Category Archives: Jazz and blues

by | March 31, 2012 · 1:00 am

Haydn and Ellington

In what he dubbed “a musicological jeu d’esprit”, Edward Green drew 25 parallels between the lives of Joseph Haydn and Duke Ellington in “Haydn and Ellington: Parallel lives?” (International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music XL/2 [December 2009] pp. 349–51). These include:

  • Both had an outstanding orchestra at their immediate disposal for decades. This meant that they wrote for individuals, not just for instruments, and enabled the striking timbral and contrapuntal risks that they felt safe taking.

  • Both helped to create the predominant musical style of their century, and were celebrated in their lifetime for having done so.

  • Despite the necessity of producing numerous occasional works, both took an experimental attitude to composing, striving for freshness of form, design, and content, and their styles changed and developed remarkably over their careers.

  • Both had a notoriously keen business sense.

Today is Haydn’s 270th birthday! Below, Baryton Trio Valkkoog performs the Adagio and Finale Fuga from Haydn’s “Birthday” trio, Hob.XI:97, composed for the birthday of  Prince Nikolaus Esterházy.

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by | March 28, 2012 · 1:00 am

Jazz and shamanism

With its emphasis on altered consciousness, shamanism—communication with the spirit world—offers archetypal visionary insight concerning the nature of the psyche; it has much in common with the key Jungian notion of individuation or fully developed and integrated consciousness.

Jazz has much in common with shamanic experience. The pan-tonal and pan-rhythmic music of the Norwegian saxophonist and composer Jan Garbarek exemplifies the healing presence of the shamanic, or individuated, spirit in 20th-century music.

This according to “The body electric: The shamanic spirit in twentieth century music” by Michael Tucker, an essay included in Music and mysticism, two consecutive issues of Contemporary music review (XIV/1–2 and 3–4) dedicated to the memory of Philip Rawson.

Above, a shaman from the Altaj Mountains of Central Asia. Below, Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s I talk with the spirits.

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by | December 22, 2011 · 1:00 am

Ragtime rants

A pair of brief unattributed articles appeared in the July 1901 issue of American musician to articulate opposing viewpoints on ragtime, which had become increasingly popular since the late 19th century.

War on ragtime denounced the genre in no uncertain terms: “The ragtime craze has lowered the standards of American music as compared with other countries…we will not give way to a popular demand that is degrading.”

Suppression of ragtime expressed a more lighthearted view:

“Last week a national association of musicians in convention at Denver solemnly swore to play no ragtime, and to do all in their power to counteract the pernicious influence exerted by Mr. Johnson, My ragtime lady, and others of the Negro school…

“But the people do not want to be educated all the time…Their great desire with music is to be pleased—to forget for a time that there is anything in this world but sunshine and laughter, and birds and flowers and purling brooks.

“And they find all those things in the homely and catchy pieces that quicken the heart-beats and make the nerves tingle with delight; yes, in ragtime, bubbling, frothing, sparkling; as light as a summer breeze and as sweet as woman’s kiss.”

This courtesy of “War on ragtime and Suppression of ragtime” in From jubilee to hip hop: Readings in African American music, edited by Kip Lornell (Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 2010), pp. 23–25. Below, Jelly Roll Morton plays the ragtime classic Shreveport stomp via piano roll.

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by | September 27, 2011 · 1:00 am

How Cooke heard America singing

A great mystery surrounded I Hear America Singing, the 13-part series that Alistair Cooke produced in 1938: How had the BBC managed to borrow recordings from the Library of Congress when no other broadcaster was allowed access to them?

The circumstances were extraordinary. First, Cooke wrote an eloquent and charming letter to Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress. “When I first became interested in American folk songs,” he wrote, “I had no idea so little had been done in recording, and how desperately hard it is for an amateur to get within earshot of the music he is interested in and excited about….I found that the Library, and only the Library, has recorded a score or more of the songs which can make my series possible.”

