The world's fascination with New Orleans stems from the allure of the music of the city_music that owes its origins and development to many sources. Until now, popular and scholarly books, dissertations, and articles that attempt to explain these sources have failed to recognize the unsung heroes of the New Orleans jazz scene: the teachers in its public schools. Through more than 90 original interviews and extensive research in New Orleans' historical collections, Dr. Kennedy documents ways that public school teachers pushed an often unwilling urban institution to become an important structure that transmitted jazz and the other musical traditions of the city to future musicians. Music legends from Louis Armstrong to Ellis Marsalis Jr._who also provides the foreword_are just two of the many well-known former students of the New Orleans public schools. Chord Changes on the Chalkboard shows that, particularly after the 1920s, public school students benefited not only from the study of instrumental music and theory, but also from direct exposure to musicians, many of whom were invited to perform for the students. The impact the teachers had on generations of musicians and music fans is undeniable, yet their teaching techniques are only part of the story. In addition to the successes enjoyed with their students, the teachers' own musical experiences, recordings, and performances are also examined. The interaction between teachers and students in New Orleans public school classrooms opens a new field of research for music historians, and this book is the first to document ways in which public school teachers acted as mentors to shape the future of jazz and the music of New Orleans. An important addition to its field, Chord Changes on a Chalkboard will provide invaluable information for jazz fans and historians, music scholars and students, and it is also useful reading for any public school teacher. A must for any music library, it should also be a welcome addition to any collection supporting African-American history or popular culture.

A biography of the life, work, and legacy of a pivotal figure in New Orleans cultural history. Based on more than seventy interviews with the subject and his close friends and family, this biography delves deep into the life of Donald Harrison—a waiter, performer, mentor to musicians, philosopher, devoted family man, and, most notably, the Big Chief of the Guardians of the Flame, a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. The firsthand accounts and anecdotes from those who knew him offer insight into the electrifying existence of a man who enriched the culture of New Orleans, took pride in his African American heritage, and advocated education throughout the city. Beneath a vibrant costume of colorful feathers and intricate beading stood a man of conviction who possessed a great intellect and intense pride. Harrison grew up during the Great Depression and faced discrimination throughout his life but refused to bow down to oppression. Through determination and an insatiable eagerness to learn, he found solace in philosophy, jazz, and art and spiritual meaning in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition. He shared his ideals and discoveries with his family, whom he protected fiercely, until he took his last breath in 1998. Harrison’s wife, children, and grandchildren continue to carry his legacy by furthering literacy programs for New Orleans’ youth. From Harrison’s birth in 1933 to his desire to become a Mardi Gras Indian to the moment he met his beloved wife, author Al Kennedy shares Harrison’s significant life experiences. He allows Big Chief Donald to take center stage and explain—in his own words—the mysterious world of the Mardi Gras Indians, their customs, and beliefs. Rare personal photographs from family albums depict the Big Chief with his family, parading through the streets on Carnival Day, and performing the timeless rituals of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans. This well-researched biography presents a side of the Big Chief the public did not see, revealing the rebellious spirit of a man who demanded respect, guarded his family, and guided his tribe with utmost pride. Praise for Big Chief Harrison and the Mardi Gras Indians “Enormously enjoyable, richly informative, and deeply moving. . . . To meet the Harrisons is to encounter an America you can't help but fall in love with and be inspired by forever, while gaining a glimpse into the powerful and meaningful tradition of the Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans. It's a story of strength, passion, survival, and resistance. It’s a story for today.” —Jonathan Demme, Academy Award–winning director “Building on his impressive knowledge of New Orleans culture, Al Kennedy delivers a masterpiece of artistic biography. The world needs to know about Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr. Al Kennedy tells his full story in this wonderful book. . . . A powerful read.” —Robert Farris Thompson, Col. John Trumbull Professor, History of Art; Master of Timothy Dwight College, Yale University; and author, Tango: The Art History of Love, Face of the Gods, and Aesthetic of the Cool

Music education takes place in many contexts, both formal and informal. Be it in a school or music studio, while making music with friends or family, or even while travelling in a car, walking through a shopping mall or watching television, our myriad sonic experiences accumulate from the earliest months of life to foster our facility for making sense of the sound worlds in which we live. The Oxford Handbook of Music Education offers a comprehensive overview of the many facets of musical experience, behavior and development in relation to this diverse variety of contexts. In this first of two volumes, an international list of contributors discuss a range of key issues and concepts associated with music learning and teaching. The volume then focuses on these processes as they take place during childhood, from infancy through adolescence and primarily in the school-age years. Exploring how children across the globe learn and make music and the skills and attributes gained when they do so, these chapters examine the means through which music educators can best meet young people's musical needs. The second volume of the set brings the exploration beyond the classroom and into later life. Whether they are used individually or in tandem, the two volumes of The Oxford Handbook of Music Education update and redefine the discipline, and show how individuals across the world learn, enjoy and share the power and uniqueness of music.

