Space is the Place: Ethnomusicology of Jazz

Curated by Molly Jones

The International Cairo Jazz Festival

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from a longer essay on improvised music spaces in Egypt that will be published in October as part of the Sounding Board's forthcoming collaboration with IASPM-US.

Book Review: "People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz Is Now!"

People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz Is Now! Ajay Heble and Rob Wallace, eds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

“Thus it is in our own roles as teachers, musicians, and scholars that we come to this project with passion, energy, and love. The creation of this book has been a collaboration called and responded to one another in both music and in writing, as we have developed this volume.”

Jazz Manouche on the French Festival Stage

Jazz manouche, also known as Gypsy jazz, is a genre rooted in the 1930s-40s recordings of guitarist Django Reinhardt and typically features guitar-centric swing tunes.  Over the past
 three decades, jazz manouche has become a distinctive cultural practice within certain communities of French Manouches (a subgroup of Romani, or “Gypsy” people), especially in Alsace.

Two Essays on Jazz Spaces at IASPM-US Website

As a part of their June series "Music Scenes," the website for US Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music has recently posted a pair of essays on jazz and space that speak to one another in a way that ethnomusicologists may find useful.

Interview: Dr. Mark Lomanno, The Rhythm of Study

"Scholarship doesn't just happen in journals—the ability of the scholar to engage with the community on an everyday level is really important, especially because the everyday and the people that we meet everyday should be the driving force behind the work that we do."

-Dr. Mark Lomanno

House Music in Macedonia: Expecting the Unexpected

In planning my fieldwork trip this summer, I decided to focus my research on the “ethno-band” scene in Macedonia, and hoped to spend a lot of time with musicians who are continuing folk music traditions in contemporary contexts. Upon my arrival in June, I began contacting the musicians I know in that scene as well as friends who are active jazz musicians in Skopje, Macedonia’s capital city.

CD Review: "Four MFs Playin' Tunes" and "Flip the Script"

Two new CDs out by contemporary jazz leaders Branford Marsalis and Orrin Evans, "Four MFs Plain' Tunes" and "Flip the Script," offer a pair of unique takes on what it means to swing in the 21st century. Both are assertive, interactive, and powerful statements, but it's what makes them different that Alex W. Rodriguez finds particularly fascinating.

Review of Birds of Fire by Kevin Fellezs

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"Sounding Board" is intended as a space for scholars to publish thoughts and observations about their current work. These postings are not peer reviewed and do not reflect the opinion of Ethnomusicology Review. We support the expression of controversial opinions, and welcome civil discussion about them. We do not, however, tolerate overt discrimination based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, and reserve the right to remove posts that we feel might offend our readers.
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