Moved by Cooke’s letter and the goal of the series, Putnam agreed to grant one-time rights with notable restrictions: the BBC would send the Library any copies that were made when it returned the recordings; the series would be broadcast live, and only once; and no recordings of the series itself would be preserved. As a result of this arrangement, many recordings were broadcast that had never before been heard by anyone outside the Library.

This according to “Alistair Cooke: A radio and TV icon in the Archive of folk culture” by Stephen D. Winick (Folklife Center news XXVII/1–2 [winter/spring 2005] pp. 6–8). Above, Cooke interviews an unknown singer for the series in 1938. Below, Vera Hall (1902–64) sings Trouble so hard, recorded by John Lomax for the Library of Congress in the 1930s.

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by | July 4, 2011 · 1:00 am

National jukebox

In May 2011 the Library of Congress launched National jukebox: Historical recordings from the Library of Congress, an Internet resource that makes historical sound recordings available to the public for free. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. These recordings were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.

At launch, the Jukebox already included over 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other U.S. labels, including Columbia, Okeh, and some Universal Music Group-owned labels. The selections range from jazz and popular styles to ethnic traditions to Western classical works, including opera arias.

Above, a Victor acoustical recording session ca. 1920.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Jazz and blues, Opera, Popular music, Resources, World music

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by | April 14, 2011 · 1:00 am

Grooves: Edizioni di Musiche Audiotattili

Libreria Musicale Italiana inaugurated the series Grooves: Edizioni di Musiche Audiotattili in 2011 with Jelly Roll Morton, la Old qaudrille e Tiger rag: Una revisione storiografica by Vincenzo Caporaletti. The book explores the longstanding question of whether Morton composed Tiger rag, which he claimed he adapted from an old quadrille, despite its having been copyrighted by Nick La Rocca.

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by | February 9, 2011 · 1:00 am

Black Grooves

Hosted by the Archives of African American Music & Culture at Indiana University, Black Grooves is a review site that aims to promote black music by providing monthly updates on interesting new releases and quality reissues in all genres—gospel, blues, jazz, funk, soul, and hip hop, as well as classical music composed or performed by black artists.

Reviews of selected new discs and DVDs are featured, with occasional attention to books and news items. An extra effort is made to track down releases by indie, underground, foreign, and other labels that are not covered in the mainstream media. While the primary focus is on African American music, related areas such as Afropop and reggae are also covered.

This post is part of our series celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in black studies. Click here for a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.

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by | February 6, 2011 · 1:00 am

John Abbott, jazz photographer

Throughout his career, John Abbott’s award-winning images of jazz have been featured on over 250 album and magazine covers; he has been the primary cover photographer for JazzTimes magazine since 2002.

On 7 September 2010, the 80th birthday of the jazz legend Sonny Rollins, Abbott’s Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins was published by Abrams. As Rollins’s photographer of choice for the past 20 years, Abbott captured images of him at home and at work; essays by the jazz critic Bob Blumenthal are included.

Below, Abbott and Blumenthal discuss the making of the book.

Related article: The Jazz Baron

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by | September 3, 2010 · 4:41 pm

Sheet music consortium

An open collection of digitized popular sheet music from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, Sheet music consortium is hosted by the UCLA Digital Library Program, which provides an access service to sheet music records at the host libraries. Each of the over 100,000 entries includes full bibliographic information; links to further resources, such as full reproductions, may be provided depending on the host institution.

The consortium members are the Archive of Popular American Music at the University of California, Los Angeles; IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana at Indiana University; the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music at Johns Hopkins University; and the Historic American Sheet Music collection at Duke University.

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by | August 4, 2010 · 7:39 am

RoJaRo

Established by Kjetil Maria Aase in 1990, RoJaRo is a continuously updated index of jazz and popular music magazines. This resource is intended to be inclusive, indexing little-known fanzines as well as well-known publications; it also presents hyperlinked lists of relevant magazines and record labels.

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Filed under Jazz and blues, Music magazines, Popular music, Resources