Jazz: The First 100 Years (with Audio CD)

Book Description

Explore the development of jazz music with JAZZ: THE FIRST 100 YEARS with accompanying audio CD! From its nineteenth-century roots in blues and ragtime, through swing and bebop, to fusion and contemporary jazz styles, this music text gives you a true feel for the vibrant, ever-changing sound of jazz. Learning is made easy with The Audio Jazz Primer CD that allows you to hear the key terms, basic music concepts, and jazz instruments discussed in the book. Key terms, topics for discussion, and the jazz basics appendix help you master difficult concepts.

Customer Reviews:

About Jazz.......2006-03-25

This is a great book. It is filling in the gaps of what I already know about jazz. It is also illustrated very well. B. Hall

filled with valuable knowledge.......2004-02-23

this book is an excellent source of information for anyone interested in not only tracing the history of jazz music, but also for anyone interested in learning the different movements, styles and influences of jazz music with sociopolitical and historical references. The CD is an asset to understanding the forms.

Average customer rating:

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST
Extremely Thorough History of Jazz!!
Pure pleasure
Correction
Sloppy, Gary, Very Sloppy

Visions of Jazz: The First Century
Gary Giddins
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0195132416

Amazon.com

As Gary Giddins makes clear in his introduction to Visions of Jazz, he's not attempting to draw a canonical line in the sand: "Everyone has his or her vision of jazz, and this is mine." Modesty aside, though, it's hard to imagine a critic with a more encyclopedic grasp of detail, or a more lucid, funny, and appropriately musical style. Weighing in at almost 700 pages, the magnificent Visions of Jazz consists of 70 profiles, beginning with a dual portrait of blackface pioneers Bert Williams and Al Jolson and concluding with the klezmer-infatuated clarinetist Don Byron. These sketches mingle musical, biographical, and cultural insights--indeed, one of Giddins's great gifts is to break down the very distinction between such categories. Yet Giddins is hardly an unhinged generalizer, and he loves to zero in on a particular chorus and disclose its charms on a bar-by-bar basis. The pinnacle of this musical microscopy occurs in his Dizzy Gillespie essay, with an almost biblical exegesis of 64 measures from the 1989 version of "Salt Peanuts." But even in these nuts-and-bolts passages, Giddins is always accessible, combining precisely the right proportions of edification and old-fashioned entertainment. The only problem with Visions of Jazz, in fact, is that it makes you so itchy and impatient to hear the music. Fortunately, Giddins has taken care of the problem by curating a companion disc called (you guessed it) Visions of Jazz. This isn't, it should be said, a predictable journey from one jazz milestone to the next. Instead he's assembled a delightfully idiosyncratic anthology, which testifies to the music's irresistible pulse and all-American parentage. --James Marcus

Book Description

Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the grace and wit that have endeared his prose to Village Voice readers for decades, Giddins also widens the scope of jazz to include such crucial American musicians as Irving Berlin, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Sinatra, all primarily pop performers who are often dismissed by fans and critics as mere derivatives of the true jazz idiom. And he devotes an entire quarter of this landmark volume to young, still-active jazz artists, boldly expanding the horizons of jazz--and charting and exploring the music's influences as no other book has done.

Customer Reviews:

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST.......2007-05-14

Au unforgettable journey through the century written by one of the most open-minded and talented jazz journalist of our time! A MUST and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING!!!

Extremely Thorough History of Jazz!!.......2006-06-25

The main reason I read this book is because I have become a Billie Holiday fan in the last 2 years and up till now not a true lover of jazz. This book caught my attention when I did a search for books on Billie. There was about 6 to 7 pages on her but I never imagined how long this book would be! Not a bad thing though. I know it took me a long time to read as it is SO detailed and thorough. It was truly an education for me and I have a much greater apprecation for jazz! Gary Giddens is an exceptional author and is obviously a veteran writer and really knows his stuff! A truly well written book. Highly recommended for lovers of jazz and those of us who are just beginning to have a love for it!

