Big Ears

Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies

Autor: Rustin, Nichole T.; Tucker, Sherrie; Radano, Ronald; Kun, Josh
Editor: Duke University Press
Col·lecció: Refiguring American Music
ISBN: 9780822343363
eISBN Pdf: 9780822389224
Lloc de publicació: Durham , United States
Any de publicació digital: 2008
Mes: Novembre
Pàgines: 472
DDC: 781.65082
Idioma: Anglés

Descripció

In jazz circles, players and listeners with “big ears” hear and engage complexity in the moment, as it unfolds. Taking gender as part of the intricate, unpredictable action in jazz culture, this interdisciplinary collection explores the terrain opened up by listening, with big ears, for gender in jazz. Essays range from a reflection on the female boogie-woogie pianists who played at Café Society in New York during the 1930s and 1940s to interpretations of how the jazzman is represented in Dorothy Baker’s novel Young Man with a Horn (1938) and Michael Curtiz’s film adaptation (1950). Taken together, the essays enrich the field of jazz studies by showing how gender dynamics have shaped the production, reception, and criticism of jazz culture.

Scholars of music, ethnomusicology, American studies, literature, anthropology, and cultural studies approach the question of gender in jazz from multiple perspectives. One contributor scrutinizes the tendency of jazz historiography to treat singing as subordinate to the predominantly male domain of instrumental music, while another reflects on her doubly inappropriate position as a female trumpet player and a white jazz musician and scholar. Other essays explore the composer George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept as a critique of mid-twentieth-century discourses of embodiment, madness, and black masculinity; performances of “female hysteria” by Les Diaboliques, a feminist improvising trio; and the BBC radio broadcasts of Ivy Benson and Her Ladies’ Dance Orchestra during the Second World War. By incorporating gender analysis into jazz studies, Big Ears transforms ideas of who counts as a subject of study and even of what counts as jazz.

Contributors: Christina Baade, Jayna Brown, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Monica Hairston, Kristin McGee, Tracy McMullen, Ingrid Monson, Lara Pellegrinelli, Eric Porter, Nichole T. Rustin, Ursel Schlicht, Julie Dawn Smith, Jeffrey Taylor, Sherrie Tucker, João H. Costa Vargas

Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION Nichole T. Rustin and Sherrie Tucker
PART I: Rooting Gender in Jazz History
- SEPARATED AT ‘‘BIRTH’’: SINGING AND THE HISTORY OF JAZZ Lara Pellegrinelli
- WITH LOVIE AND LIL: REDISCOVERING TWO CHICAGO PIANISTS OF THE 1920s Jeffrey Taylor
- GENDER, JAZZ, AND THE POPULAR FRONT Monica Hairston
- ‘‘THE BATTLE OF THE SAXES’’: GENDER, DANCE BANDS, AND BRITISH NATIONALISM IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR Christina Baade
- IDENTITY FOR SALE: GLENN MILLER, WYNTON MARSALIS, AND CULTURAL REPLAY IN MUSIC Tracy McMullen
PART II Improvising Gender: Embodiment and Performance
- FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PAVEMENT: A GEOPOLITICS OF BLACK DANCE Jayna Brown
- PERVERSE HYSTERICS: THE NOISY CRI OF LES DIABOLIQUES Julie Dawn Smith
- ‘‘BORN OUT OF JAZZ . . . YET EMBRACING ALL MUSIC’’: RACE, GENDER, AND TECHNOLOGY IN GEORGE RUSSELL’S LYDIAN CHROMATIC CONCEPT Eric Porter
- ‘‘BUT THIS MUSIC IS MINE ALREADY!’’: ‘‘WHITE WOMAN’’ AS JAZZ COLLECTOR IN THE FILM NEW ORLEANS (1947) Sherrie Tucker
- FITTING THE PART Ingrid Monson
PART III Reimagining Jazz Representations
- ‘‘BETTER A JAZZ ALBUM THAN LIPSTICK’’ (LIEBER JAZZPLATTE ALS LIPPENSTIFT): THE 1956 JAZZ PODIUM SERIES REVEALS IMAGES OFJAZZ AND GENDER IN POSTWAR GERMANY Ursel Schlicht
- EXCLUSION, OPENNESS, AND UTOPIA IN BLACK MALE PERFORMANCE AT THE WORLD STAGE JAZZ JAM SESSIONS João H. Costa Vargas
- ‘‘IT TAKES TWO PEOPLE TO CONFIRM THE TRUTH’’: THE JAZZ FICTION OF SHERLEY ANN WILLIAMS AND TONI CADE BAMBARA Farah Jasmine Griffin
- ‘‘BLOW, MAN, BLOW!’’: REPRESENTING GENDER, WHITE PRIMITIVES, AND JAZZ MELODRAMA THROUGH A YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN Nichole T. Rustin
- THE GENDERED JAZZ AESTHETICS OF THAT MAN OF MINE: THE INTERNATIONAL SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM AND INDEPENDENT BLACK SOUND FILM Kristin McGee
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX