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Why Jazz?: A Concise Guide
What was the first jazz record? Are jazz solos really improvised? How did jazz lay the groundwork for rock and country music? In Why Jazz? , author and NPR jazz critic Kevin Whitehead provides lively, insightful answers to these and many other fascinating questions, offering an entertaining guide for both novice listeners and long-time fans.
Organized chronologically in a convenient question and answer format, this terrific resource makes jazz accessible to a broad audience, and especially to readers who've found the music bewildering or best left to the experts. Yet Why Jazz? is much more than an informative Q&A; it concisely traces the century-old history of this American and global art form, from its beginnings in New Orleans up through the current postmodern period. Whitehead provides brief profiles of the archetypal figures of jazz--from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Wynton Marsalis and John Zorn--and illuminates their contributions as musicians, performers, and composers. Also highlighted are the building blocks of the jazz sound--call and response, rhythmic contrasts, personalized performance techniques and improvisation--and discussion of how visionary musicians have reinterpreted these elements to continually redefine jazz, ushering in the swing era, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, and the avant-garde.
Along the way, Why Jazz? provides helpful plain-English descriptions of musical terminology and techniques, from "blue notes" to "conducted improvising." And unlike other histories which haphazardly cover the stylistic branches of jazz that emerged after the 1960s, Why Jazz? groups latter-day musical trends by decade, the better to place them in historical context.
Whether read in self-contained sections or as a continuous narrative, this compact reference presents a trove of essential information that belongs on the shelf of anyone who's ever been interested in jazz.
Organized chronologically in a convenient question and answer format, this terrific resource makes jazz accessible to a broad audience, and especially to readers who've found the music bewildering or best left to the experts. Yet Why Jazz? is much more than an informative Q&A; it concisely traces the century-old history of this American and global art form, from its beginnings in New Orleans up through the current postmodern period. Whitehead provides brief profiles of the archetypal figures of jazz--from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Wynton Marsalis and John Zorn--and illuminates their contributions as musicians, performers, and composers. Also highlighted are the building blocks of the jazz sound--call and response, rhythmic contrasts, personalized performance techniques and improvisation--and discussion of how visionary musicians have reinterpreted these elements to continually redefine jazz, ushering in the swing era, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, and the avant-garde.
Along the way, Why Jazz? provides helpful plain-English descriptions of musical terminology and techniques, from "blue notes" to "conducted improvising." And unlike other histories which haphazardly cover the stylistic branches of jazz that emerged after the 1960s, Why Jazz? groups latter-day musical trends by decade, the better to place them in historical context.
Whether read in self-contained sections or as a continuous narrative, this compact reference presents a trove of essential information that belongs on the shelf of anyone who's ever been interested in jazz.
- GenresMusic
172 pages, Hardcover
First published November 27, 2010
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117 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 10, 2019
Jazz On The Fourth Of July
In addition to parades and fireworks, I thought it would be valuable to celebrate Independence Day by revisiting a unique product of American freedom: the music of jazz. Over the years, I have listened to a fair amount of jazz, while my main interest in music is classical.
Kevin Whitehead's recent book, "Why Jazz? a concise guide" (2011) appeared to be a good way to get reacquainted with this American muse. The book is part of a series of short works published by Oxford University Press with the aim of giving readers workable background knowledge of an important, interesting subject in brief scope. Whitehead brings both knowledge and love to jazz. He is a longtime jazz critic for National Public Radio and has written extensively about the music.
The book consists of roughly 140 pages of text. It begins with an introductory chapter on the basics of jazz which discusses some relatively sophisticated musical concepts. The remainder of the book is arranged chronologically and covers early jazz through 1940, beebop, cool, and hard bop from 1940--1960, the Avant-Garde period of jazz and its aftermath from 1960 -- 1980, and a final chapter on the "postmodern" period of jazz from 1980 to the present. The book includes a good glossary of musical terms, a perfunctory list of important jazz recordings, and a better bibliography of books for further reading.
Much is covered in a small space as Whitehead offers discussions of musical theory, including such matters as chromatic scales, bitonality, the circle of fifths, polyrhythms,syncopation,modal jazz, and musical form. He gives the reader a sense of the difference between, say, bop, cool, and hard bop. The book also emphasizes the interrelationships among musical forms and the dangers of too rigid categorization. There are short, valuable discussions of important musicians, including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Theolonius Monk, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and others. The discussion of Rollins stood out for me, especially of his early recording of "Way out West." I have this album in my collection and was moved to rehear it several times after Whitehead reminded me about it. The lengthy final chapter on current developments in jazz includes a great deal of detail. The book can be read straight through, as I did, or slowly in individual chapters to help explore a particular type of jazz.
