The Jazz Cadence of American Culture

Edited by Robert G. O'Meally

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

Related Subjects

• American Literature
• Art, Music, Architecture, & Photography
• Popular Culture
• Race and Ethnicity

About the Author

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

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