Pure pleasure.......2006-04-17

Gary Giddins was only a name to me until Ken Burns's JAZZ series aired on PBS in early 2001. While I appreciated all the commentators in that remarkable series, it was the observations of Giddins that I began to eagerly anticipate night after night. He made me SEE music that I knew and loved but whose structure and complexity I had often been unable to grasp. Despite some jazz appreciation classes in college and haphazard collecting of old jazz records over the years, I had not gotten much past the "I know what I like" phase. His passion for music I was less familiar with led me on some rewarding treasure hunts.

I bought "Visions of Jazz" shortly after the conclusion of the Burns miniseries. I devoured it. I have turned to it time and again in the intervening years. Many critics overanalyze their subjects to the point where they suck the life out of the very thing they're attempting to illuminate. Giddins does not have that problem. His prose sings and swings with the elan of his beloved Sarah Vaughan.

Giddins's re-examination of the music of Ellington and Armstrong may seem at first blush to be superfluous; you may think you know all there is to know on that subject. But he proves that even the most accessible jazz figures and their music evolve from and operate within a such a complex idiom that periodic re-evaluation is necessary, and, if approached with respect for both the subject and the reader -- which Giddins has above all else -- it is most welcome indeed.

There are chapters in "Visions of Jazz" about musicians with whom I was completely unfamiliar. But I took a chance and read them, and wound up buying some Matthew Shipp recordings. It's that kind of book. You can take out as much as you put in.

As much as I appreciate Giddins's bone-deep love of jazz, his scholarship and wry humor, I also respect him for his fearlessness in making a case for, say, the inscrutable Cecil Taylor. But I am probably a big fan of someone who leaves Gary Giddins cold, and that's OK. The jazz tent is big enough for us all.

Why not 5 stars? The only "perfect" thing in jazz is Ellington's "Just a-Sittin' and a-Rockin."

Correction.......2005-11-21

To the previous reviewer: Mr Giddens was RIGHT. Coltrane's Impressions was based on BOTH pieces of music.

Sloppy, Gary, Very Sloppy.......2005-11-20

The source of Coltrane's 'Impressions' was (Morton) Gould's "Pavanne" and not Ravel's "Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte" Giddins, however, confuses them on page 484. (After all, what's a pavane among friends?)

As someone who has spent a career reviewing documents and spreadsheets, I have a simple philosophy: if there is one error, I assume that there are others. This cost Gary a star.

Average customer rating:

A superb overview of jazz
Great Book that covers History
Thorough and Enjoyable!

Jazz: The First Century
Tad Lathrop
Manufacturer: William Morrow
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0688170749
Release Date: 2000-04-25

Book Description

It's been called America's classical music. The infinite art. The heart and soul of all popular music. But whatever the label, jazz has played an immense cultural role worldwide, opening up vast vistas of musical creativity, generating unforgettable performances, and giving us such iconic artists as Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.

Jazz: The First Century marks the passage of the music's first hundred years by bringing together text and art in a rich, illustrated chronicle that opens up the vibrant world of jazz to everyone.

Jazz: The First Century is edited by John Edward Hasse, Curator of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution, leading a writing team of today's finest and most widely respected jazz authorities. Their compelling essays are complemented by an engrossing and sophisticated design packed with more than 300 images, including vintage photographs, sheet music covers, rare album jackets, posters, and more.

From the beginning, jazz offered a new kind of musical expression perfectly suited to the innovation and rapid pace of life in the twentieth century. Jazz: The First Century vividly illuminates the circumstances of the music's birth, examines the contributions of its most consequential musicians, and brings to life its many pleasures, from the emotionalism of early blues and the infectious syncopation of ragtime to the exhilaration of 1930s big-band swing and the awesome musical flights of bebop-from the understated sophistication of cool jazz and the boundless expressiveness of free improvisation to the electrifying power of fusion and the potent grooves of jazz-rap and hip-hop.

In addition, seventy concise sidebars focus on important songs, key landmarks and personalities, and conventions of jazz performance and composition. They also examine the confluence of jazz with radio and television and with such art forms as film, painting, literature, poetry, classical music, and dance.

