Jazz Cadence of American Culture

Robert G. O'Meally is Zora Neale Hurston Professor of American Literature at Columbia University.

• What Is Jazz? Introduction Jazz-the Word, by Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner Forward Motion: An Interview with Benny Golson, by Benny Golson and Jim Merod James A. Snead Black Music as an Art Form, by Olly Wilson Remembering Thelonious Monk: When the Music Was Happening Then He'd Get Up and Do His Little Dance, by Quincy Troupe and Ben Riley Improvisation and the Creative Process, by Albert Murray One Nation Under a Groove; or, the United States of Jazzocracy Introduction What's American About America, by John Kouwenhoven Jazz and the White Critic, by Amiri Baraka Duke Ellington Music Like a Big Hot Pot of Good Gumbo, by Wynton Marsalis and Robert G. O'Meally Blues to Be Constitutional: A Long Look at the Wild Wherefores of Our Democratic Lives as Symbolized in the Making of Rhythm and Tune, by Stanley Crouch The Ellington Programme, by Barry Ulanov Jazz Lines and Colors: The Sound I Saw Introduction Art History and Black Memory: Toward a Blues Aesthetic, by Richard J. Powell Skyscrapers, Airplanes, and Airmindedness: The Necessary Angel, by Ann Douglas Calvin Tomkins Celebration, by Sherry Turner DeCarava Black Visual Intonation, by Arthur Jafa Improvisation in Jazz, by Bill Evans Jazz is a Dance: Jazz art in Motion Introduction Jazz Music in Motion: Dancers and Big Bands, by Jacqui Malone Characteristics of Negro Expression, by Zora Neale Hurston African Art and Motion, by Robert Farris Thompson Be Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire, by Michael Eric Dyson Noise Taps a Historic Route to Joy, by Margo Jefferson Tell the Story: Jazz, History, Memory Introduction Pulp and Circumstance: The Story of Jazz in High Places, by Gerald Early Jazz and American Culture, by Lawrence W. Levine The Golden Age, Time Past, by Ralph Ellison Double V, Double-Time: Bebop's Politics of Style, by Eric Lott It Jus Be's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues, by Hazel V. Carby Other: From Noun to Verb, by Nathaniel Mackey Writing the Blues, Writing Jazz Introduction The Blues as Folk Poetry, by Sterling A. Brown Richard Wright's Blues, by Ralph Ellison Preface to Three Plays, by August Wilson The Function of the Heroic Image, by Albert Murray The Seemingly Eclipsed Window of Form: James Weldon Johnson's Prefaces, by Brent Edwards Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol, by Nathaniel Mackey

O'Meally's volume is the first to focus exclusively on the rich interdisciplinary commentary that jazz has inspired over the decades... Impressive and thoughtfully assembled. -- Mark Tucker Jazz Times An important resource for understanding how such hard-to-define aspects as 'hipness' and 'soulfulness' shape a culture and its most characteristic forms of artistic expression. -- Jerome Klinkowitz American Literary Scholarship An innovative approach to understanding jazz within a larger social context. Library Journal Both a celebration and an analysis of jazz, this massive omnibus of essays, interviews, riffs, reminiscences, lectures and meditations examines the impact of jazz on American culture from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s black arts revolution... Outstanding. Publishers Weekly There is much that is ducal among the 35 wide-ranging essays collected in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. Billboard O'Meally has assembled an impressive anthology that achieves an almost synesthetic rendering of jazz...the best designed reference book on the topic to date. It should be in every library. Choice The Jazz Cadence of American Culture is a celebration of jazz that goes beyond the usual jazz history, carefully and informatively examining the impact of jazz on other arts, politics, and daily life. The Bookwatch A monument to a grand and vital intellectual tradition that we cannot afford to neglect as jazz enters its second century--and as that great interdisciplinary, interpretive synthesis of jazz scholarship finally gets written. Notes If race keeps us apart, jazz brings us together, as Ralph Ellison pointed out when he called American life 'jazz shaped.' The 35 essays in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, edited by Robert G. O'Meally, testify that Ellison was on to something. The Washington Post Book World