Description
Book Synopsis"Takes us back to that moment between the fifties and the sixties when a new music called free jazz took root in the coffeehouses and nightclubs of New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles."-John Szwed, author of So What: The Life of Miles Davis
Trade Review"
This Is Our Music takes us back to that moment between the fifties and the sixties when a new music called free jazz took root in the coffeehouses and nightclubs of New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In this rich and evocative book, Iain Anderson meets the challenge posed by the music and follows its lead into the complex political realignments, shifting racial dynamics, and redefinition of art and entertainment that characterized the subsequent decade." * John Szwed, author of
So What: The Life of Miles Davis *
"Historian Iain Anderson tracks the political and social meanings of jazz as the music changed hands around the world. . . . The crooked line Anderson draws from the maverick [Cecil] Taylor (a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient) to the conservative [Wynton] Marsalis (arbiter of "What Is-and Isn't-Jazz") is the real contribution of
This Is Our Music." *
Bookforum *
"Anderson's evenhanded, archive-driven book is consistently instructive-a fine guide to the debates that raged around free jazz and to the music's unexpected current place in the American arts canon." *
Journal of American History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. The Resurgence of Jazz in the 1950s
2. Free Improvisation Challenges the Jazz Canon
3. Free Jazz and Black Nationalism
4. The Musicians and Their Audience
5. Jazz Outside The Marketplace
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