Here also are hundreds of recommended recordings-selections based on opinions gathered in an international survey of historians, educators, critics, musicians, and broadcasters.

For newcomers and aficionados alike, Jazz: The First Century offers a wealth of enlightening information. It's an essential and comprehensive overview of the music Tony Bennett calls "Amrica's greatest contribution to the world...a celebration of life itself."

Customer Reviews:

A superb overview of jazz.......2004-11-21

This book provides a superb overview of jazz, written by 28 leading experts. I have been listening to jazz for years, but have longed for a good, balanced, interesting overview of the subject that hits all the highlights. This one does that, and more. The 300 illustrations and the judicious, informative captions are worth the price of the book alone. Each chapter ends with a list of ten essential CDs, and there are more guides to listening in the back of the book. I learned a lot from the many sidebars, too, such as "Women in Jazz," "Jazz Standards," "Jazz in the Movies." A handsomely designed, great read!

Great Book that covers History.......2002-09-29

now this is the kind of Book that I call must reading because it covers a Form of Music&the People that molded&brought it to Life in a Rich Classy way.it explores so many areas&brings it all back to home without missing a beat.this Book is a History Lesson on so many things.Jazz is a Wide range topic all onto itself&this Book Explores that&so much more.

Thorough and Enjoyable!.......2000-08-06

This textbook covers basically all aspects of jazz. From the music's multi-cultured roots to the swing revival and every era in between, Jazz: The First Century presents a comprehensive timeline of ground breaking musicians(famous and obscure), and their most memorable compositions and recordings. The book shows how history influenced jazz, and likewise how jazz influenced history. It brings alive the original brass bands in New Orleans; the heyday of the prohibition years in Chicago, including Joe "King" Oliver's band showcasing Louis Armstrong on cornet; the development of styles such as swing, bebop, and fusion; and the rest of the world's interpretations of the music that grew up in America. I recommend this book to jazz enthusiasts who want a biography of the music, musicians who need a reference to classic jazz recordings, or anyone even remotely interested in recent music history. Did I mention that there is a list of key jazz albums? Also, a great index and many images!

Amazon.com

In this comprehensive examination of Latin jazz, John Storm Roberts, British-born, U.S.-based music journalist and author of Black Music of Two Worlds and The Latin Tinge, details the diversity and history of this often overlooked genre. Writing for the novice, Roberts outlines the presence of Afro-Hispanic rhythms and musical forms in African-American jazz: exploring turn-of-the-century New Orleans, where the Cuban Habanera and Argentinean tango rhythms were synthesized into the ragtime of Scott Joplin and the jazz of Jelly Roll Morton in the early 1920s; the creation of the mambo by bassist Israel "Cachao" Lopez and the incorporation of the conga drum by Chano Pozo into Dizzy Gillespie's big band and bebop combos in the '30s and '40s; and the popularization of the samba by American saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim with the 1960s hit, "The Girl from Ipanema."

In detailing the history of this Pan-American musical mélange, Roberts's definitions of key Latin jazz terms are to the point and free of music-critic jargon. For example, he describes the 3/2 or 2/3 rhythmic pattern known as the Cuban clave as "a simplification, under a Euro-Latin influence, of a common West African organizing concept that consists of a regular total number of sounds and silences, usually carried on a bell." Roberts also introduces the reader to the many Caribbean, Central, and South American musicians who have moved and grooved the U.S. for decades, including Puerto Rican pianists and percussionists Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, and Jerry Gonzalez; the Argentinean nuevo tango creator Astor Piazzolla; the Cubano conguero Mongo Santamaria, and the Swedish-American vibraphonist Cal Tjader. Throughout this well-researched volume, Roberts reveals how the artistic contributions of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking neighbors have enriched American music, and impresses upon us the fact that "the Latin tinge was one of the most crucial elements in the universality of jazz." --Eugene Holley Jr.

Book Description

For the first time, author John Storm Roberts tells the full story of the great Latin jazz musicians including Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Astrid Gilberto, Chick Corea, and their lasting impact on American jazz. Richly illustrated with photographs, this book helps explain the phenomenal growth of Latin-influenced popular music.