Early in the book, Whitehead discusses "swinging" which he describes as "one of the most alluring and elusive of jazz concepts." (p.10) Whitehead's book, unfortunately, fails to swing. It is full of information but reads, for the most part, flatly and pedantically. Although the book might appeal to readers familiar with jazz as a brief overview and refresher, the book probably would not inspire newcomers with a strong desire to jump into the music. The major problem with the book is in its organization. The discussion is not presented as a narrative. Rather, Whitehead presents his materials in a series of questions and answers. This results in a disjointed, strained presentation which, unfortunately, reads more like a catechism than a short history and story of music. I also thought that the book was topheavy towards current developments in jazz for a reader seeking a short introduction to the genre as a whole.
Whitehead's book gave me the welcome opportunity to think about jazz as part of a celebration of America's birthday. As he points out (p. 10), not all jazz has to "swing" to be valuable. Even so, this short book would have benefited greatly from dropping the question and answer format and particularly from more verve and lilt.
Robin Friedman
In addition to parades and fireworks, I thought it would be valuable to celebrate Independence Day by revisiting a unique product of American freedom: the music of jazz. Over the years, I have listened to a fair amount of jazz, while my main interest in music is classical.
Kevin Whitehead's recent book, "Why Jazz? a concise guide" (2011) appeared to be a good way to get reacquainted with this American muse. The book is part of a series of short works published by Oxford University Press with the aim of giving readers workable background knowledge of an important, interesting subject in brief scope. Whitehead brings both knowledge and love to jazz. He is a longtime jazz critic for National Public Radio and has written extensively about the music.
The book consists of roughly 140 pages of text. It begins with an introductory chapter on the basics of jazz which discusses some relatively sophisticated musical concepts. The remainder of the book is arranged chronologically and covers early jazz through 1940, beebop, cool, and hard bop from 1940--1960, the Avant-Garde period of jazz and its aftermath from 1960 -- 1980, and a final chapter on the "postmodern" period of jazz from 1980 to the present. The book includes a good glossary of musical terms, a perfunctory list of important jazz recordings, and a better bibliography of books for further reading.
Much is covered in a small space as Whitehead offers discussions of musical theory, including such matters as chromatic scales, bitonality, the circle of fifths, polyrhythms,syncopation,modal jazz, and musical form. He gives the reader a sense of the difference between, say, bop, cool, and hard bop. The book also emphasizes the interrelationships among musical forms and the dangers of too rigid categorization. There are short, valuable discussions of important musicians, including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Theolonius Monk, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and others. The discussion of Rollins stood out for me, especially of his early recording of "Way out West." I have this album in my collection and was moved to rehear it several times after Whitehead reminded me about it. The lengthy final chapter on current developments in jazz includes a great deal of detail. The book can be read straight through, as I did, or slowly in individual chapters to help explore a particular type of jazz.
Early in the book, Whitehead discusses "swinging" which he describes as "one of the most alluring and elusive of jazz concepts." (p.10) Whitehead's book, unfortunately, fails to swing. It is full of information but reads, for the most part, flatly and pedantically. Although the book might appeal to readers familiar with jazz as a brief overview and refresher, the book probably would not inspire newcomers with a strong desire to jump into the music. The major problem with the book is in its organization. The discussion is not presented as a narrative. Rather, Whitehead presents his materials in a series of questions and answers. This results in a disjointed, strained presentation which, unfortunately, reads more like a catechism than a short history and story of music. I also thought that the book was topheavy towards current developments in jazz for a reader seeking a short introduction to the genre as a whole.
Whitehead's book gave me the welcome opportunity to think about jazz as part of a celebration of America's birthday. As he points out (p. 10), not all jazz has to "swing" to be valuable. Even so, this short book would have benefited greatly from dropping the question and answer format and particularly from more verve and lilt.
Robin Friedman
March 6, 2020
I’m someone who was a casual jazz listener and collector in the 70s, an obsessive thru the 80s and now hardly listen to much besides Miles and Sun Ra, Kevin Whitehead’s book to me is a brief stroll through memory lane and my collection. His columns in the Voice guided me through many of those years and purchases. I believe the book is meant for newbies, though, so it’s hard for me to say how well it works at that. Just about everything mentioned is now streamable, so with this book and an Internet connection one could learn a lot. Would it make one a fan? Don’t know. It’s a bit dry in parts so I’m not sure. When he describes music that touches him, his prose soars, though. I’m not crazy about the Q&A format but that’s a minor point.