Fake books—anthologies of songs notated in a musical shorthand—have been used by countless pop and jazz musicians in both professional and amateur settings for more than half a century. The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians traces the entertaining and previously unknown account of the origins of pop song fake books, which evolved through the bootlegging of a now obscure musical subscription service, the Tune-Dex. The book follows the history of fake books through their increased popularity among musicians to their prosecution by the government and the music industry, resulting in America's first full-blown federal trial for criminal copyright infringement. Through accounts given by jazz musicians Steve Swallow and Pat Metheny, The Story of Fake Books also reveals the definitive history of the most popular fake book, one that has acquired a legendary status among jazz musicians: an anthology of jazz tunes called The Real Book. Drawing from information in FBI files, entertainment trade papers, and federal court records, author Barry Kernfeld presents pioneering research, which brings together aspects of pop music history and copyright law to disclose this predecessor of current-day battles over pop song piracy.

Ruby Braff's uncompromising standards, musical taste, and creative imagination informed his consummate artistry in creating music beautifully played. He achieved swiftly what few musicians accomplish in a lifetime by developing a unique and immediately recognizable style. Alth...

In The Contradictions of Jazz, Paul Rinzler takes a new approach to jazz aesthetics and theory by exploring four pairs of opposites present in jazz: individualism and interconnectedness, assertion and openness, freedom and responsibility, and creativity and tradition. By themselves, these eight values speak volumes about the meaning of jazz and its significance. Understanding how these opposites coexist in jazz leads to an exploration of the connections linking jazz with the experiential and existential, which contrast with the connections between composition and science. Rinzler explains the various concepts, including either/or and dialectic thinking, and then examines the pairs of opposites individually, describing their position and presence in jazz. He then demonstrates how the larger meaning of these contradictory opposites depends on ideas from the philosophies of phenomenology and existentialism. Rinzler considers the opposites inherent in the product and process of jazz, as well as mistakes and the challenge of perfection, presenting these values in light of the contradictions inherent in jazz. With a full bibliography and an index, The Contradictions of Jazz is a fascinating read for fans and scholars of jazz history and aesthetics.

What is jazz? What is gained—and what is lost—when various communities close ranks around a particular definition of this quintessentially American music? Jazz/Not Jazz explores some of the musicians, concepts, places, and practices which, while deeply connected to established jazz institutions and aesthetics, have rarely appeared in traditional histories of the form. David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Daniel Goldmark have assembled a stellar group of writers to look beyond the canon of acknowledged jazz greats and address some of the big questions facing jazz today. More than just a history of jazz and its performers, this collections seeks out those people and pieces missing from the established narratives to explore what they can tell us about the way jazz has been defined and its history has been told.

Magic City is the story of one of American music's essential unsung places: Birmingham, Alabama, birthplace of a distinctive and influential jazz heritage. In a telling replete with colorful characters, iconic artists, and unheralded masters, Burgin Mathews reveals how Birmingham was the cradle and training ground for such luminaries as big band leader Erskine Hawkins, cosmic outsider Sun Ra, and a long list of sidemen, soloists, and arrangers. He also celebrates the contributions of local educators, club owners, and civic leaders who nurtured a vital culture of Black expression in one of the country's most notoriously segregated cities. In Birmingham, jazz was more than entertainment: long before the city emerged as a focal point in the national civil rights movement, its homegrown jazz heroes helped set the stage, crafting a unique tradition of independence, innovation, achievement, and empowerment. Blending deep archival research and original interviews with living elders of the Birmingham scene, Mathews elevates the stories of figures like John T. "Fess" Whatley, the pioneering teacher-bandleader who emphasized instrumental training as a means of upward mobility and community pride. Along the way, he takes readers into the high school band rooms, fraternal ballrooms, vaudeville houses, and circus tent shows that shaped a musical movement, revealing a community of players whose influence spread throughout the world.

"Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals" is a multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the discussion of all aspects of handling, preserving, researching, and organizing collections. Curators, archivists, collections managers, preparators, registrars, educators, students, and others contribute.

Sara Le Menestrel explores the role of music in constructing, asserting, erasing, and negotiating differences based on the notions of race, ethnicity, class, and region. She discusses established notions and brings to light social stereotypes and hierarchies at work in the evolving French Louisiana music field. She also draws attention to the interactions between oppositions such as black and white, urban and rural, differentiation and creolization, and local and global. Le Menestrel emphasizes the importance of desegregating the understanding of French Louisiana music and situating it beyond ethnic or racial identifications, amplifying instead the importance of regional identity. Musical genealogy and categories currently in use rely on a racial construct that frames African and European lineage as an essential difference. Yet as the author samples music in the field and discovers ways music is actually practiced, she reveals how the insistence on origins continually interacts with an emphasis on cultural mixing and creative agency. This book finds French Louisiana musicians navigating between multiple identifications, musical styles, and legacies while market forces, outsiders' interest, and geographical mobility also contribute to shape musicians' career strategies and artistic choices. The book also demonstrates the decisive role of non-natives' enthusiasm and mobility in the validation, evolution, and reconfiguration of French Louisiana music. Finally, the distinctiveness of South Louisiana from the rest of the country appears to be both nurtured and endured by locals, revealing how political domination and regionalism intertwine.