Customer Reviews:

A history of surprising, delightful musical connections.......2002-11-11

A masterful work by John Storm Roberts, whose early-'70s books on Latin American music were "world music" landmarks, and whose Original Music record label has reissued some of the most precious African and Latin American popular and traditional music one is ever likely to hear. The introductory chapters are a little slow-going, as Roberts twists and gyrates to avoid anticipated critical jabs. His qualifications and defensiveness may make sense to enthnomusicological insiders, but to the average reader, they seem fairly unnecessary, or at least a bit hard to follow. After that, though, the book picks up steam and is quite captivating. The main point of contention is the fascinating (and convincing) idea that *_Latin American_* influences were every bit as present at the inception of American jazz music as were African ones. In Roberts' world, the term "latin jazz" isn't exactly redundant, but it is misleading: Latin Jazz didn't spring forth in the 'Forties and 'Fifties out of whole cloth. Rather, Latin American influences on North American musicians can be found as far back as the Antebellum period, and are present at all the major junctures of jazz history. In addition to combing through historical records (such as newspapers, journals, and the records sheet music publishers), Roberts offers a clear critical narrative of the cross-pollination of Latin American dance music and Afro-European jazz. He touches on the major trends and significant collaborations of the last 120 years: ragtime, the tango, the rumba, the thunderous New York "CuBop" scene of the 1940s, and of course the bossa nova craze of the 1960s, and the gradual formalization of "Latin Jazz" as a genre. Along the way he sheds some light on famous artists such as Machito, Dizzy Gillespie and Tito Puente, as well as dimly-remembered pioneers like Antonio Machin, Don Azpiazu and gives favorable nods towards big banders who "got" the drift of the oncoming tide of Latin American crossover. Along with Sue Steward's "Musica!," this book can go a long way to fill in the gaps for folks who are new to the sound, as well as those who want to dig deep down. Recommended!!

Good Info Source.......2001-12-14

While I can't say I'd recommend this book for a cover-to-cover read, it proved an excellent aid during my research of Latin Jazz this year. First of all, the chapters go in order by year, so you can really feel like you're progressing through time, as jazz evolves before your eyes. Next, it tends to focus on jazz itself, and then go into the big latin stars, their recordings, etc. That's actually one thing I didn't like, and that kept it from being an actual book to read through - it just talked too much about people that I personally knew nothing about. (Also, it would have been nice if the definitions of some of the basic vocabulary had been discussed. If you're into this, you'll probably be fine, but when trying to explain this to the 'typical guy on the street', definitions are helpful.) So, all in all, my recommendation is that if you're looking for actual information on Latin Jazz, this is good. It's just not something I could sit down with for a while.

Crabby, dense, but richly informative, too!.......2001-08-10

A masterful work by John Storm Roberts, whose early-'70s books on Latin American music were "world music" landmarks, and whose Original Music record label has reissued some of the most precious African and Latin American popular and traditional music one is ever likely to hear. The introductory chapters are slow-going, as Roberts twists and gyrates to avoid anticipated critical jabs. His qualifications and defensiveness may make sense to enthnomusicological insiders, but to the average reader, they seem fairly unnecessary, or at least a bit hard to follow. After that, though, the book picks up steam and is quite captivating. The main point of contention is the fascinating (and convincing) idea that Latin American influences were every bit as present at the inception of American jazz music as were African ones. In Roberts' world, the term "latin jazz" isn't exactly redundant, but it is misleading: Latin Jazz didn't spring forth in the 'Forties and 'Fifties out of whole cloth. Rather, Latin American influences on North American musicians can be found as far back as the Antebellum period, and are present at all the major junctures of jazz history. In addition to combing through historical records (such as newspapers, journals, and the records sheet music publishers), Roberts offers a clear critical narrative of the cross-pollination of Latin American dance music and Afro-European jazz. He touches on the major trends and significant collaborations of the last 120 years: ragtime, the tango, the rumba, the thunderous New York "CuBop" scene of the 1940s, and of course the Brazilian bossa nova craze of the 1960s, and the gradual formalization of "Latin Jazz" as a genre. Along the way he sheds some light on famous artists such as Machito, Dizzy Gillespie and Tito Puente, as well as dimly-remembered pioneers like Antonio Machin, Don Azpiazu and gives favorable nods towards big banders who "got" the drift of the oncoming tide of Latin American crossover. Along with Sue Steward's "Musica!," this book can go a long way to fill in the gaps for folks who are new to the sound, as well as those who want to dig deep down. Recommended!!

