The description of this section of the Ethnomusicology Review Sounding Board reads as follows: “Honoring the jazz roots of foundational ethnomusicologists such as Mantle Hood, Alan Merriam, Charles Keil and Steven Feld, ‘Space is the Place’ makes room for discussion regarding the intersections between ethnomusicology and jazz studies.” In my contribution to this discussion, I am interested in exploring a surpri
Issues of space and place pervade jazz historical narratives, especially when considering conventional “up the river” histories.
On January 26, my fieldwork in Santiago, Chile took an unforgettable turn when I took to the patio of a shared artists’ house to perform a set of improvised music with three Chilean jazz musicians. This concert came about as part of a transnational collective effort among Chilean jazz aficionados, a Danish web startup company, and my own network of family, friends, and fellow music lovers.
In December 1917, U.S. Merchant Marine Truman Blair Cook wrote a diary entry describing his crew’s arrival in Arica, Chile—a small mining town near the country’s northern border. The following is excerpted from Oregon Historical Quarterly, where Cook's diaries were published in 1976:
Earlier this year, the Erroll Garner Jazz Project gifted the University of Pittsburgh a trove of materials relating to the career of Garner, assembled by his longtime manager Martha Glaser.
Jazz has developed virtually since its inception through a close but often uneasy relationship between recorded media and live performance. Think of the “classic” recordings that are celebrated as paragons of jazz artistry, but also of the common admonishment that any true experience of jazz is a live one, in which musicians and audience members commune with one another in a unique, never-to-be-repeated musical and social event.
The Vision Festival is an annual multi-arts festival centered around the avant-jazz aesthetic that has been developing in downtown Manhattan since the 1970s loft jazz scene. While largely a music festival, it always includes poetry, visual art, and dance. The festival takes place each June (or July) in New York City and draws artists and audiences from around the world.
In the major narratives of jazz history, the 1970s seem to hold little of value.
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