November 12, 2014
Pretty solid, accessible primer on jazz. I liked the question/answer format a lot, though I occasionally felt like the questions were not particularly well answered. (Which is kind of staggering since he wrote the questions himself.) Gave me some more names to dig into and helped me to better understand some of the principles of different movements within jazz (ie. bebop, cool jazz, free jazz, etc.).
This thought is sort of apropos of nothing, but I saw a good talk by Tom Insel, the director of the NIMH, recently and he discussed the BRAIN initiative. One of the things he brought up was that tools often open the road to new discoveries, new questions, new modes of inquiry. Paradigm shifts based on an insight generally explain existing data, but rarely open up new questions. It's really the development of tools that lead us to new discoveries. I've been thinking about this concept for the last week and I'm especially interested in thinking about it in the context of non-scientific exploration. What are the new tools that allowed music to move forward? Is it instrument development? New ways of making sounds? The development of new instrumental combinations? Perhaps in the case of something like free jazz we can think of a new tool as new ways of thinking about chord structure, rhythm structure, etc. On the other hand, maybe jazz is a continuum of refinement of a few ideas that fit a common set of tools (instrument combinations, harmonic structure, recording capabilities). To see a real revolution in music, perhaps it is necessary to look to electronic music as a vanguard in which tool development has gone hand in hand with new ideas in how music sounds. How has the ability to build loops of melody and stack those loops changed songwriting? Are we more inclined to build up rather than out now? What will the songs of the future sound like and what will be the tools that allow them to forge their own identity?
This thought is sort of apropos of nothing, but I saw a good talk by Tom Insel, the director of the NIMH, recently and he discussed the BRAIN initiative. One of the things he brought up was that tools often open the road to new discoveries, new questions, new modes of inquiry. Paradigm shifts based on an insight generally explain existing data, but rarely open up new questions. It's really the development of tools that lead us to new discoveries. I've been thinking about this concept for the last week and I'm especially interested in thinking about it in the context of non-scientific exploration. What are the new tools that allowed music to move forward? Is it instrument development? New ways of making sounds? The development of new instrumental combinations? Perhaps in the case of something like free jazz we can think of a new tool as new ways of thinking about chord structure, rhythm structure, etc. On the other hand, maybe jazz is a continuum of refinement of a few ideas that fit a common set of tools (instrument combinations, harmonic structure, recording capabilities). To see a real revolution in music, perhaps it is necessary to look to electronic music as a vanguard in which tool development has gone hand in hand with new ideas in how music sounds. How has the ability to build loops of melody and stack those loops changed songwriting? Are we more inclined to build up rather than out now? What will the songs of the future sound like and what will be the tools that allow them to forge their own identity?
February 17, 2011
A basic jazz primer that is a great place to start if you know very little about jazz but want to learn more. The question and answer format allows the reader to grab quick bites of information for easy digestion. With certain books I've picked up the habit of Googling or YouTubing as I read. Reading that Thelonius Monk's "Evidence" has a bridge that is "punctuated by fiendish offbeat accents." means so much more when I can immediately listen to it as well.
March 4, 2011
This is a decent introduction to Jazz - it's musicians and genres. For me, it was a nice review, but I did learn a bit about the direction of jazz in the 90's and beyond. It doesn't go too in-depth in any direction and reads as a sort of FAQ of Jazz.
February 26, 2011
im sure there are other, maybe better, concise jazz primers, but this is the one that fell into my lap and it was pretty good.
March 3, 2011
More like a 2.5-- not a bad book, just too much "musical theory jargon" for jazz newbs and/or music novices.
May 31, 2017
I can think of two ways to read this book:
a quick run through,
or opening up to a style/artist/time period you would like to better understand; opening up youtube; searching for a song; and reading Whitehead's prose while listening to the songs he writes about.
Whitehead is good at translating sounds into text. But, no matter how good someone is at conveying the flow and structure of a song, it all starts to run together into a mash unless you have music to listen too... at least for me anyways.
The book 's overall chronological set up is broken up with clear headers in the form of a question like " Why is Charlie Parker so revered?" or "what was special about Bebop?". This makes it easy to hop around and get what you want without having to read beyond the point of comprehension, overwhelmed by words describing sounds.
