving music.
Trade Review"If you thought jazz was dead, think again. As this remarkable collection of essays makes crystal clear, jazz is alive, loud, messy, sprawling, old and wise, born again, and playful.
People Get Ready makes an essential contribution to jazz studies, cultural studies, and our increasingly global understanding of modern music. And it demonstrates what discerning readers and listeners already know: that 'hip' is both an adjective and a verb."—
Robin D. G. Kelley, author of
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original"Reader Get Ready! This lovely collection blasts past pessimism and uncertainty to showcase the resonant vibrancy of jazz today. From history to technology and from improvisation to politics,
People Get Ready constitutes mandatory reading for anyone with a serious interest in answering Marvin Gaye's perennial question—'What's Going On?'"—
Daniel Widener, author of
Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles“This collection of thought-provoking essays is as much about inclusion, looking at jazz as a genre relevant to all, as it is futurism. Evolved from the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, the publication is like a breath of fresh air in the scholarship pertaining to the music, first and foremost because it looks at it from new angles, and, perhaps more importantly, provides a platform for artists who simply have not been lionised according to their full worth.” -- Kevin L Gendre * Jazzwise *
“A diverse array of knowledgeable improvisers riffing on the musical practice and community that has inspired them.” -- Alex W. Rodriguez * Ethnomusicology Review *
"...an excellent companion, presenting a diverse range of voices on the various aesthetic, social, and economic contexts bearing on improvised music currently and fleshing out how jazz and its aesthetic corollaries negotiate with these material factors through an ongoing stylistic restlessness and capacity for exchange." -- Michael Borshuk * English Studies in Canada *
"[T]he clearly situated specificity and well-grounded interdisciplinarity ... make[s] the conversations in
People Get Ready so compelling." -- A. Scott Currie * Ethnomusicology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. "People Get Ready": The Future of Jazz is Now! / Ajay Heble and Rob Wallace 1
Part I. Beyond Categories: Histories and Mysteries
1. "Now is the Time": Voicing against the Grain of Orality / Aldon Lynn Nielsen 31
2. The Antiquity of the Avant-Garde: A Meditation on a Comment by Duke Ellington / John Szwed 44
3. Listening Trust: The Everyday Politics of George Lewis's "Dream Team" / Julie Dawn Smith and Ellen Waterman 59
4. Jeanne Lee's Voice / Eric Porter 88
5. Kick Out the Jazz! / Rob Wallace 111
Part II. Crisis in New Music? Vanishing Venues and the Future of Experimentation
6. Days of Breads and Roses / Marc Ribot 141
7. Subsidy, Advocacy, Theory: Experimental Music in the Academy, in New York City, and Beyond / Tamar Barzel 153
8. Subsidizing the Experimental Muse:Rereading Ribot / John Brackett 166
9. One Musician Writes about Creative-Music Venues in Toronto / Scott Thomson 175
10. Somewhere There: Contemporary Music, Performance Spaces, and Cultural Policy / Alan Stanbridge 184
Part III. Sound Check
The Jazz Photography of Thomas King 197
Part IV. Get Ready: Jazz Futures
11. Black Jazz in the Digital Age / Greg Tate 217
12. Improvising Digital Culture / DJ Spooky and Vijay Iyer 225
13. Ancient to the Future: Celebrating Forty Years of the AACM / Douglas Ewart, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Famoudou Don Moye, Matana Roberts, Jaribu Shahid, Wadada Leo Smith, and Corey Wilkes 244
14. People, Don't Get Ready: Improvisation, Democracy, and Hope / Tracy McMullen 265
Works Cited 281
Contributors 295
Index 301
