How to Listen to Jazz

by Ted Gioia

Jazz is the great American art form, its very essence is predicated on freedom and creativity. Its sound unequivocally calls forth narratives of past struggles and future dreams. Yet jazz can be as inscrutable as it is mesmerizing, especially to outsiders who don’t know what to make of improvisation or unexpected shifts in melody or tempo. How does a casual listener learn to understand and appreciate the nuances between the unapologetic and innovative sounds of Louis Armstrong, the complexity of Coleman Hawkin’s saxophone, and the exotic and alluring compositions of Duke Ellington? How does Thelonius Monk fit in alongside Benny Goodman and John Coltrane?

In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively, accessible introduction to the art of listening to jazz. Covering everything from the music’s structure and history to the basic building blocks of improvisation, Gioia shows exactly what to listen for in a jazz performance. He shares listening strategies that will help readers understand and appreciate jazz for the rest of their lives, and provides a history of the major movements in jazz right up to the present day. He concludes with a guide to 150 elite musicians who are setting the tone for 21st century jazz.

Both an appreciation and an introduction to jazz by a foremost expert, How to Listen to Jazz is a must-read for anyone who’s ever wanted to understand America’s greatest contribution to the world of music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Jazz, Art, History, Audiobook, Cultural

Audiobook

First published May 17, 2016

About the author

Ted Gioia (1957) is an American jazz critic and music historian.

Reviews

[Jury Razumau]

Spotify playlists: https://open.spotify.com/user/razumau..., https://open.spotify.com/user/razumau....

[Morgan Blackledge]

This has been ONE FUKING INCREDIBLE experience.

I feel like I just finished a cultural/personal/spiritual odyssey.

It has taken me a while to finish this.

There is a Spotify playlist that goes with the book.

There is about 50-100 hours of music on it.

I listened to it as I went.

That’s what took so long.

But DANG-AH-LANG-DI-ANNE-LANE

What a life changer.

I FUCKIN SAYvored it!

I have been a jazz fan since the 80’s.

But I haven’t really listened to jazz for years.

Decades even.

I think I just hit a brick wall with it.

I stopped being curious.

I lost touch with just how transgressive/transformative jazz is.

This book is part intro to jazz criticism.

And part jazz history primer.

In sum.

I loved it.

[Martin]

Hands down, one of the best books on jazz I have ever read. And easily the best book on trying to explain jazz. If you are just dipping a toe in the great ocean that is jazz, or if you have been enjoying this music for decades, this is a book that will increase your understanding and enjoyment of this music. It's already altered the way I listen to music, and I've been listening to jazz since the early eighties. I think it helps that Ted Gioia is a musician himself. How to listen to jazz is also very refreshingly free of ideology. Ted Gioia simply wants you to listen to and enjoy the music for its own sake. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

[Olive Fellows (abookolive)]

See my review on Booktube!

[Iris Nuțu]

4.5 stars, actually. I only give ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ to books that I feel I could start reading again the moment I have read the last word on the last page, which is obviously not the case right now - but still. This was amazing.

I've just finished reading this book (and when I say reading I mean reading & listening to Gioia's recommendations) and I've been sitting here for the last couple of minutes, listening to random jazz on Spotify, having coffee and a cigarette and simply being grateful that such a book exists.

Because I believe that, given the way in which jazz is commonly perceived nowadays - especially by my generation - we are in great need of such writings. I imagine that the cases in which this book miraculously lands in the hands of a person who does not know anything about or has no appreciation whatsoever for jazz are very rare and that most of Ted Gioia's readers are already genuinely interested in the subject. But I still think that the mere existence of this book might influence someone to reconsider their feelings towards this genre - and that's honestly enough for me. Because, although indeed sophisticated and complex, jazz has never been and should never be considered an unfathomable kind of music. Jazz is for everyone. And that's precisely what Ted Gioia wanted us to remember, when he wrote How to Listen to Jazz.

[Genni]

This is, hands down, one of the best introductions to a genre of music I have read. His approach is rather analogous to Adler’s with regard to literature. It lacks the literary flare that, for me, kicks non-fiction into the 5-star category, but is otherwise a phenomenal contribution to the history of jazz.

[John]

Ted Gioia is a solid writer and has a terrific grasp of jazz music. But I came away somewhat disappointed in this work. It is more of a personal journey into jazz. And when he starts getting into chord progressions and music theory and that sort of thing, it becomes a challenge in my opinion for the average reader. I'm going to read his book on jazz standards, which I think might be a better way to understand and appreciate jazz -- a look at individual songs rather than a very wide look at the musical style. It may be better to go piece by piece.