Great Book.......2000-11-04

This is a great book both someone like me who knows little about the subject or for the music scholar.

The Seminal Work on Latin Jazz.......2000-10-28

North America has long pertained to Latin-America as well as Anglo-America: large areas of the country were colonized by Spaniards before English-speakers arrived. Today, the United States is the fifth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, with a Latino population estimated from 22 to 30 million. John Storm Roberts's brilliant earlier work demonstrates a pervasive "Latin tinge" in North American music. This new book meticulously documents the history of Latin jazz. The famed New Orleans composer and pianist Jelly Roll Morton argued that "Spanish tinges" were essential to jazz already in the early twentieth century. Latin influences on jazz grew when Dizzy Gillespie and Machito put Afro-Cuban rhythms on center-stage at mid-century, and again when the bossa nova boomed in the 1960s. Today, Latin tinges provide what is arguably the most vital strand in new American music. Both an invaluable research tool and a good read, Roberts has given us the seminal, single most important work on this subject.

Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930

Average customer rating:

Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930
William Howland Kenney
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0195092600

Book Description

The setting is the Royal Gardens Cafe. It's dark, smoky. The smell of gin permeates the room. People are leaning over the balcony, their drinks spilling on the customers below. On stage, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong roll on and on, piling up choruses, the rhythm section building the beat until tables, chairs, walls, people, move with the rhythm. The time is the 1920s. The place is South Side Chicago, a town of dance halls and cabarets, Prohibition and segregation, a town where jazz would flourish into the musical statement of an era. In Chicago Jazz, William Howland Kenney offers a wide-ranging look at jazz in the Windy City, revealing how Chicago became the major center of jazz in the 1920s, one of the most vital periods in the history of the music. He describes how the migration of blacks from the South to Chicago during and after World War I set the stage for the development of jazz in Chicago; and how the nightclubs and cabarets catering to both black and white customers provided the social setting for jazz performances. Kenney discusses the arrival of King Oliver and other greats in Chicago in the late teens and the early 1920s, especially Louis Armstrong, who would become the most influential jazz player of the period. And he travels beyond South Side Chicago to look at the evolution of white jazz, focusing on the influence of the South Side school on such young white players as Mezz Mezzrow (who adopted the mannerisms of black show business performers, an urbanized southern black accent, and black slang); and Max Kaminsky, deeply influenced by Armstrong's "electrifying tone, his superb technique, his power and ease, his hotness and intensity, his complete mastery of the horn." The personal recollections of many others--including Milt Hinton, Wild Bill Davison, Bud Freeman, and Jimmy McPartland--bring alive this exciting period in jazz history. Here is a new interpretation of Chicago jazz that reveals the role of race, culture, and politics in the development of this daring musical style. From black-and-tan cabarets and the Savoy Ballroom, to the Friars Inn and Austin High, Chicago Jazz brings to life the hustle and bustle of the sounds and styles of musical entertainment in the famous toddlin' town.

Average customer rating:

Not Free SF Reader
Trouble and Her Friends, draft 2
"I Heard a Rumour"
Best yet from Melissa Scott
Another Solid Read from Scott

The Jazz
Melissa Scott
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

High Tech | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

General | Computer Science | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0312868022

Amazon.com

Misinformation, PR, disinformation, rumors, spinning, lies--in the near future, the art of untruth has evolved into the jazz: virtual-reality Internet theatre, an entertainment for the cognoscenti and a source of pain and scandal for those who believe what they see, read, or experience. Tin Lizzy has escaped her troubled criminal adolescence to become one of the premiere design programmers of the jazz. But when she agrees to design the back-tech for a teenage boy's brilliant jazz scenario, she discovers too late that Keyz created his jazz with a sophisticated program stolen from a Hollywood studio. Now Lizzy is a criminal again, a desperate fugitive on the run with Keyz through the dangerous underground of the 21st century, fleeing cops, bounty hunters, studio detectives, and a powerful, ruthless CEO who has a secret to preserve, and boundless resources and vindictiveness.

