100 Books Like The Mandorla Letters

As a scholar as well as performer of the African American creative improvised music usually called jazz, my attunement to this art form resonates with its historico-cultural matrix as much as with the sounds themselves.  These books distinguish themselves for being well-researched and rigorous.  They are the real deal, doing justice to the heart as well as the intellect of this  art form.  

I am a musician and an author. Many of my mentors and collaborators are members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a collective organization of African American composers and performers founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1965. Their farthest-reaching innovation, a form known as “creative music,” transformed the fields of jazz and experimental music by breaking down the barriers that—prior to the advent of the AACM—had separated the disciplines of composition and improvisation. My book Sound Experiments and the other books on the list give readers new insights into the members of the AACM and their groundbreaking music.

I am a musician and an author. Many of my mentors and collaborators are members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a collective organization of African American composers and performers founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1965. Their farthest-reaching innovation, a form known as “creative music,” transformed the fields of jazz and experimental music by breaking down the barriers that—prior to the advent of the AACM—had separated the disciplines of composition and improvisation. My book Sound Experiments and the other books on the list give readers new insights into the members of the AACM and their groundbreaking music.

I am a musician and an author. Many of my mentors and collaborators are members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a collective organization of African American composers and performers founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1965. Their farthest-reaching innovation, a form known as “creative music,” transformed the fields of jazz and experimental music by breaking down the barriers that—prior to the advent of the AACM—had separated the disciplines of composition and improvisation. My book Sound Experiments and the other books on the list give readers new insights into the members of the AACM and their groundbreaking music.

I grew up hearing jazz thanks to my dad, a big swing fan who allegedly played Duke Ellington for me in the crib. My father couldn’t believe it when I developed a taste for “modern jazz,” bebop, even Coltrane, but he never threw me out. Fifty years later I still love to play jazz on drums and listen to as much as I can. But along the way, I realized the world might be better served by me writing about the music than trying to make a living performing it. I had the great privilege of studying jazz in graduate school and wrote about big-band jazz for my first book, which helped launch my career.

I like to believe that my own characters struggle with being human. They struggle with their bitterness, their relations to others (or lack thereof), and their unresolved guilt. What happens when guilt is left unresolved? What happens when someone enters into a state of self-imposed isolation? These are topics I enjoy exploring in my work. I’ve enjoyed writing since I was a child. My mother deserves all the credit. At bedtime, rather than reading bedtime stories to me from a book, she would make up a story and then ask me to do the same. This helped me to develop a lifelong love for reading and writing.

I have been fascinated by James Ellroy’s life and writing since I first discovered it as a lonely teenager on a rainswept family holiday. He went through dark times; the unsolved murder of his mother and his subsequent struggles with addiction. But how he overcame this to become one of America’s greatest writers is an inspiring story and has inspired me to get through my own personal turmoil. Indeed, many Ellroy readers will attest to how his life story and writing helped them overcome their struggles. Now as Ellroy’s biographer, I am continually drawn back to his work. Reading just a few pages allows me to contemplate what Ellroy calls ‘the Wonder’.

Music has always spoken to my innermost being, and coming of age in the late 1960s, I’ve been drawn to the quest for justice and equality in politics.  In my undergraduate studies at Berkeley, the late political theorist Michael Rogin, who interpreted Moby Dick as a parable of 19th Century race relations, taught me that my two interests could be combined.  As a professor of Political Science I’ve written books and articles that explore music’s ability to express ideas about politics, race, and ethnicity in sometimes unappreciated ways. 

I started buying records 70 years ago. I worked in a car factory for a decade, then landed a job in publishing, having written a couple of magazine articles, and finally got a chance to do what I was born to do: write about my favorite subject. Music has been the most important thing in the world to me ever since I heard the hits of the 1940s on the radio, playing on the kitchen floor while my mother did the ironing. I believe music is a mystery, more important than we can know, in every way: intellectual, psychological, emotional, philosophical. That is why it is such a big business, even if the business itself is often less than salubrious.

I’ve been the pianist for the Heath Brothers and the Jimmy Heath Quartet for over 20 years. Since moving to NYC in 1996, I’ve had the honor of playing and recording with an assortment of jazz luminaries including Charles McPherson, Roberta Gambarini, Lewis Nash, Winard Harper, Rodney Green, Michael Rodriguez, David Wong, among many others. During that time, I’ve also been actively involved in teaching, arranging, and writing, having three books published by Chuck Sher since 2013, An Approach to Comping Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and Introduction to Jazz Piano, A Deep Dive.