[James]

I can't really blame Ted Gioia for my disappointment with How to Listen to Jazz. I knew how it was gonna go. I've been listening to jazz with pleasure my entire adult life. Recently, though, I've been approaching my keen music fandom with the idea that putting in more work will yield more pleasure. Specifically, I want to know the elements from which music is made, so that I can afford the craft involved an adult appreciation, much as I know an elegant paragraph or a delicate pie crust in a way that's informed by experience. I've fallen down a rabbit hole of music-nerd YouTube and this title was enthusiastically recommended by uber-nerd, crush-magnet, Adam Neely, so I assumed it was somewhat rigorous, not having merited his gentle enough but not-infrequent scorn.

The problem with this book is that listening to music is a real-world skill and you can't really learn real-world skills from reading a book. Two of the chapters in How to Listen to Jazz specifically address the skill of conscious listening and attempt to do on the page what Gioia does in a classroom setting. To the uninitiated, Gioia says, jazz seems like tv wrestling, an anarchic free-for-all, when if fact it is more like a chess game "in which creative freedom is bound by rules and imagination must operate within carefully defined constraints."

I already understood the theme/variation idea in music, but the most useful thing that I learned from the "Structure of Jazz" chapter is that in order to readily distinguish the structure of a piece of music, I will have to train myself to reflexively count, which means physically listening to records, tapping my foot along and keeping track of the measures. "If you can count to thirty-two," Gioia exhorts, and keep the numbers in time with the beats of the music, you are ready to roll." Geez. When I said I was willing to work more for my pleasure, I didn't mean actual work.
Gioia then patiently walks us through several pieces of music. When reading, what would have been a seamless process in the classroom - make a statement, play a clip, show a slide, make another statement, play another clip -involved putting the book down, looking up the piece on YouTube and skipping the ads before I even began the process of counting the measures. Lazybones that I am, I found myself reading on through and telling myself I would do the counting later.

The bulk of the book is taken up with what felt like filler - a thumbnail history of jazz and a chapter in which Gioia enthuses about seminal artists. If I knew nothing at all about this music (a reasonable enough assumption for the presumed reader of this volume), these chapters might be useful, but, like I said, I've been listening for a long time. I just wanted to understand what I'm hearing. To give Ted Gioia his due, he pointed me in the right direction. He can't walk the path for me, though. Per Gioia's suggestion, I have begun listening to Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology while reading the book-length liner notes and, when I remember, counting.

[Popebrak]

I'm a recovering death-metal DJ. . . this was very helpful.

[Kusaimamekirai]

So much to like about this book.
Giola offers some helpful tips on what to listen for and even offers several specific recordings as examples. Of course, if you are like me and can’t read music, talk of notes, bars, and phrasing is still a bit difficult to unravel. I will say however that while I can’t claim to fully have a handle on what to listen for (does anyone really?) I’m closer than I was before reading this book.
Furthermore, the book is a wonderful overview on the last century of jazz and some of its styles, personalities, and innovations. I found myself scrambling to YouTube to listen to King Oliver’s “Dippermouth Blues”, Miles Davis “Someday my prince will come” (basically on endless repeat in my ears since I found it), among others.
While too short to be comprehensive, the writing is engaging, conversational, and doesn’t assume that the reader attended a jazz conservatory for a large portion of their life.
Accessible and informative are two things hard to come by in a book about jazz but Giola is both of these and more. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to have a greater appreciation of jazz

[Joe Richards]

This book establishes itself as a catch-all guide to listening to jazz, but I'm not entirely convinced that it delivers, or who the target audience might be.

On the one hand, it equips you with some fundamentals - probably too simplified for established jazz listeners. On the other, it stylises itself as a critique on the art of listening and of music reviewing, yet doesn't quite dig deep enough for someone such as myself - a musician and jazz fan - to learn much beyond the author's own personal opinions on listening to and interpreting music.

As such, I think perhaps that the book would adequately suit two readership models; firstly the complete novice, who isn't aware of jazz (or perhaps has a passing interest) or isn't aware of deep / active listening, for whom the information provided here will be useful and indeed eye-opening. The exceedingly brief introductions on a handful of individual jazz greats will doubtless serve as tantalising aperitifs, but the author doesn't delve into any of their works in a particularly detailed manner - each simply ends with a selection of recommended listening, laying the work out for you to do.

