Representing Jazz

by Krin Gabbard (Editor)

Traditional jazz studies have tended to see jazz in purely musical terms, as a series of changes in rhythm, tonality, and harmony, or as a parade of great players. But jazz has also entered the cultural mix through its significant impact on novelists, filmmakers, dancers, painters, biographers, and photographers. Representing Jazz explores the "other" history of jazz created by these artists, a history that tells us as much about the meaning of the music as do the many books that narrate the lives of musicians or describe their recordings.
Krin Gabbard has gathered essays by distinguished writers from a variety of fields. They provide engaging analyses of films such as Round Midnight , Bird , Mo’ Better Blues , Cabin in the Sky , and Jammin’ the Blues; the writings of Eudora Welty and Dorothy Baker; the careers of the great lindy hoppers of the 1930s and 1940s; Mura Dehn’s extraordinary documentary on jazz dance; the jazz photography of William Claxton; painters of the New York School; the traditions of jazz autobiography; and the art of "vocalese." The contributors to this volume assess the influence of extramusical sources on our knowledge of jazz and suggest that the living contexts of the music must be considered if a more sophisticated jazz scholarship is ever to evolve. Transcending the familiar patterns of jazz history and criticism, Representing Jazz looks at how the music actually has been heard and felt at different levels of American culture.
With its companion anthology, Jazz Among the Discourses , this volume will enrich and transform the literature of jazz studies. Its provocative essays will interest both aficionados and potential jazz fans. Contributors . Karen Backstein, Leland H. Chambers, Robert P. Crease, Krin Gabbard, Frederick Garber, Barry K. Grant, Mona Hadler, Christopher Harlos, Michael Jarrett, Adam Knee, Arthur Knight, James Naremore

Genres: Jazz, Music

328 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 1995

About the author

Krin Gabbard is a “come-back” trumpet-player even though he spends most of his time writing books and teaching classes about movies. In recent years, most of his writing has been about jazz. He was born in 1948 in Charleston, a small town in East Central Illinois. He spent the first eighteen years of his life in Charleston, the home of Eastern Illinois University, where both his parents taught. At the University of Chicago, Krin was not skilled enough to play trumpet with the Art Ensemble of Chicago (which actually held auditions at the university), and the local rock bands had no need for trumpets. Mostly he read old books and acted in a few plays. After graduating with a B.A. from Chicago in 1970, Krin went to Indiana University where he took graduate degrees in Classics and Comparative Literature. He also hosted a weekly radio program devoted to the music of Duke Ellington. In 1973, he met and fell in love with Paula Beversdorf. They have been married ever since.

In 1981, he began teaching in the Comparative Literature Department at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. Krin has taught many different courses at Stony Brook, everything from ancient Greek literature to a seminar on Miles Davis. Mostly, however, he has taught cinema studies. His first three books grew out of his interest in film.

As a child, Krin played the cornet in the school band, but he gave it up in college. Thirty-seven years later he bought a new trumpet and began taking lessons. His most recent book, Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture (2008), describes his new life as an amateur trumpet-player. The book also gives a history of the trumpet from ancient Egypt to the present, with special attention to the African American jazz artists who transformed the instrument in the twentieth century.

Krin and Paula live on the Upper West Side of New York City and occasionally find time to go to a movie or a jazz club.