Review of Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology

abstract: This thesis examines the jazz jam session’s function in the constitution of jazz scenes as well as the identities of the musicians who participate in them. By employing ritual and performance studies theories of liminality, I demonstrate ways in which jazz musicians, jam sessions, and other social structures are mobilized and transformed during their social and musical interactions. I interview three prominent members of the jazz scene in the greater Phoenix area, and incorporate my experience as a professional jazz musician in the same scene, to conduct a contextually and socially embedded analysis in order to draw broader conclusions about jam sessions in general. In this analysis I refer to other ethnomusicologists who research improvisation, jazz in ritual context, and interactions, such as Ingrid Monson, Samuel Floyd, Travis Jackson, and Paul Berliner, as well as ideas proposed by phenomenologically adjacent thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Karen Barad. This thesis attempts to contribute to current jam session research in fields such as ethnomusicology and jazz studies by offering a perspective on jam sessions based on phenomenology and process philosophy, concluding that the jam session is an essential mechanism in the ongoing social and musical developments of jazz musicians and their scene. I also attempt to continue and develop the discourse surrounding theories of liminality in performance and ritual studies by underscoring the web of relations in social structures that are brought into contact with one another during the liminal performances of their acting agents. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Music 2019

abstract: This project uses fourteen transcriptions of Pete Fountain’s solos as examples to demonstrate traditional jazz clarinet techniques and language in terms of motives, patterns, and a variety of articulations. This project also includes guidelines on how to practice jazz improvisation as well as how to apply Fountain’s techniques and jazz language to one’s own improvisation. Though there are countless musicians who have made remarkable contributions to the development of the jazz language, Pete Fountain’s unique style is particularly worthy of study due to his massive media presence, effortless playing techniques, unique tone quality, and showmanship throughout his career. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2019

The vibraphone has been associated with improvisation since the beginning of the twentieth century. There have been many documents designed to guide students in both technical studies on the vibraphone and improvisational skills. This document includes three instructional courses dedicated to the teaching of those skills. It uses only materials found on the website vibesworkshop.com, which is curated by Philadelphia-based vibist Tony Miceli. These courses are designed for undergraduate college students through advanced amateurs or professionals. Many college curricula include insufficient vibraphone studies or do not include them at all. Currently, most college percussion studio professors specialize in areas other than vibraphone. Because of their lack of experience, professors supplement their teaching methods with materials that approach vibraphone in a subpar manner. Such materials instruct students to internalize and regurgitate bland materials instead of creating and developing their own ideas. The vibesworkshop.com courses aim to assist those professors and students by replacing older instructional materials with a system that cultivates students' affinity with the vibraphone, allowing them to continue contributing to the online vibes community after participation in these courses.

acase@tulane.edu

ABSTRACT This dissertation examines jazz in the life of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), from its founding after the end of World War II to its dissolution with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Challenging the established scholarly view that jazz was an art form whose primary dynamic consisted of opposition to the state, this dissertation argues that jazz was in fact a musical genre that enjoyed considerable state attention and in some cases support. Over the 40 years of the GDR’s history, party leaders variously legislated, controlled, repressed, encouraged, and ultimately sponsored jazz activities, recognizing throughout these years that jazz bore a critical relation to Marxist ideology with respect to its origins in racial identity and class-based oppression: this history, then, reflects the evolving struggle by socialist authorities to define this relationship and manage it accordingly. In order to make this argument, this dissertation examines previously unexamined material from a variety of sources in the GDR, including interviews from former residents and jazz actors, private documents such as diaries and letters, official government policies, and records of state surveillance. It provides the first full-length assessment of jazz over the entire lifespan of the GDR, dividing this history into four key phases and documenting the evolution of jazz from its initial use as a tool of re-education immediately following World War II to its emergence as a state-sanctioned art form in the 1980s. In sum, this dissertation argues that jazz can no longer be seen in such a simplistic way as scholars generally contend: rather, this research concludes that jazz must be understood as an art form in continuous and evolving dialogue with, not pure opposition to, the state. / acase@tulane.edu

