The Jazz Cadence of American Culture [Paperback]

Robert O'Meally (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1998

Taking to heart Ralph Ellison's remark that much in American life is "jazz-shaped," The Jazz Cadence of American Culture offers a wide range of eloquent statements about the influence of this art form. Robert G. O'Meally has gathered a comprehensive collection of important essays, speeches, and interviews on the impact of jazz on other arts, on politics, and on the rhythm of everyday life. Focusing mainly on American artistic expression from 1920 to 1970, O'Meally confronts a long era of political and artistic turbulence and change in which American art forms influenced one another in unexpected ways.

Organized thematically, these provocative pieces include an essay considering poet and novelist James Weldon Johnson as a cultural critic, an interview with Wynton Marsalis, a speech on the heroic image in jazz, and a newspaper review of a recent melding of jazz music and dance, Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. From Stanley Crouch to August Wilson to Jacqui Malone, the plurality of voices gathered here reflects the variety of expression within jazz.

The book's opening section sketches the overall place of jazz in America. Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner unpack the word jazz and its register, Albert Murray considers improvisation in music and life, Amiri Baraka argues that white critics misunderstand jazz, and Stanley Crouch cogently dissects the intersections of jazz and mainstream American democratic institutions. After this, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring jazz and the visual arts, dance, sports, history, memory, and literature. Ann Douglas writes on jazz's influence on the design and construction of skyscrapers in the 1920s and '30s, Zora Neale Hurston considers the significance of African-American dance, Michael Eric Dyson looks at the jazz of Michael Jordan's basketball game, and Hazel Carby takes on the sexual politics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith's blues.

The Jazz Cadence offers a wealth of insight and information for scholars, students, jazz aficionados, and any reader wishing to know more about this music form that has put its stamp on American culture more profoundly than any other in the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Columbia University professor Robert G. O'Meally--one of the most comprehensive essayists and cultural critics on the scene--has brought together diverse viewpoints on jazz's continuing influence over the culture of the United States. This superb collection takes its cue from the legendary Ralph Ellison's observation that American life is "jazz-based." As O'Meally writes, "The book is thus a teaching tool designed to open the way for a variety of new avenues in jazz studies as a growing interdisciplinary field of exploration."

Ann Douglas muses on the relationship between skyscrapers and the music of the swing era, while Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner trace the jumbled etymology of the very word jazz. Astute critic Albert Murray offers a brief but masterful and illuminating treatise, "Improvisation and the Creative Process," while James A. Snead explores the uses of riffs in "Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture." The book's scope is grand enough to include Stanley Crouch's affirmative "Blues to Be Constitutional," Amiri Baraka's scorching indictment "Jazz and the White Critic," and Michael Eric Dyson's take on basketball's jazz/dance-like Afro-American reinvention, "Be Like Mike: Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire." Interviews with saxophonist Benny Golson and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis round out an incredible work that reveals all of the multicolored hues and grooves that make the United States glow. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From Publishers Weekly

Both a celebration and an analysis of jazz, this massive omnibus of essays, interviews, riffs, reminiscences, lectures and meditations examines the impact of jazz on American culture from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s black arts revolution. The anthology's unifying theme, as O'Meally, professor of American literature at Columbia University, declares in the preface, is that jazz?with its balance between individual invention and group coordination?is a quintessential democratic medium, both metaphor and model for egalitarian cooperation. Picking up that motif, the selections by Amiri Baraka, Stanley Crouch, August Wilson, Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, Sterling Brown, Zora Neale Hurston, Wynton Marsalis and others explore how jazz, with roots in Africa, became a robustly, definitively American form of expression. Jazz's ethos of improvisational pluralism, its games of color and space, its rhythms and sudden changes, as the contributors demonstrate, have had a pervasive, often subtle influence on art (Jackson Pollock, Stuart Davis, Mondrian, Romare Bearden), photography, filmmaking, dance, popular song, architecture and literature (Jack Kerouac, Vachel Lindsay, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright). A mixed bag, this collection includes a feminist interpretation of women blues singers in the 1920s, a deconstruction of basketball star Michael Jordan's style of play, a survey of traditional African dance and music and reappraisals of black and white jazz history. It frequently veers into hyperbole, as when jazz is seen as analogue, influence or model for the Manhattan skyline, the Constitution, or Mark Twain's humorous monologues. But whatever its excesses, this outstanding investigation of jazz as an integral strand in the fabric of American culture is a must for aficionados.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (October 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231104499
• ISBN-13: 978-0231104494
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 6.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #597,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars intelligent and invigorating, May 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (Paperback)

The collection of essays gathered in this volume are exceptional--smart, insightful, and inspiring. Together they explore jazz as a cultural phenomenon, not only a musical genre. They are organized intelligently in a manner which makes the book both educational and very enjoyable.