Secondly, this book may appeal to the established jazz listener who possesses basic or no existing knowledge on music theory or construction, and who wants to learn more. It introduces the reader to musical fundamentals such as rhythm, tone, timbre and expression, and to basic jazz idioms such as heads, solos and vamps. Although it describes the evolution of jazz in a more than adequate manner, it doesn't go much deeper than this musically, which I found a little shallow considering the lofty ambitions laid out in the opening gambit.

I may be being a little harsh here, as realistically the book does cover exactly what the title would suggest. It's a little bit more basic than I would have hoped for, but as an introduction for a novice it's a decent academic way into a genre of music that should command your attention and respect.

[Bob O'Bannon]

There are so many people who love jazz, and who speak of it with such passion and devotion, that I have always concluded that my own indifference to the genre must be the fault of me, not the music. So what could be more fitting than a book titled "How to Listen to Jazz"?

It is clear that Ted Gioia not only loves jazz, but wants you to love it too. In clear and understandable language, he explains essential musical concepts as dynamics, phrasing, pitch, and personality. He gives helpful summaries of the major sub genres of jazz – swing, bebop, cool jazz, fusion, etc., while also explaining the significance of jazz giants like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. And he does it all without a hint of elitism or condescension.

Probably most helpful to me as a fan primarily of pop, rock and folk is the realization that jazz is not focused on replication. Every other musical genre seeks to repeat what was originally written and recorded, but with jazz, the distinctive element is spontaneity. Jazz is never the same, which explains why you'll see so many jazz artists doing their own versions of the same classic songs. Jazz's goal is not to repeat the song, but to explore it, reinvent it, and even deconstruct it. In contrast to the "realm of perfect replication," jazz is for those "who want to be in attendance when the miracle happens." (49).

I doubt my love for jazz will ever match Gioia's, but as a result of reading this helpful book, I am at least motivated to open my ears and listen.

[Michelle Curie]

A joyous excursion into the exciting and wondrous world of the music where everything is possible!



How to Listen to Jazz is a book I picked up as part of my wish to learn more about the origins and the cultural evolution of jazz, while looking at it from a musical standpoint more than a historical. Ted Gioia was definitely the right man to turn to for this!

The music scholar talks with such passion and knowledge about the subject that it's hard not to get swept away by his enthusiasm. Briefly covering structural things like rhythm, phrasing and pitch, he explains how to understand structures of songs by guiding the reader through a couple of examples. There are then short passages on the different eras jazz has moved through, followed by a look at a couple of grand jazz innovators and a list of contemporary jazz artists worth listening to.

I enjoyed how he didn't tell you what to think, but instead helps to think for yourself. There's a passage in which he talks about how the best music critics make themselves superfluous, as they allow you to grasp the music for yourself. It's a wise statement and one that I support. This isn't an "ultimate guide" to jazz nor does it claim to be one – it's more of a door opening. Once you've stepped through it, you can independently go and explore a whole world of music.

[Sonja]

This could have been a 5 star book, very easily. I chose to get this as an audio book because I have listened to many music related books on audio format.
The reader is great and it is well written. It is missing music samples! How can I learn what to listen for if there is no music.
Audio books are also often listened to in the car. I can't even write notes on what he is telling to listen to or watch on YouTube.
I know there are probably issues with copyrights but still. :(

[Ryan Berger]

Gioia's substack is one of the very few that I read regularly. His most endearing quality to me by far is his enthusiasm for the things that he likes as opposed to say, deep insight into whatever he's writing about. He's jovial and charismatic and phenomenally well-read and that's enough.

I know Jazz is his wheelhouse (he's a student and scholar of music) and yet of all the things I've read Gioia talk about, Jazz might be the shallowest pool I've waded into. I've listened to the guy talk about algorithms more than what he's a true expert in.