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to provide insight into affective learning during seventh-grade students' early experiences of improvising and spontaneously creating melodies in jazz style. As data collection progressed, the instructor's focus of engaging students to learn improvisation through anxiety-based affective strategies became the transforming factor of this qualitative study. Subsequently, the overarching research question evolved into: What is the nature of affective teaching and learning during students' early experiences of improvising and spontaneously creating melodies in jazz style, where the instructor intentionally incorporates affective learning experiences using Wisconsin's Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance model? Supplementary research questions included: (a) How does the teacher navigate teaching and learning experiences that target anxiety during the process of learning to improvise in the jazz band rehearsal? (b) How do the students engage with the instructor's targeted teaching strategies in the jazz band setting? (c) How do the students perceive the implementation of teaching and learning experiences created by the teacher? The seventh-grade jazz band director and six seventh-grade jazz students (three girls and three boys with one set of triplets) from a Midwest middle school music program participated. Data collection occurred during the 2011 - 2012 school year. Data included three semi-structured interviews, rehearsal observations over four months, and the instructor's Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance (CMP) teaching plan. Using MacIntyre, Potter, and Burns' (2012) socio-educational model for music motivation, an adaptation of Robert Gardner's socio-educational model of motivation in second language acquisition, I applied the model's categories--(a) anxiety, (b) integrativeness, (c) attitudes toward the learning situation, (d) motivation, and (e) perceived competence--to my data. Because MacIntyre, et al. (2012) identified anxiety as an outcome that significantly and negatively predicted perceived competence through their quantitative study, I analyzed the instructor's teaching and learning strategies that targeted anxiety and the students' perceptions of their own anxiety while learning to solo improvise. The findings in this study revealed how an instructor integrated anxiety-inducing experiences in a manner that positively influenced student motivation. The progression began with game-like solo improvisation experiences and developed into unanticipated improvised solos assigned by the instructor. By incorporating teaching and learning strategies that incrementally increased anxiety within the learning situation context, anxiety as a negative outcome (MacIntyre's et al., 2012) transformed into positive experiences. The students gradually became comfortable with the emotion of anxiety, began to take risks and, ultimately, developed more interest to continue learning and improvising.

Experiences as a composer and performer in Australia involve a number of significant collaborations with musicians from diverse cultures and musical backgrounds. The musical result incorporates a number of world music elements in the form of drones, rhythms and the use of instruments such as modified guitars and the tabla. But it is distinctly different in content and approach from the generic term, World music, because it deals almost exclusively with music traditions where improvisation is central to collaborative processes. The application of the term ‘intercultural improvisation’ is a more useful descriptor of the process in which musicians from diverse backgrounds cross the boundaries of their music and step into ao zone of experimentation. This is explored through composition and improvisation that cross musical boundaries / Master of Arts (Hons.)

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In Culture and Imperialism, Said illustrates that we have no "autonomous cultural forms," but rather "impure" ones that are the products of historically "discrepant experiences." American culture has an interesting relationship with the history of imperialism. The Europeans that settled the U.S. imported slave labor to assist in the growth of the new nation and this practice ironically "hybridized" American culture despite institutionalized segregation of the races, mixing disparate cultural ideas in a common social location. Said's theory fits an analysis of jazz in America since the music was instigated by the enslavement of native Africans, West Indians and inhabitants of the Caribbean, and the tensions this produced between traditional European and non-European cultural experiences are emblematic of its evolution into a popular form of music. Concomitant to its popularity in the later 1930s was a scholarly interest in the history of jazz, which culminated in narratives ascribing to it a recognizable "American" history and a set of familiar European aesthetic characteristics, neglecting the "discrepant experiences" of jazz history. During the 1940s, some artists were working with musical ideas that expanded the innovative spaces left open by those preceding them. Criticized for playing "anti-jazz," they produced music for audiences who were late to realize the significance of their contributions. Among them was John Coltrane, a saxophonist who took these controversial approaches into unconventional musical territories. Similar to the shortsighted criticisms weighed against his mentors, critics regarding Coltrane neglected the ways in which his music is important as an expression of the fundamental power struggles that are at the heart of American culture. I analyze several of Coltrane's recordings to illustrate how they are artifacts which can be studied for evidence of the tendency in narratives to preclude the "hybridity" important to the history of jazz. My focus is on the liner notes that accompany the recordings, which I read "contrapuntally" with other forces in their production in order to discuss the tensions between economics, communication and representation that are integral to an understanding of Coltrane's music. / Graduation date: 1999