Book description
The richest place in America's musical landscape is that fertile ground occupied by jazz. Scott DeVeaux takes a central chapter in the history of jazz - the birth of bebop - and shows how our contemporary ideas of this uniquely American art form flow from that pivotal moment. At the…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Birth of Bebop as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
When I began my book I’d been out of graduate school for 25 years. I read deeply to see what I’d missed and discovered what is now called cultural history. It seems to me that a great deal of it is written to a template rather than directly from the facts as discovered. Even though DeVeaux comes out of the academic world, I get no such sense from Bop. It’s brilliant. Immaculately researched and nicely written, it addresses the extraordinary transition of Black music from entertainment-driven (however artful) to art (however entertaining). It’s an important story, and DeVeaux tells…
From Dennis' list on jazz and the story it tells about America.
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