Books like Swing Shift — picked by fans

In this utterly unique book, Small contends that music does not consist of “works” but is rather an activity called “musicking” that enacts relationships – between sounds but also among the participants, including the audience. Through musicking we learn about ourselves in relationship to others, and that relationship can be one of submission (sitting quietly listening to an orchestra) or equality (jazz musicians improvising in response to each other while the audience shouts encouragement). In Small’s view, African American music enacts democratic relationships, in which all participate as equals, and individuality is enhanced rather than hindered by group solidarity.  

Based on extensive personal interviews with some of the most impactful musicians in jazz, Dr. Monson demonstrates how the supremely interactive nature of jazz improvisation is based on the oral and aural traditions of African American vernacular speech. It therefore demonstrates the way that music, language, and other aspects of culture intrinsically form a unified complex whole.

Gilroy sees in black music a democratic “ethos” embodied in features like “call and response” and improvisation. This ethical sensibility unites disparate parts of the African diaspora, but Gilroy also insists that the music is irrevocably “hybrid” and “Creole,” connecting African-derived cultures with European and other ones as well. Gilroy argues that black music’s connective ability creates an intersubjective, democratic community which he calls an “alternative public sphere.”

Although not about jazz or even music, this rich text provides a foundation for thinking about jazz democratically and has influenced some of the above-mentioned authors. Bakhtin argues that artworks have the potential to put multiple voices in conversation with one another without resolving them to a single point of view. The epitome of such artworks was what he called, using a musical metaphor, the “polyphonic novel” pioneered by Dostoevsky. Such artworks embody and encourage a “broadening of consciousness,” an openness to the voices of others that is the essence of democracy at its best.  

I love this book because it provides essential practical knowledge of jazz arranging techniques through an in-depth analysis of 8 familiar arrangements by three of the most successful jazz arrangers, Thad Jones, Sammy Nestico, and Bob Brookmeyer.

The musical analyses are particularly valuable because of the way the author presents the analyzed scores with a condensed, concert analysis of the form and structure of the music below the score. In addition to being a successful New York arranger, Ray Wright was an accomplished educator having spent many years directing the Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media Program at the Eastman School of Music.

Ellroy at his most avant-garde. The plot is familiar territory for Ellroy fans; murder and political corruption in 1950s LA. But the experimental prose style, including the most pared-down clipped sentences, started to alienate some of his readers. Personally, I regard the book as Ellroy’s masterpiece and the experimentation is justified as it helps to deliver a lightning-fast pace.

In The Freedom Principle, Chicago music critic John Litweiler examines the AACM’s connections to the experimental styles of jazz that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Figures such as Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were important early influences on the AACM, and Litweiler shows how their work became the foundation for the even more radical advances of AACM composers and improvisers. The Freedom Principle is also replete with wonderful stories from the AACM’s first two decades, including Henry Threadgill’s account of how he created the hubkaphone, a percussion instrument made from salvaged hubcaps.

I came across this book when I decided to focus my graduate study on the history of jazz and was reading everything I could find. It’s a short book, full of incredible vintage photographs, and it taught me so much about what swing is, how music and dance are joined at the hip. How it’s all rooted in the blues. And about the link between the “Saturday Night Function” of celebrating life with music and dance, followed a few hours later by the “Sunday Morning Function,” singing and celebrating God and community in church. The two are not all that far apart. Along with Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray was probably the first author to write about jazz with a real sense of lyricism and poetry. In this book, the writing itself carries the energy and exuberance of jazz.

Any aficionado follower of our music is aware that – for all the lists of books on jazz, worldwide nowadays – in truth the very first nations to study seriously and passionately this extraordinary music called jazz were the European countries. They discovered in the 1930s the magic of those Black orchestras that entertained the wealthy cruise ships travelling from the United States to France and Europe. The local musicians welcomed their Black colleagues who became their teachers. While in the United States jazz music was considered just another form of dance music, in Europe, it was examined, dissected, catalogued, and played with great passion.

The very first world book ever published on jazz came from Belgium in 1932, called At the Frontiers of Jazz by Robert Goffin (in the French language). Followed the famous Le Hot Jazz by Panassiè in 1934, today also translated into English. The dam was… show more.

Want to write about music and musicians? You’ll need to understand the world in which they live. And if you’re writing about jazz and rock ‘n’ roll in the middle of the last century, that means a segregated, ugly world where even the most talented were treated as less than human. This was the world of the Chitlin’ Circuit. A dangerous, exciting, lawless network of nightclubs and juke joints from Memphis to New Orleans, Houston to Indianapolis, this topography spawned the popular music we love today. And nobody brings it to life like Lauterbach, whose reporting and language are as intense and musical as the era itself.