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The Other Side of Nowhere. Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue

by Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble, Eds. ,with introduction by Ingrid Monson
Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, 2004
462 pp., illus. 3 b/w. Trade, $70.00; paper, $29.95
ISBN: 0-8195-6681-0; ISBN: 0-8195-6682-9.


Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

It is a dangerous road to utopia, and one ought to keep in mind that the quest for a just and prosperous society in real life as well as in fiction or philosophy has lead to catastrophic failures. No wonder serious politicians and bona fide sociologists have all but given up on theorizing about the means to reach paradise on earth and leave it to dreamers and possibly pop singers to speculate on how to get there. So why does the publisher of this otherwise very fine collection of essays about jazz, improvisation and its social importance ask if 'jazz improvisation can create a form of utopia'? Maybe because dreaming of utopia is the prerogative of oppressed groups, wherever they are. Maybe only the weary and the downtrodden have a right to struggle for a utopian future whereas the powerful and the rich should be kept in place by law, compromise, and public outrage. Anyway, one of the possible roles jazz and its companion, improvisation, can play in a community is to create a temporary and very local quasi-utopian haven for performers and audiences. Improvisation at least gives the impression that rules can be transgressed——or transcended?——while still being in sync with others, that harmony can exist alongside disharmony and individuality can be emphasized within collectivity and vice versa.

Eighteen authors have contributed to this book, and certainly not all of them agree with these bloggish ideas that jazz and improvisation is an escape route to utopia or——to put it more positively——a source of strength to overcome hardship, oppression and the loss of identity. Quite on the contrary, the ideas exposed in the essays range far and wide about the role of jazz. In the first section, three performers are thinking out loudly about the importance of improvisation in their practice and how it changed their attitude towards a sometimes hostile environment. No wonder two of them are women: grande dame Pauline Oliveros and Dana Reason.

In the second section, four essays shed some light on the historic communities involved in the rise and development of improvised jazz. In the third, 'Social Practice and Identity' the question of the relation between jazz and its carrier communities is explored. Obviously, two marginalized groups are to be on the foreground in this discussion: Afro-Americans and women. And they duly are, in remarkable essays by Mark Anthony Neal and Sherrie Tucker among others. "Improvisation and Imitation: Marlon Brando as a Jazz Actor" by Krin Gabbard stands out as a very imaginative and interesting analysis of the influence jazz plays in other arts, more precisely in American cinema. It shows that jazz certainly has helped building contemporary mythologies and has contributed to our material culture in more ways than just musical.

The last and fourth section of the book contains four essays round the theme of collaboration and dissonance and actually shows in which ways theory and research of improvisation and jazz could be further developed.

The editors are both professors at the University of Guelph, and it is in the shadow of the annual Guelph Jazz Festival that the essays and authors have been brought together. Maybe only such a combination of scholarship and practice can effectively lead to a substantial progress in our understanding of the role and the societal dynamics of jazz, but someone ought to write a more accessible version of the ideas in these essays to reach a wider audience.

 

 




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