João H. Costa Vargas

How do political imaginaries in (but not necessarily exclusively of) the United States relate to the mostly instrumental, improvised, some would say Afrological, music we often call jazz? In which ways do jazz performance, experimentation, and vocabulary express and inflect visions of social critique and transformation?

 

Focusing on improvised music and political imaginaries of the period between 1950-1980, this seminar explores the overlapping and mutually constituted dimensions of race, gender, social class, sexuality, and nationality, as indexes of political orientation. Emphasis will be placed on gendered blackness as a set of enabling practices that, while addressing structural and longstanding facets of imposed marginalization, projects modes of social organization through musical statements and theorizations.

 

Central questions to be explored revolve around whether, how, and why a political critique is articulated, and a yet-to-be social world becomes graspable through certain manifestations of jazz.

 

Formal musical knowledge if not required; we will agree on key terms and definitions with which you can frame your perspective on the recordings, readings, and during our dialogues.

 

 

Seminar Dynamics

 

All participants upload, via blackboard, a one- to two-page thought piece on the readings and the pertinent music. Choose a record that is related to the reading(s) (either directly referenced or that pertains to the time period and/or genre discussed), and incorporate your take on the music (a specific song from the record, and/or the record’s aural project) into the thought piece.

 

Reflect on what you hear, and listen to what you write and read.

 

When selecting the tunes, listen to its specificities: form, or apparent absence of form, the way it is performed, the musicians’ interaction, and how, if at all, a political statement is made with or in spite of the music. The record’s liner notes (as indeed its layout and graphic art) are often important sources of information about the recording session’s circumstances, inspiration, and personnel. So-called “jazz photographs” are another telling source, including those taken by musicians themselves. Bassist Milt Hinton, for example, produced a vast pictorial archive during his unusually long career.

 

Please upload your thought piece by 11:59p on the Tuesday before class.

 

Seminar participants should bring copies of their report to their colleagues.

 

The reports should be a brief, but focused discussion of one topic that you found relevant and compelling. The topic should bridge the reading(s) and the music. Try to be as specific as possible; remember that your colleagues will also write short reports, so creative angles on the texts and music will help to produce unique and complementary vignettes.

 

One person will be responsible for initiating and structuring the seminar. The person responsible for the seminar brings a one-page set of reflections (which every participant does) and additional questions to structure the discussion.

 

Typically, the seminar dynamic will include of the following:

 

10-15 min: overview of the reading, and identification of key insights

20-30 min: listening of relevant composition(s) and discussion of record it belongs to

60-90 min: statement of questions and dialogue

10-15 min: definition of one topic for final discussion

20-30 min: final thoughts, conclusions

 

The presenter will be responsible to keep time (and other participants should help)

 

Here is a good (generative) example of a question/thought:

Bebop marks a break from swing inasmuch it requires from performers a distinct, expanded awareness of chords and chord progressions, syncopation, and improvisation. At the same time, bebop attempts to interrupt the white-dominated commodification of music by linking a certain sound to performance and production schemes that seek relative black autonomy. How, if at all, are bebop aesthetic related to/infused by/generator of (representations and practices of) gendered blackness? If we consider politics in a broader sense – as that which impacts configurations of power and the demarcation of publics – What types of political projects do such modalities of gendered blackness suggest?

 

A bad example of a question/thought:

What is bebop? How do you think bebop performers transform key concepts of swing and earlier manifestations of jazz?

 

When you prepare for the seminar, please avoid focusing on what you consider the writer or performer’s “wrong” or “limited” approach. Instead, listen/search for the logic(s), assumptions (or assumptive logics), motivation, intentions and/or consequences in the written and aural performance. 

Grade

Weekly short reports: 55%

Participation: 15%

Presentations: 15%

Final reflection piece (5 pages): 15%

 

Books/texts

I will make the texts and books available up until week 8; from then on, you are responsible to find the readings. When possible, I will have the books beyond week 8 on reserve at the PCL library for 2-hour consultation.