Quietly, outside the hot, critical spotlight turned upon the original cyberpunks and second-generation cyberwunderkind Neil Stephenson, Melissa Scott has become one of the strongest, most productive, and least street-glamour-blinded cyberpunks writing at the turn of the millennium. This is not entirely a surprise; in 1986, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She is also a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for best science fiction novel. If you haven't read Melissa Scott, The Jazz is a fine place to start. --Cynthia Ward

Book Description

Tin Lizzy, a young woman techie with a criminal past, and Keyz, a teenage boy who used his parents access codes to borrow a Hollywood studios editing program, are on the run across the altered landscape of 21st century America from the studio police, and a megalomaniac CEO. The jazz is the new artform of the Internet in the new century.

Download Description

Melissa Scott, twice winner of the Lambda Award for best SF novel, and author of the cyberpunk classic, Trouble and Her Friends, returns with a hip novel of the media dominated future. Tin Lizzy, a young woman techie with a criminal past, and Keyz, a teenage boy who used his parents access codes to borrow a Hollywood studio's editing program (that is the hidden source of its media success), are on the run from the studio police and the vengeance of a megalomaniac CEO across the altered landscape of mid-21st century USA. The jazz is the new artform of the internet in the new century, the art of spreading convincing entertaining lies. The Jazz is a triumph.

Customer Reviews:

Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03

The Jazz is a more mundane work, if you like, with a setting a little bit closer to our own. Imagine if you take some melding of a crappy show like Entertainment Tonight or that sort of American thing, and it grows, and evolves on the internet to the point where people are obsessed with it all over the place.

Programmers and designers have to produce it, and some of them will get their places with criminal or other help, and the criminal types will want their cut.

Trouble and Her Friends, draft 2.......2003-01-28

Basically, this book takes the plot of Scott's earlier novel Trouble and Her Friends, and changes the technology a little. Instead of netwalking and criminal hacking, it's about people who spread misinformation over the internet as their profession. This is an interesting idea, and could have made a very good short story or novella. But Scott takes it and makes a thriller around it, complete with a villain. It reminded me of The Fugitive.

I have to admit I never finished reading this book. After half of it, I decided that the plot wasn't nearly strong enough, the characters weren't alive, and the setting was too mundane to keep my interest. Compared to Trouble, the tech in this book is peanuts - the computers aren't too much further along than those we have today - and not much else has changed. Such near-future settings can work, obviously, but there wasn't enough substance here.

I would love to see this idea - the jazz - rewritten in a shorter format. As the basis for a novel, I don't think it's strong enough; especially not as the basis for a thriller like this book wants to be.

"I Heard a Rumour".......2002-05-28

Remember those commercials at the height of the dotcom boom, the ones that showed these amazed, enthusiastic people demanding "are you ready?" in an attempt to lure you to the Internet's supposed wonders? In Melissa Scott's version, people are, but it's hell (many form nostalgiac gated communities just to avoid it).

The book is set in an indefinite future America that seems to be a generation or so from now, where most of society seems bent on amusing itself to death, especially people who "play the jazz."

And the people who play the jazz in Scott's world don't have saxophones; they have web equipment, and the idea is to spread chaos through rumour. (Anyone whose first wakeup call to the dark side of the Internet occurred on the day they received their first e-mail warning about the Good Times virus will quickly get the idea.) In one sequence, in order to create a diversion at one point the heroine, Tin Lizzy, creates chaos at a shopping mall by sending out false rumors of a new product. But let Scott tell it herself, regarding the ultimate jazz her heroine "Tin Lizzy" plays: "this was something people wanted to hear, and this one, too, was picked up and repeated."

