What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (Music of the African Diaspora) [Paperback]

Eric Porter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0520232968 | ISBN-13: 978-0520232969

Despite the plethora of writing about jazz, little attention has been paid to what musicians themselves wrote and said about their practice. An implicit division of labor has emerged where, for the most part, black artists invent and play music while white writers provide the commentary. Eric Porter overturns this tendency in his creative intellectual history of African American musicians. He foregrounds the often-ignored ideas of these artists, analyzing them in the context of meanings circulating around jazz, as well as in relationship to broader currents in African American thought.
Porter examines several crucial moments in the history of jazz: the formative years of the 1920s and 1930s; the emergence of bebop; the political and experimental projects of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; and the debates surrounding Jazz at Lincoln Center under the direction of Wynton Marsalis. Louis Armstrong, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Yusef Lateef, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Wadada Leo Smith, Mary Lou Williams, and Reggie Workman also feature prominently in this book. The wealth of information Porter uncovers shows how these musicians have expressed themselves in print; actively shaped the institutional structures through which the music is created, distributed, and consumed, and how they aligned themselves with other artists and activists, and how they were influenced by forces of class and gender.
What Is This Thing Called Jazz? challenges interpretive orthodoxies by showing how much black jazz musicians have struggled against both the racism of the dominant culture and the prescriptive definitions of racial authenticity propagated by the music's supporters, both white and black.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Among the many books on the history of jazz, most document the interpretations of white critics....But now, Eric Porter's brilliant book seeks to trace the ways in which black jazz musicians have made verbal sense of their accomplishments, demonstrating the profound self-awareness of the artists themselves as they engaged in discourse about their enterprise." - Susan McClary, author of Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form

From the Inside Flap

"Among the many books on the history of jazz. . . an implicit division of labor has solidified, whereby black artists play and invent while white writers provide the commentary. . . . Eric Porter's brilliant book seeks to trace the ways in which black jazz musicians have made verbal sense of their accomplishments, demonstrating the profound self-awareness of the artists themselves as they engaged in discourse about their enterprise."--Susan McClary, author of Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form

"With What Is This Thing Called Jazz Eric Porter has given us an original portrait of black musicians as creators, thinkers and politically conscious individuals. This well-written, thoroughly researched work is a model of a new kind of scholarship about African American musicians: one that shows them as people who are both shaped by and actively shaping their political and social context. One of the book's most important contributions is that it takes seriously what the musicians themselves say about the music and allows their voices to join that of critics and musicologists in helping to construct a critical and philosophical framework for analyzing the music. Professor Porter's work is rare in it's balanced attention to the formal qualities of the music, historical interpretation and theoretical reflection. His is a work that will certainly shape the direction of future studies. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? is an extraordinary work."--Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

"A major contribution to American Studies in music, Eric Porter's lucidly written book is the first to thoroughly analyze and contextualize the critical, historical and aesthetic writings of some of today's most innovative composer-performers. Placing the vital concerns of artists at the center, this work provides academic and lay readers alike with important new insights on how African-American musicians sought to realize ambitious dreams and concrete goals through direct action--not only in sound, but through building alternative institutions that emphasized the importance of community involvement."--George E. Lewis, Professor of Music, Critical Studies/Experimental Practices Area University of California, San Diego

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Product Details

• Paperback: 427 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520232968
• ISBN-13: 978-0520232969
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 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: #418,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading for Anyone Interested in Jazz Criticism, January 3, 2004

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This review is from: What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (Music of the African Diaspora) (Paperback)

As many fans realize, jazz music (and even the term "jazz" itself) is the source of much critical and cultural debate. There has always been a peculiar tension between the critics who define the music with culturally loaded terminology and the musicians who often view the art as something that cannot be adequately reduced in such a manner. Things have certainly become more complicated in the last thirty-five years, with the rise of the avant-garde. Many critics and even some musicians (e.g., Wynton Marsalis) have dismissed the most innovative developments in the music as being "non-jazz," which has culminated in a perspective whereby jazz has been codified, historicized, and, to some people, seems to be "swallowing its tail."

Eric Porter's excellent academic work delves deeply into the current debates on jazz, as well as provides a thorough overview of how musicians have defined their art in their own terms throughout the history of jazz. As with the history of any art (e.g., painting, photography, literature), it becomes apparent that what we get in jazz criticism is a series of narratives that occasionally correspond to one another but often tend to diverge markedly at various points. Porter's book is extremely valuable because it focuses on the voices that have not been adequately represented in the discourse on jazz-the voices of the musicians themselves.

What I particularly enjoy about Porter's book is its even-handed tone. The book is exhaustively researched and follows a logical progression from the rise of jazz in the early twentieth-century to modern times. His discussions of the essays of Duke Ellington, WC Handy, and prominent intellectuals (Zora Neale Hurston, WEB Dubois, Alain Locke et al.) are all placed in the context of a larger discussion of race, gender, economics, and American culture. At the same time, Porter's role is clearly that of a researcher and scholar; he is not someone who passes judgment on the thoughts of the musicians. He simply presents us with the information.

In addition to analyzing thoroughly the roots of jazz, there are lengthy and informative chapters on the development of bebop, the music and thought of Charles Mingus, and that of 60s stalwarts such as Leo Smith and Anthony Braxton. The discussion of Braxton's massive tomes (the Tri-axium Writings) is particularly welcome, since his universalist approach to music has put him in an unusual position with the regard to the jazz community, arguably since his contract with Arista expired over two decades ago. The discussion of the neo-conservative movement in jazz, led by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch, appropriately follows the discussion of Braxton's work and illustrates the challenges that jazz critics face as the music increasingly draws upon a myriad of musical forms that draw attention to the inadequacies of conventional criticism. What I particularly enjoyed was Porter's lucid discussion of the similarities as well as the differences in the thought of Braxton and Marsalis. Porter's organized presentation of such topics certainly enabled me to appreciate the thoughts of all the jazz musicians discussed in the book, whether I agreed with them or not.

The value of this book is that it not only shows the reader the viewpoints of the often neglected musicians, but also does not shy away from the critical, theoretical, and cultural complexities with which critics and musicians must deal in the future of jazz music. It is a valuable step indeed to understanding, if not definitively answering, "What is this thing called jazz?"