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Riffs and Choruses: A New Jazz Anthology (Bayou)

Riffs and Choruses: A New Jazz Anthology (Bayou)

by Andrew Clark (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2001

    $3.25
Synopsis

Riffs and Choruses is a comprehensive new anthology of writing about jazz with edited selections on jazz origins, history, culture, style, myth, race, and related areas of language, literature, and film. The collection provides a more extensive range and topic focus than any other anthology in the area and is the ideal complement to jazz histories for students of music, jazz, and American and popular culture. A carefully prepared anthology and a suitable source book for students, this volume's quality and range of selections will also appeal to jazz buffs and the general reader.>

$3.25

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 512
 Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Published: 01 Mar 2001
ISBN 10: 0826447562
ISBN 13: 9780826447562

Media Reviews

The scope and diversity of the book are astonishing. It instantly finds a place as an invaluable research tool, but at the same time as a delicious field for fascinating browsing. Gene Lees, best-selling author, and editor of Jazzletter
Wide-ranging and exhaustive .There is lots of good material here. To paraphrase Helen Gurley Brown, you can never be too rich or too thin, or have too many books about jazz.
-Booklist, May 1, 2001
Riffs And Choruses doesn't have such a glaring imbalance, and now challenges Robert Gottlieb's Reading Jazz - which does - as the best anthology of jazz writing. It's an intelligent, insightful selection, though it goes for the snap-shot approach of shorter extracts from lots
of writers, leaving you wishing for more from many of them.
Thematically divided into ten Riffs and ten Choruses, the Riffs by the
editor comment on his selections. Themes range from Jazz and
Definition, Critics, Improvisation and Culture to Jazz in Literature and
in Film. An anthology like this is useful because many of the sources
are out of print. The usual critical suspects such as Amiri Baraka and
Scott DeVeaux are well-represented. And from Jelly-Roll Morton's
braggadocio to Art Pepper's self-lacerating confessional - quite a
contrast in self-esteem - there are the authentic voices of the
musicians themselves. Morton is incredible: I, myself, happened to be
the creator [of jazz] in the year 1902...It may be because of my
contributions, that gives me authority to know what is correct of
incorrect. I guess I am 100 years ahead of my time...
In the section on Jazz and film, Hollywood's sanitising and racist
stereotyping is devastatingly analysed by Krin Gabbard and Kenneth
Spence. The debate continues with the artistic and relative commercial
successes of the last two decades, Bertrand Tavernier's 'Round Midnight
and Clint Eastwood's Bird. In a lengthy interview, Tavernier comments
on how he dealt with the bizarre, enigmatic way jazz musicians relate
to each other. They make Pinter's characters sound like introspective
over-explainers. He also discusses how his camera moves in the music
sequences echoed the harmonic structure of the compositions. But
Francis Davis gives both films excessively short shrift. This section makes for an especially rewarding conclusion to a valuable anthology. AN