The story is told from two POVs, Lizzy's (who takes to the road with the teenager she's trying to help) and the cop trying to capture her while staying on the good side of his boss, who's a borderline psychopath. Scott's prose is spare; her characters seem real; the climax is cynical.

Each sequence is a beautiful set piece in itself. Despite the title, nothing seems improvisatory. It's all schemed out as carefully as a Bananarama album, and it entertains in precisely the same way.

Best yet from Melissa Scott.......2002-05-26

I first started reading Melissa Scott when a friend gave me Burning Bright and from then on i was hooked. The Jazz is her best yet. Lots of inventive virtual reality and some really nice bits for gamers like the boy that everyone is chasing is a gamer who just happened to stumble on something he shouldnt have. This book would make a great game!!

Another Solid Read from Scott.......2002-01-02

The Jazz
Melissa Scott

To paraphrase the San Francisco Chronicle review of David Mamet's latest film, Heist: The Jazz is a minor work by a major author, which is still better than most in a genre still seen as pulp fiction by most of the reading populous.

I've been a Scott fan for several years, starting with Trouble and Her Friends, which is still on of my favorite works by her along with The Shapes of their Hearts. In fact, The Jazz is an odd updated, yet more grounded re-conceptualization of Trouble.... The Jazz is an odd cop/detective chase story set in a not so distant future USA. Technology has developed in some fairly expected manners, as has corporations relationship with a society of consumers. The plot revolves around an entertainment conglomerates pursuit of a teen boy proto-hacker, who who accidentally stole a secret program from their networks, and a bad girl-turned-good creative programmer, who decides to help him fight the power.

Scott's strength in writing science fiction has been her focus on society and psychology, weaving stories based on the interplay between individual psyche, interpersonal relationships, and larger societal movements. Her visions of fantastic future technologies are vehicles for these elaborate tapestries; and while her imaginings are detailed and fascinating in their own right, they are never simple shiny baubles meant to mask a vacuum in plot or character development.

That said, in The Jazz, Scott's vision of the future is much closer to that of the present. And, the mundane character and simplicity of the technological future is paralleled in the characters and story. Instead of a more familiar future serving to make her characters more accesible and grounded in our present experience; the characters are simpler and less intriguing. In particular, Keyz, the plot's reason d'etre, seems to simply exist with no reason for us to be actually interested in him. I'm sure this was by design, but his construction only failed to hold my interest in one of the books major protagonists.

Book Description

In early twentieth-century France, the term art négre was as likely to call to mind the music and dance of black America as it was to evoke the sculpture of black Africa. Indeed, music and dance, which racial theorists and exotic novelists portrayed as the "primitive" arts par excellence, were thought to exemplify the "genius" of blacks in all creative fields. In Le Tumulte noir, Jody Blake focuses on the impacts of African sculpture and African-American music and dance on Parisian popular entertainment and modernist art, literature, and performance.

Blake discusses the reception of ragtime-era and jazz-age entertainment, as well as other African visual and performing art forms, to provide new ways of understanding the development of modernist primitivism, from Matisse and Picasso to Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Purism. But the influence of art négre went well beyond the avant-garde art world. Starting with the cakewalk of the 1900s and culminating with the Charleston of the 1920s, the book studies the African-American idioms that were involved in larger cultural, social, and political developments. As an illustration, Blake argues that performers such as Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet of Revue négre fame were thought to affect the political balance between Africa and Europe during the colonial period.

Customer Reviews:

A New Yorker's Pluck Through Thick and Thin.......2004-04-10

Mr. Hooper is the quintessential New Yorker with a flair and zest for life that engages even the most practical of us. In this book, he transports his readers back to the time in NYC when style and enthusiasm for glorious life were the sport of gentlemen.

He regales us with a host of zany characters, all of whom happen to be family members who provide plenty of entertainment during his formative years. His anecdotes are both charming and racy. He is abruptly removed from this stage by World War II and the draft. Yet his innocence and pluck carry him through. He survives with wit and enthusiasm intact.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on December 1, 2000. The length of the article is 2387 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Visions of Jazz: The First Century.(Review) (book review)
Author: David Horn
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 2000
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 57 Issue: 2 Page: 352

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books