But, I do enjoy spending a half hour or so with the book and youtube open everyonce in awhile. This books is expanding my ear as well as my ability to write about sound.
a quick run through,
or opening up to a style/artist/time period you would like to better understand; opening up youtube; searching for a song; and reading Whitehead's prose while listening to the songs he writes about.
Whitehead is good at translating sounds into text. But, no matter how good someone is at conveying the flow and structure of a song, it all starts to run together into a mash unless you have music to listen too... at least for me anyways.
The book 's overall chronological set up is broken up with clear headers in the form of a question like " Why is Charlie Parker so revered?" or "what was special about Bebop?". This makes it easy to hop around and get what you want without having to read beyond the point of comprehension, overwhelmed by words describing sounds.
But, I do enjoy spending a half hour or so with the book and youtube open everyonce in awhile. This books is expanding my ear as well as my ability to write about sound.
November 4, 2019
Good for what I was using it for--light reading before falling asleep--since it's basically an FAQ on jazz (or what the author believes are or should be FAQs). Focuses more on history and subgenres within jazz, fairly opinionated, describes unfamilar things in terms of other unfamiliar things (e.g., describing one relatively obscure artist in terms of another obscure artist isn't that helpful), and gives pretty short shrift to guitar players. I'd definitely read Gioia's history of jazz before picking this up.
November 2, 2019
A short but very informative guide about jazz, its history, styles, and main creators. Even if very brief, this book manages to include a fair number of short appreciations of specific tunes, with a careful description of what is going on, written in a way that anyone can follow while listening to them, a feature that is quite valuable both for the novice and for the more experienced listener.
August 20, 2019
A good beginner primer to jazz, though I feel that at times the presentation makes the material feel a little too esoteric. As well, I feel as though the questions aren't answered well enough at times but are rather used as a jumping-off point to introduce more material.
March 16, 2021
Easy primer with some great listening suggestions.
Read
August 19, 2021Excellent primer for jazz beginners and also for those heads like me who are versed in jazz but wanted a little shoring up on certain concepts, ideas, historical contexts, etc. Recommended.
November 24, 2021
Concise, detailed but not encyclopedic, perhaps a touch too music theory-ish. But as a primer on a genre that many find inaccessible (it’s not), this is great.
January 6, 2022
A good, conscience guide on the history of jazz.
June 15, 2024
When that $2 library-sale book turns out to be a banger.
March 6, 2016
If you're new to jazz, this is a good survey of the genre, loosely organized in chronological order. There are useful citations of various tunes that illustrate the author's points about musical evolution. I learned how the various artists were linked by various musical sub genres, which was interesting.
I am not sure who the author was trying to reach, as the book is neither fish nor foul.If you're new to jazz, the music theory described here may be a little too technical. If, on the other hand, you're learning to improvise and know some music theory, the book may not be technical enough. The Q and A format makes it a quick, one day read but I didn't love Whitehead ' s writing style.
This is a quick intro to jazz history. Those interested in jazz structure should look elsewhere.
I am not sure who the author was trying to reach, as the book is neither fish nor foul.If you're new to jazz, the music theory described here may be a little too technical. If, on the other hand, you're learning to improvise and know some music theory, the book may not be technical enough. The Q and A format makes it a quick, one day read but I didn't love Whitehead ' s writing style.
This is a quick intro to jazz history. Those interested in jazz structure should look elsewhere.
September 24, 2014
I'm interested in Jazz and have a little bit of understanding as to what it's about.
I was intially attracted by the questions format that Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Warum Jazz? 111 gute Gründe) uses, and there is certainly lots of information on people and movements and relationships between them all presented, but this book was just a drudge to read. I gave up.
Buy carefully. I think there must be better books out there.
I was intially attracted by the questions format that Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Warum Jazz? 111 gute Gründe) uses, and there is certainly lots of information on people and movements and relationships between them all presented, but this book was just a drudge to read. I gave up.
Buy carefully. I think there must be better books out there.
October 13, 2015
Enjoyable Q&A about jazz. As the subtitle says, It's concise.
This got 4 stars because my enjoyment was enhanced by listening to the songs and musicians the author suggests and writes about. Took a lot longer to read the book that way, but it includes some great music.
This got 4 stars because my enjoyment was enhanced by listening to the songs and musicians the author suggests and writes about. Took a lot longer to read the book that way, but it includes some great music.
October 28, 2012
I liked this one. Basically a FAQ for Jazz novices. Sets out what it intends to do.
December 7, 2013
I just got tired before I finished it. Reading about jazz without hearing it didn't make a lot of sense once I started to study.
November 18, 2015
A solid primer on jazz for a neophyte like me.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews