Clawing At The Limits Of Cool

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Clawing at the Limits of Cool

Author : Farah Jasmine Griffin,Salim Washington
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-22
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781466855298

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Clawing at the Limits of Cool by Farah Jasmine Griffin,Salim Washington Pdf

When the renowned trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis chose the members of his quintet in 1955, he passed over well-known, respected saxophonists such as Sonny Rollins to pick out the young, still untested John Coltrane. What might have seemed like a minor decision at the time would instead set the course not just for each of their careers but for jazz itself. Clawing at the Limits of Cool is the first book to focus on Davis and Coltrane's musical interaction and its historical context, on the ways they influenced each other and the tremendous impact they've had on culture since then. It chronicles the drama of their collaboration, from their initial historic partnership to the interlude of their breakup, during which each man made tremendous progress toward his personal artistic goals. And it continues with the last leg of their journey together, a time when the Miles Davis group, featuring John Coltrane, forever changed the landscape of jazz. Authors Farah Jasmine Griffin and Salim Washington examine the profound implications that the Davis/Coltrane collaboration would have for jazz and African American culture, drawing parallels to the changing standards of African American identity with their public personas and private difficulties. With vastly different personal and musical styles, the two men could not have been more different. One exemplified the tough, closemouthed cool of the fifties while the other made the transition during this time from unfocused junkie to a religious pilgrim who would inspire others to pursue spiritual enlightenment in the coming decade. Their years together mark a watershed moment, and Clawing at the Limits of Cool draws on both cultural history and precise musical detail to illuminate the importance that their collaboration would have for jazz and American history as a whole.

Clawing at the Limits of Cool

Author : Salim Washington,Farah Jasmine Griffin
Publisher : Thomas Dunne Books
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2008-08-05
Category : Music
ISBN : 0312327854

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Clawing at the Limits of Cool by Salim Washington,Farah Jasmine Griffin Pdf

When the renowned trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis chose the members of his quintet in 1955, he passed over well-known, respected saxophonists such as Sonny Rollins to pick out the young, still untested John Coltrane. What might have seemed like a minor decision at the time would instead set the course not just for each of their careers but for jazz itself. Clawing at the Limits of Cool is the first book to focus on Davis and Coltrane’s musical interaction and its historical context, on the ways they influenced each other and the tremendous impact they’ve had on culture since then. It chronicles the drama of their collaboration, from their initial historic partnership to the interlude of their breakup, during which each man made tremendous progress toward his personal artistic goals. And it continues with the last leg of their journey together, a time when the Miles Davis group, featuring John Coltrane, forever changed the landscape of jazz. Authors Farah Jasmine Griffin and Salim Washington examine the profound implications that the Davis/Coltrane collaboration would have for jazz and African American culture, drawing parallels to the changing standards of African American identity with their public personas and private difficulties. With vastly different personal and musical styles, the two men could not have been more different. One exemplified the tough, closemouthed cool of the fifties while the other made the transition during this time from unfocused junkie to a religious pilgrim who would inspire others to pursue spiritual enlightenment in the coming decade. Their years together mark a watershed moment, and Clawing at the Limits of Cool draws on both cultural history and precise musical detail to illuminate the importance that their collaboration would have for jazz and American history as a whole.

Harlem Nocturne

Author : Farah Jasmine Griffin
Publisher : Civitas Books
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2013-09-10
Category : History
ISBN : 9780465069972

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Harlem Nocturne by Farah Jasmine Griffin Pdf

As World War II raged overseas, Harlem witnessed a battle of its own. Brimming with creative and political energy, the neighborhood's diverse array of artists and activists took advantage of a brief period of progressivism during the war years to launch a bold cultural offensive aimed at winning democracy for all Americans, regardless of race or gender. Ardent believers in America's promise, these men and women helped to lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement before Cold War politics and anti-Communist fervor temporarily froze their dreams at the dawn of the postwar era. In Harlem Nocturne, esteemed scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin tells the stories of three black female artists whose creative and political efforts fueled this historic movement for change: choreographer and dancer Pearl Primus, composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams, and novelist Ann Petry. Like many African Americans in the city at the time, these women weren't't native New Yorkers, but the metropolis and its vibrant cultural scene gave them the space to flourish and the freedom to express their political concerns. Pearl Primus performed nightly at the legendary Cafe Society, the first racially integrated club in New York, where she debuted dances of social protest that drew on long-buried African traditions and the dances of former slaves in the South. Williams, meanwhile, was a major figure in the emergence of bebop, collaborating with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell and premiering her groundbreaking Zodiac Suite at the legendary performance space Town Hall. And Ann Petry conveyed the struggles of working-class black women to a national audience with her acclaimed novel The Street, which sold over a million copies -- a first for a female African American author. A rich biography of three artists and the city that inspired them, Harlem Nocturne captures a period of unprecedented vitality and progress for African Americans and women, revealing a cultural movement and a historical moment whose influence endures today.

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis

Author : Aaron Lefkovitz
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2018-06-20
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781498567527

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Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis by Aaron Lefkovitz Pdf

This book examines Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis as distinctively global symbols of threatening and nonthreatening black masculinity. It centers them in debates over U.S. cultural exceptionalism, noting how they have been part of the definition of jazz as a jingoistic and exclusively American form of popular culture.

Blowin' the Blues Away

Author : Travis A. Jackson
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2012-06-12
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780520951921

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Blowin' the Blues Away by Travis A. Jackson Pdf

New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the city’s jazz scene is more important now than ever before. Blowin’ the Blues Away examines how jazz has thrived in New York following its popular resurgence in the 1980s. Using interviews, in-person observation, and analysis of live and recorded events, ethnomusicologist Travis A. Jackson explores both the ways in which various participants in the New York City jazz scene interpret and evaluate performance, and the criteria on which those interpretations and evaluations are based. Through the notes and words of its most accomplished performers and most ardent fans, jazz appears not simply as a musical style, but as a cultural form intimately influenced by and influential upon American concepts of race, place, and spirituality.

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature

Author : Farah Jasmine Griffin
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780393651911

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Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin Pdf

A PBS NewsHour Best Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year in Nonfiction A brilliant scholar imparts the lessons bequeathed by the Black community and its remarkable artists and thinkers. Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase "read until you understand," a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life. Griffin has spent years rooted in the culture of Black genius and the legacy of books that her father left her. A beloved professor, she has devoted herself to passing these works and their wisdom on to generations of students. Here, she shares a lifetime of discoveries: the ideas that inspired the stunning oratory of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, the soulful music of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, the daring literature of Phillis Wheatley and Toni Morrison, the inventive artistry of Romare Bearden, and many more. Exploring these works through such themes as justice, rage, self-determination, beauty, joy, and mercy allows her to move from her aunt’s love of yellow roses to Gil Scott-Heron’s "Winter in America." Griffin entwines memoir, history, and art while she keeps her finger on the pulse of the present, asking us to grapple with the continuing struggle for Black freedom and the ongoing project that is American democracy. She challenges us to reckon with our commitment to all the nation’s inhabitants and our responsibilities to all humanity.

The Whiskey of Our Discontent

Author : Quraysh Ali Lansana,Georgia A. Popoff
Publisher : Haymarket Books
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2017-05-15
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9781608467648

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The Whiskey of Our Discontent by Quraysh Ali Lansana,Georgia A. Popoff Pdf

“[A] superb tribute . . . [an] essential collection” of essays analyzing the works of the preeminent twentieth-century poet and voice of social justice (Booklist). Winner of the Central New York Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Award Poet, educator, and social activist Gwendolyn Brooks was a singular force in American culture. The first black woman to be named United States poet laureate, Brook’s poetry, fiction, and social commentary shed light on the beauty of humanity, the distinct qualities of black life and community, and the destructive effects of racism, sexism, and class inequality. A collection of thirty essays combining critical analysis and personal reflection, The Whiskey of Our Discontent, presents essential elements of Brooks’ oeuvre—on race, gender, class, community, and poetic craft, while also examining her life as poet, reporter, mentor, sage, activist, and educator. “Gwendolyn Brooks wrote and performed her magnificent poetry for and about the Black people of Chicago, and yet it was also read with anguish, delight, and awe by white people, successive waves of immigrants, and ultimately the world.” —Bill Ayers, from the Introduction

Coltrane

Author : Ben Ratliff
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2008-10-28
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781429998628

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Coltrane by Ben Ratliff Pdf

John Coltrane left an indelible mark on the world, but what was the essence of his achievement that makes him so prized forty years after his death? What were the factors that helped Coltrane become who he was? And what would a John Coltrane look like now--or are we looking for the wrong signs? In this deftly written, riveting study, New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff answers these questions and examines the life of Coltrane, the acclaimed band leader and deeply spiritual man who changed the face of jazz music. Ratliff places jazz among other art forms and within the turbulence of American social history, and he places Coltrane not just among jazz musicians but among the greatest American artists.

