Saying Something
Subtitle: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press
Published: March 15, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 261
ISBN-13: 9780226534787
Subjects: Black studies; Blues; Cultural studies; Music; Pop Arts / Pop Culture; USA; Genres & Styles - Jazz; Music / Jazz; Instruction & Study - Techniques; History and criticism; Improvisation (Music); Jazz
First sentence: In 1989, when I was living in Brooklyn, New York, I began the process of presenting myself to musicians, radio producers, friends, booking managers, and others in the role of ethnomusicologist and academic.
Description: This fresh look at the neglected rhythm section in jazz ensembles shows that the improvisational interplay among drums, bass, and piano is just as innovative, complex, and spontaneous as the solo. Ingrid Monson juxtaposes musicians' talk and musical examples to ask how musicians go about "saying something" through music in a way that articulates identity, politics, and culture.

Through interviews with Jaki Byard, Richard Davis, Sir Roland Hanna, Billy Higgins, Cecil McBee, and others, she develops a perspective on jazz improvisation that has "interactiveness" at its core: in the creation of music through improvisational interaction, in the shaping of social communities and networks through music, and in the development of cultural meanings and ideologies that inform the interpretation of jazz in twentieth-century African-American and American cultural life.

Replete with original musical transcriptions, this broad view of jazz improvisation and its emotional and cultural power will have a wide audience among jazz fans, ethnomusicologists, and anthropologists.