 

Course structure

 

Weeks 1-4

Swing, bebop: Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln

 

Weeks 5-7

Afrological principles, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, black heteronormative/homosocial masculinity

 

Weeks 8-10

Bebop, postbop: modality, black nationalism, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, free improvised music

 

Weeks 11-14

Experimental music, harmolodics, space, and alternative sociabilities: AACM, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Horace Tapscott

 

 

 

Reading and discussion schedule

 

Week 1) (Jan 17

Introduction and assignments

Notes, scales, chords, progressions, timbre

Charlie Parker: “music is melody, harmony, and rhythm.”

11-15hrs/day of work into the horn

 

Week 2) (Jan 24

Presenter

 

Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1997)

Introduction and Part One (Coleman Hawkins)

 

 

Recommended

Eric Porter, What is this Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians and their Ideas

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001)

Available online. Introduction, chapters 1 and 2 (D. Gillespie)

 

 

Week 3) (Jan 31

Presenter

 

Robin Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (New

York: Free Press, 2009), pp. 60-142.

 

Amiri Baraka, “The High Priest of Bebop.” In Digging (Berkeley: U of California Press,

2009), pp. 222-235.

 

Angela Y. Davis, Blues legacies and Black feminism : Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie

Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), pp. 3-42, 161-198. (B. Holiday)

 

Farah Griffin, If You Can't be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (New

York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 193-198. (B. Holiday)

 

Amiri Baraka, “Billie Holiday.” In Digging (Berkeley: U of California Press, 2009), pp.

219-221.

 

 

Week 4) (Feb 7          

Presenter

 

Eric Porter, “Straight Ahead: Abbey Lincoln and the Challenge of Jazz Singing.” In What

is this Thing Called Jazz, pp. 149-190 (available online)

 

Amiri Baraka, “Abbey Lincoln.” In Digging (Berkeley: U of California Press, 2009), pp.

295-303.

 

Fred Moten, In the Break:The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: U

of Minnesota Press, 2003), pp. 1-24.

 

Farah Griffin, If You Can't be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (New

York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 161-191. (Abbey Lincoln)

 

 

 

Recommended

Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: All Girl Bands of the 1940s (Durham: Duke University

Press, 2000)

Graham Lock, Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of

Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)

Part II Duke Ellington: Tone Parallels

 

Amiri Baraka, Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music (Berkeley:

U of California Press, 2009)

            Chapters 46, 47 (On Duke Ellington)

Wynton Marsalis and Robert G. O’Meally “Duke Ellington: ‘Music Like a Big Hot Pot

of Good Gumbo.” In R. O’Meally, ed., The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (New York: Columbia U Press, 1998), pp. 143-153.

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)

Randy Weston, African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston (Durham: Duke

University Press, 2010)

Assata Shakur, Assata: an Autobiography (Westport, Conn: L. Hill, 1987)

 

 

Week 5) (Feb 14

Presenter

 

Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1997)

            Part Two: Professional After Hours: Young Black Musicians in the 1940s.

 

Eric Lott, “Double V, Double-Time: Bebop’s Politics of Style.” In R. O’Meally, ed., The

Jazz Cadence of American Culture (New York: Columbia U Press, 1998), pp. 457-467.

 

Nichole T. Rustin, “’Blow, Man, Blow!’ Representing Gender, White Primitives, and

Jazz Melodrama through A Young Man with a Horn.” In N. T. Rustin and S. Tucker, eds, Big Ears: Listening to Gender in Jazz Studies (Durham: Duke U Press, 2008), pp. 361-392.

 

George Lewis, “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.”

Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 16, no. 1, 1996.

 

 

Recommended

George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press,[1972] 1990)

Assata Shakur, Assata: an Autobiography (Westport, Conn: L. Hill, 1987).

 

 

 

 

Week 6) (Feb 21

Presenter

 

Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog (New York: Knopf, 1971), selections

 

Nat Hentoff, “ Charles Mingus.” In N. Hentoff, The Jazz Life (New York: Da Capo,

1961), pp. 157-169.

 

Ekkerhard Jost, “Charles Mingus.” In Free Jazz (New York: Da Capo, 1994), pp. 35-43.

 

Eric Porter, “’Passion of a Man’: The Poetics and Politics and Charles Mingus.” In What

is this Thing Called Jazz, pp. 101-148 (available online)

 

Recommended

Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and interaction (Chicago, U of

Chicago Press, 1996)

Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic

Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)

 

 

Week 7) (Feb 28

Presenter

 

Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, Miles, the Autobiography (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1989), selections

 

Amiri Baraka, “Miles Later.” In Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical

Music (Berkeley: U of California Press, 2009), pp. 9-18.