The Cultural Career of Coolness

Author : Ulla Haselstein,Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit,Catrin Gersdorf,Elena Giannoulis
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2013-10-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780739173176

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The Cultural Career of Coolness by Ulla Haselstein,Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit,Catrin Gersdorf,Elena Giannoulis Pdf

Cool is a word of American English that has been integrated into the vocabulary of numerous languages around the globe. Today it is a term most often used in advertising trendy commodities, or, more generally, in promoting urban lifestyles in our postmodern age. But what is the history of the term “cool?" When has coolness come to be associated with certain modes of contemporary self-fashioning? On what grounds do certain nations claim a privilege to be recognized as “cool?" These are some of the questions that served as a starting-point for a comparative cultural inquiry which brought together specialists from American Studies and Japanese Studies, but also from Classics, Philosophy and Sociology. The conceptual grid of the volume can be described as follows: (1) Coolness is a metaphorical term for affect-control. It is tied in with cultural discourses on the emotions and the norms of their public display, and with gendered cultural practices of subjectivity. (2) In the course of the cultural transformations of modernity, the term acquired new importance as a concept referring to practices of individual, ethnic, and national difference. (3) Depending on cultural context, coolness is defined in terms of aesthetic detachment and self-irony, of withdrawal, dissidence and even latent rebellion. (4) Coolness often carries undertones of ambivalence. The situational adequacy of cool behavior becomes an issue for contending ethical and aesthetic discourses since an ethical ideal of self-control and a strategy of performing self-control are inextricably intertwined. (5) In literature and film, coolness as a character trait is portrayed as a personal strength, as a lack of emotion, as an effect of trauma, as a mask for suffering or rage, as precious behavior, or as savvyness. This wide spectrum is significant: artistic productions offer valid insights into contradictions of cultural discourses on affect-control. (6) American and Japanese cultural productions show that twentieth-century notions of coolness hybridize different cultural traditions of affect-control.

Habits of Distraction

Author : Michael Wood
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Page : 139 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2018-07-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781782845539

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Habits of Distraction by Michael Wood Pdf

Starting with Walter Benjamin's idea of 'reception in a state of distraction' and looking briefly at some antecedents for Benjamin's thinking, this book develops a working model of distraction in interpretation. It includes examples that are taken from film (Benjamin's test case), literature, music, painting and photography.

Miles Davis

Author : Clarence Bernard Henry
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2017-08-15
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781317228394

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Miles Davis by Clarence Bernard Henry Pdf

This research and information guide provides a wide range of scholarship on the life, career, and musical legacy of Miles Davis, and is compiled for an interdisciplinary audience of scholars in jazz and popular music, musicology, and cultural studies. It serves as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field.

If You Can't be Free, be a Mystery

Author : Farah Jasmine Griffin
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Blues musicians
ISBN : 9780684868080

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If You Can't be Free, be a Mystery by Farah Jasmine Griffin Pdf

The threads of Billie Holiday's mystique are unraveled in this study of a woman who needed to create art at any cost. Griffin liberates Holiday from stereotypes of black women and pries her away from the male tradition of jazz criticism while presenting Holiday's independent spirit. of photos.

Jazz and American Culture

Author : Michael Borshuk
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2023-11-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781009420198

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Jazz and American Culture by Michael Borshuk Pdf

This book explores jazz as a cultural lodestone and source of critical inquiry for over a century.

Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century

Author : Philip Freeman
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2022-01-28
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781789046335

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Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century by Philip Freeman Pdf

What does jazz mean 20 years into the 21st century? Has streaming culture rendered music literally meaningless, thanks to the removal of all context beyond the playlist? Are there any traditions left to explore? Has the destruction of the apprenticeship model (young musicians learning from their elders) changed the music irrevocably? Are any sounds off limits? How far out can you go and still call it jazz? Or should the term be retired? These questions, and many more, are answered in Ugly Beauty, as Phil Freeman digs through his own experiences and conversations with present-day players. Jazz has never seemed as vital as it does right now, and has a genuine role to play in 21st-century culture, particularly in the US and the UK.

Finding Democracy in Music

Author : Robert Adlington,Esteban Buch
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-02
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781000163612

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Finding Democracy in Music by Robert Adlington,Esteban Buch Pdf

For a century and more, the idea of democracy has fuelled musicians’ imaginations. Seeking to go beyond music’s proven capacity to contribute to specific political causes, musicians have explored how aspects of their practice embody democratic principles. This may involve adopting particular approaches to compositional material, performance practice, relationships to audiences, or modes of dissemination and distribution. Finding Democracy in Music is the first study to offer a wide-ranging investigation of ways in which democracy may thus be found in music. A guiding theme of the volume is that this takes place in a plurality of ways, depending upon the perspective taken to music’s manifold relationships, and the idea of democracy being entertained. Contributing authors explore various genres including orchestral composition, jazz, the post-war avant-garde, online performance, and contemporary popular music, as well as employing a wide array of theoretical, archival, and ethnographic methodologies. Particular attention is given to the contested nature of democracy as a category, and the gaps that frequently arise between utopian aspiration and reality. In so doing, the volume interrogates a key way in which music helps to articulate and shape our social lives and our politics.