Here's my frustration: Gioia's got a couple books about Jazz out-- this one and another called The History of Jazz. Knowing this, I wanted to go with this book thinking it'd help my appreciation a little more (a note: I was in my public school's Jazz Band for six years. I soft-committed to study Jazz at another college before tanking an audition so badly that the faculty member suggested I pursue something else. I took his advice and switched colleges and majors, from Jazz at Fredonia to Broadcasting at Oswego). But Gioia can't quite seem to help himself and so much of this book ends up being less of an exercise in active listening and more of a methodology for cracking the Jazz archives. That is immensely less helpful as A) technology largely helps streamline the process and B) Jazz is a bit like classical music in that The Greats produced prodigiously with immense songbooks and album stacks and the most important legends can be counted on your digits (fingers won't suffice, we'll need to enlist the toes). I'm beyond a novice (but not by much) and my appreciation for jazz has atrophied in the decade since I put down my horn but I'm shocked that I didn't learn one new name to take home (with the massive caveat that Gioia includes a downloadable PDF with the book that features tons of NEW jass musicians he's excited by. I'm still considering it a caveat because he doesn't talk about them in the book's actual text).

Much of the book ends up being hero worship and less about theory which, to be fair, Gioia is quite good at. And though I can appreciate his Salute-The-Cause attitude when it comes to new jazz (I'm a science fiction writer-- I know all about putting on a brave face and pretending something new is good when it's fine at best and [REDACTED] at worst), he does come across as pleading at times. Though he won't find an argument in me that so much of what makes jazz special is that improvisational, mystical element that only exists in the moment. That requires getting out there and seeking Jazz out. It won't come to you.

There's also a bizarre left turn in the ending summary where Gioia talks about the potential use of AI in Jazz (this was written in 2016 before the rise of AI Art Snake Oil) that is truly baffling and antithetical to everything Gioia stands for.

A total newcomer will get much more out of this. Still a great resource, just not much to it other than Gioia talking about music he likes and why it was important.

[Declan Melia]

Sax Ed!

This is as good as a book like this can get. Ted Gioia (a writer and academic after my own heart with his obsession with tracking continuity through music history and obsessive list writing) tells us what he loves about Jazz and why we should love it too.

Mr Gioia’s overarching thesis is that you don’t need to be an expert in music theory to dig jazz, you just need to listen to it with an appreciative ear. He starts with a few key listening techniques (how to appreciate structure, improvisation, and that most elusive of musical qualities: Swing), takes us through a brief history of the art form, and discusses a few of the major innovators.

It's a truth self-evident that jazz is an intimidating style. Louis Armsotrong (Gioia’s absolute hero) famously, said if you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know. Indeed, in the circles I run in, the title of this book alone is loaded with pretence. But Gioia walks a tightrope between passion and pretention and never lapses into the holier than thou gatekeeping that seems so prevalent in all music genres.

He is able to pull this off because he never strays across the line from guide to professor. The whole thing reads like an enthusiastic fan pointing you un the right direction. He is quick to point out that analysis of musical structure and form are available to you if you want to go down that path, but this music is for anyone who listens with an open mind.

For me, the best sections were the historical ones. Hearing (and this is a book where the writer’s voice is heard rather than read) Gioia rap about his musical heroes in their historical context encourages you to hear them with a receptive ear. Further, he provides handy lists to introduce a novice to key tracks and then goes on to tell you what makes them so special. Listening along as you read makes for a truly joyous reading experience.

For the avoidance of doubt, if you want to get into Jazz: Read this book. You won’t be disappointed.

[Malum]

2.5 stars.
More "history of jazz" than "how to listen to jazz". Gioia says to appreciate jazz you just have to listen to it and be receptive to it, and that's about the extent of the "how to" part of the book. The bulk of the book is small biographical snippets of jazz musicians with recommended tracks to listen to for each one. These were interesting enough to keep my attention.

I don't normally consider audiobook production values in my ratings but not including any music samples in this is almost criminal. I know that it would be too expensive to buy Coltrane or Davis tracks, but even public domain jazz samples would have been preferable to an audiobook about how to appreciate a form of music with no examples of that music.

[Guillermo García Moscoso]

Aprendí cosas nuevas, recordé otras antiguas, me entretuve y me hizo pasar un vuelo, literal y metafóricamente, volando.

[Luca]

Feel like I’m finally ready to be that white-guy-in-his-20s at cocktail parties.

Really good introduction for complete newcomers that I feel I will keep going back to. Includes chapters on basic terms, history of trends, and key artist profiles. Definitely recommend listening to the Spotify playlist in between sections.

[Axel]

Can’t wait to become the most annoying person at dinner parties

[Marc]

Picked this up while randomly perusing the shelves at the library. It turned out to be a delight. Gioia is as big a fan of jazz as he is a learned critic. He starts out by talking about really using your ears to listen to the music, gives a little background on rhythm and structure, then moves from the origins of jazz through each type of style/era (complete with recommended songs/artists for each period of innovation), and then closes with some of his favorite innovators (Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman).

