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Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-Reality of Creative Music

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Author Graham Lock accompanied Anthony Braxton's classic quartet on a 1985 tour of England, and this book is the result. It includes interviews Lock did with Braxton and other members of his group. These are connected with concert reviews, stories of the tour, and essays on Braxton's ideas on musical languages and notation systems. Braxton candidly discusses his own startlingly innovative work as well his ethical, political, and spiritual beliefs.

Three Viewpoints on Robt. O'Meally's "Blues for Huckleberry"

Three professors of English and experts in African-American studies, Jonathan Arac, Susan K. Harris, and David L. Smith, present their views on Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and on Robert O'Meally's interpretation of it in "Blues for Huckleberry," the Introduction to the Barnes and Noble Classics version of Twain's work.

The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

Segregation galvanized the African-American community in Central Los Angeles. Its tightyly-knit social structure and cultural ferment nurtured artists who helped lay the groundwork for the avant-garde of the 1950s and inspire the community arts movement from the 1960s to the present in Los Angeles. Isoardi offers a history of this community's growth, development and contribution to jazz.

Review—Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop

Guthrie Ramsey's Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop explores the lationship between music and African American identity. Surveying an array of black music styles, Ramsey asks how African Americans have identified themselves in music. He draws upon his experience as a jazz and gospel pianist and his family's participation in the Great Migration to generate an ethnographic method that positions family narrative at the intersection of racial identity and musical expression.

A Forum on the Prosody of Thelonious Monk

Caliban, a journal of alternative poetry, featured this collection of articles on the workings and the implications of Thelonious Monk's music. The contributions include poetry inspired by Monk, analysis of his music, and social commentary. These writings were featured in Caliban 4 (1988). To read the current issue online, please go to calibanonline.com.

 

Black Music as an Art Form

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Wilson squarely confronts the challenge of defining what “black music” is in all its vastness and diversity. He argues that it should not be thought of as a set of specific characteristics, but a conceptual approach to making music, “the manifestations of which are infinite.” Wilson refers to both aesthetic theory and detailed analysis of musical works to highlight the common threads he believes run through all black music.

© 1988 Olly Wilson. Used with permission of BMRJ. All rights reserved.

Current Musicology Special Issue - Jazz Studies

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In this special issue (Nos. 71-72, Spring 2001-Spring 2002), Current Musicology drew together some of the most prominent scholars in the nascent field of jazz studies to deal with important and provocative questions the subject has raised. The volume was dedicated to Columbia professor Mark Tucker, whose untimely death on December 6, 2000 robbed the field of one of its leading lights. This JSO special feature presents selected articles from the issue. © Used by permission of Current Musicology and the authors of specific excerpts.

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