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The nation's leading circle of jazz scholars will revive a forum on the impact of jazz on American culture August 9 and 10 as part of the renowned Newport, R.I. Jazz Festival. Topics to be discussed will include the influence of jazz on the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, as musicians served as goodwill ambassadors; the portrayal of jazz musicians by Hollywood and Madison Avenue; and the myths and meanings of Billie Holiday.
The forum, "The Meanings of Jazz," revives an early, tentative discussion on jazz and American culture held at the first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954.
Robert O'Meally, the literary scholar and founder and director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, has organized the event and will serve as moderator. Salve Regina University in Newport will host the forum, which is open to an invited audience of educators, musicians and journalists.
Many of the participants are members of the Jazz Study Group, which has met at Columbia twice-yearly since 1995 for discussions on jazz and culture moderated by Professor O'Meally under the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation. The writings of the Jazz Study Group are represented in an anthology edited by O'Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (Columbia University Press: 1999), which is recognized as the first "textbook" of jazz studies.
This leading circle of jazz scholars, critics and writers include John Szwed of Yale University, who taught at Columbia during the spring; Brent Edwards, who studied at Columbia and is now a faculty member at Rutgers University, and Farah Griffin, who will join the Columbia faculty in the fall from the University of Pennsylvania.
During the seminar, these and other scholars, many of whom trained at Columbia, will examine such topics as how jazz musicians are portrayed by Hollywood and Madison Avenue; how jazz informed the struggle for social justice, particularly the impact of jazz on the Civil Rights Movement and the influence of jazz musicians as goodwill ambassadors during the Cold War; the legacy of John Coltrane in photographs and print; and the myths and meanings of Billie Holiday's life and music.
O'Meally will give opening remarks and moderate the first session, "Images of Jazz Players: Mythic and Real" at 1:30 P.M., August 9 in Cecelia Hall.
The first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 included a panel discussion titled "The Place of Jazz in American Culture." At the time, jazz was still a renegade art form and few scholars had given the music much thought, the exceptions being those early participants: historian Marshall Stearns of Hunter College, musicologist Henry Cowell of the Peabody Institute and folklorist Willis James of Spelman College. Today, of course, jazz has been firmly established as an art form and numerous universities offer jazz history and other jazz studies courses.
"In some ways, this explosion of academic interest in jazz can be traced back to that first panel in Newport 46 years ago," said O'Meally.
"We plan to pick up where the original forum left off," said George Wein, CEO of Festival Productions, producer of jazz festivals worldwide.
O'Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and founder and director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia, which opened in the fall of 1999. Bringing jazz to the forefront of a liberal arts education, Columbia is the first research institution to approach the study of jazz as a cultural phenomenon -- a way to understand the soul of American culture and society today. A trailblazer in the interdisciplinary field of jazz studies, whose practitioners are drawn from across the humanities, arts and social sciences, O'Meally is a literary scholar, biographer of Billie Holiday and Grammy music award nominee as co-producer of the Smithsonian Collection CD set, "The Jazz Singers."
The seminar schedule follows:
Wednesday, August 9, 1:30-5 P.M. Opening Remarks by Robert O'Meally Images of Jazz Players: Mythic and Real, moderated by O'Meally:
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"Jazz in Hollywood: Is There Hope? Krin Gabbard (State University of New York at Stony Brook)
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"Lady of the Day: Myths and Meanings of Billie Holiday," Farrah Griffin (University of Pennsylvania)
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"Visualizing Coltrane: The Coltrane Legacy in Photography and Print," Herman Beavers (University of Pennsylvania)
Thursday, August 10, 9 A.M.- 12:15 P.M. Jazz and the Struggle for Social Justice, moderated by O'Meally:
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"Sammy Davis Jr., Jazz and the 1960's" Gerald Early (Washington University)
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"The Freedom Now Suite: Politics and the Music of the Early 1960's," Ingrid Monson (Washington University)
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"Ugly Beauty: Monk as Modern Art," Robin Kelley (New York University)
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"The Goodwill Ambassadors: Jazz and the Cold War," Penny Von Eschen (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Thursday, August 10, 1:15-5:30 P.M. Institutionalizing the Music, moderated by Bob Blumenthal
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"The Literary Duke: Reading Ellington Between the Lines," Brent Edwards (Rutgers University)
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"Race and Nation in 4/4 Swing Time Riffing on the Jazz Mainstream," John Gennari (Pennsylvania State University)
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"From the Woodshed to Melodic Mirrors: The Impact of Jazz Education on Musical Development," Travis Jackson (University of Michigan)
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"Life on the Institution's Barricades: Jazz Permanent Avant-garde," John Szwed (Yale University)
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