I was going to try list and link to all the recommendations, but there are just too many. Instead, I'll simply link to a few of my favorite jazz songs below this review.
------------------------------------------
WORD I LEARNED WHILE READING THIS BOOK
ostinato
------------------------------------------
A few of my favorites...
- "Watermelon Song" (William Parker)
- "Blue Pepper" (Duke Ellington)
- "C Jam Blues" (Louis Armstrong)
- "Turnaround" (Joshua Redman)
- "Bird's Lament" (Moondog)
- "My Funny Valentine" (Sarah Vaughan)
- "Blue Moon" (Billie Holiday)
- "Paranoid Android" (Brad Mehldau)
- "Mad World" (Postmodern Jukebox)

[Mesoscope]

This book may be useful to complete beginners, but I feel somewhat misled. I got it because of the name, and because the first chapter or two really did orient me toward aspects of listening and appreciation that were helpful. But by page 75 I looked up and said "What happened? This has just become another history of jazz, and a pretty cursory one."

So that's the majority of the book - a survey of jazz history for a general audience with no interest in theory. Anyone who is not scared by words like "dominant chord" would probably do better to check out something like the history of jazz by Ted Deveaux and Gary Giddins.

There are a couple minor things about this book that I don't care for. When he provides song recommendations, he references them by recording date, not by album. That makes sense until about 1950, and then it forces the reader to figure out which recording he's talking about. Similarly, in the end he provides a list of 150 working jazz musicians he thinks are worth paying attention to - 100 albums would have been more useful. I'm not going to go through a list of 150 musicians and google what albums Billy Blade or Christian Scott have appeared on.

[jacinta]

things that have transpired while i read this book:
- developed a crush on chet baker
- listened to coleman hawkins at the gym
- said “katie don’t be mad at me im gonna play jazz while i drive”
- tried to analyze the monsters inc theme song 😭😭
- made a playlist of just hyperpop and classic jazz
basically this book ruined me and i am forever changed there js truly jouissance in jazz i understand it now completely

[James Klagge]

Somehow over the last several years, in my old age, I've started to purchase and listen to jazz (more often). It might have something to do with listening to more LPs in addition to CDs (another sign of old age). I knew some highlights of jazz, but this book gave some structure to what I knew and direction to what I needed to learn. An easy read with lots of listening suggestions. Presumably these things can be found on you-tube and streaming, but I would have appreciated a discography at the end.

[Jan Strik]

Leuk boek dat begint met een beetje informatie over muziektheorie, de geschiedenis van jazz met enkele stromingen daarin en de structuur van de nummers.
Daarna worden enkele bepalende artiesten in het verleden toegelicht en ten slotte de jazz die nu speelt.
En in het gehele boek worden markante nummers genoemd voor een periode, stroming of muzikant.
Is denk ik een fijnere en makkelijkere ingang als je wat meer over jazz wilt weten.
Het boek 'The history of jazz' van dezelfde auteur is veel uitgebreider en leuk als je er dieper in wilt duiken.

[Will Clemmons]

If you’re looking to dive deeper into jazz, read this book. Very informative and helps in finding your own jazz journey, not someone else’s.

[Sintija]

Lieliska grāmata. Tā manā mūzikas fana gājienā jau paspējusi atstāt savu zīmogu. Plašāks grāmatas apskats ir pieejams manā blogā Dari lietas:
https://www.darilietas.lv/ka-klausiti...

[Arne]

Jazz rapidly became a genre where l almost on a daily basis listen to and even though I know my classics, I was/am always intrigued with knowing more about a genre that can be so peaceful yet so complex and that its roots are older than 100 years at this point.

In a fairly small book, Gioia gives amazing insights about the genre, the instruments and the people that founded the basics but also explored outside of the box.

Honestly I wish this book never ended.

[Hannah]

I wish Gioia dove a little deeper into history and music theory here; however, I understand this was meant to be introductory for a popular audience. I am an absolute beginner to this genre, and it did give me a toehold, some confidence, and a good place to begin and expand my listening. He’s excellent at dispelling the illusion of inaccessibility and encouraging you to JUST LISTEN TO THE MUSIC. What do you hear? How do you feel? As silly as it sounds, I needed that reminder.

I enjoyed my experience with this and plan to revisit the lists of performers and artists he provides. Gioia’s History of Jazz seems like a good place to head next for greater depth and detail.

[Jack Wolfe]

gud. review soon