 

Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (New York, Da

Capo Pr, 2007), selections

 

Bill Evans, liner notes to Kind of Blue (in O’Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American

Culture and other publications), pp. 269-270

 

 

 

Week 8) (March 7

Presenter

 

Listen to/watch Brandford Marsalis’s approach to the “A Love Supreme” suite

 

Amiri Baraka, “A Jazz Great: John Coltrane,” and “Coltrane Live at Birdland.” In A.

Baraka, Black Music (New York: Da Capo [1968] 1998), pp. 56-68.

 

Frank Kofsky, John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s (New York:

Pathfinder, [1970] 1998), selections

 

Ekkehard Jost, “John Coltrane and Modal Playing.” In Free Jazz (New York: Da Capo,

1994), pp. 17-34.

 

Herman Gray, “John Coltrane and the Practice of Freedom.” In Leonard Brown, ed. John

Coltrane & Black America’s Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music (Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2010), pp. 33-54.

 

Ashley Kahn, A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album (New

York: Viking, 2002), selections

 

 

Recommended

Chris DeVito (Ed.), Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews (Chicago:

Chicago Review Press, 2010)

Lewis Porter, John Coltrane: His Life and Music (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, 1998)

 

 

March 14 no class: spring break

 

 

Week 9) (March 21

Presenter

 

Ajay Heble, Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance and Critical Practice (New

York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 29-62

 

Valerie Wilmer, “Cecil Taylor – Eighty-Eight Tuned Drums;” “Albert Ayler – Spiritual

Unity;” and “As Serious as Your Life.” In As Serious as Your Life: John Coltrane and Beyond (London: Serpent’s Tail [1977] 1992), pp. 45-59, 92-111, 129-152.

 

Amiri Baraka, “Cecil Taylor.” In Black Music (New York: Da Capo [1968] 1998), pp.

104-112.

 

  

Recommended

Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973)

Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).

 

 

Week 10) (March 28

Presenter

 

Amiri Baraka, “Introducing Wayne Shorter.” In Black Music (New York: Da Capo

[1968] 1998), pp. 81-86

 

Michelle Mercer, Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter (New York: Penguin,

2007), selections

 

 

Week 11) (April 4

Presenter

 

Ekkehard Jost, “Sun Ra.” In Free Jazz (New York: Da Capo, 1994), pp. 180-199.

 

John F. Szwed, Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (New York: Da Capo,

1998), selections

 

Valerie Wilmer, “Sun Ra – Pictures of Infinity.” In As Serious as Your Life: John

Coltrane and Beyond (London: Serpent’s Tail [1977] 1992), pp. 74-91.

 

Graham Lock, Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of

Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)

Part I Sun Ra: A Starward Eye, pp. 13-74.

 

 

 

Week 12) (April 11

Presenter

 

Valerie Wilmer, “The AACM – Chicago’s Alternative Society.” In As Serious as Your

Life: John Coltrane and Beyond (London: Serpent’s Tail [1977] 1992), pp. 112-126.

 

George Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental

Music (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), selections.

 

 

Recommended

Clora Bryant et al., (eds.), Central Avenue sounds : jazz in Los Angeles (Berkeley :

University of California Press, 1998).

Horace Tapscott, Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace

Tapscott (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp.

 

 

Week 13) (April 18

Presenter

 

Amiri Baraka, “Don Cherry.” In Black Music (New York: Da Capo [1968] 1998), pp.

162-171.

 

Peter Niklas Wilson, Ornette Coleman: His Life and His Music (Berkeley: Berkeley Hill

Books, 1999), foreword (Pat Metheny), and pp. 1-102.

 

 

Week 14) (April 25

Presenter

 

Fred Ho, Wicked Theory, Naked Practice: A Fred Ho Reader (Minneapolis: U of

Minnesota Press, 2009), selections

 

Ajay Heble, “Up for Grabs: the Ethicopolitical Authority of Jazz;” and “Conclusion.” In

Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance and Critical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 199-237

 

Week 15) (May 2

Discuss papers + Ken Burn’s “Jazz” + conclusions