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Home , Come Sunday, Dizzy Gillespie

Intersections: Cross-Pollination with Other Styles – Summer, 2017 Wesleyan University Graduate Liberal Studies Program Instructor: Noah Baerman [email protected]

Overview

In “Jazz Intersections” we will be exploring the ways that jazz has cross-pollinated with other styles of music. The very origins of jazz come from diverse sources, African, European, and otherwise. Other styles and cultures have continued to influence the development of jazz, whether influencing the fabric of the whole genre or leading to the development of sub-styles and even more personalized fusions by individual artists. Likewise, as jazz has developed and flourished, its influence has made its way into at least pockets of virtually every style of Western music, plus some non-Western styles as well.

In this course we will dig into the musical interactions that jazz has had with rock, pop, R&B, hip-hop, blues, gospel, folk, European classical music, and various musical forms of Latin America, Africa, and East and South Asia. We will look at both isolated collaborations and more ongoing points of influence, while examining different ways in which these reciprocal influences can occur. We will explore the work of jazz artists who have particularly embraced other styles and cultures in their own music as well as the music of many musicians and composers outside of the jazz idiom who have incorporated significant jazz elements into their work. Our diverse list of artists includes Dizzy Gillespie, , , Eddie Palmieri, Herbie Hancock, Igor Stravinsky, the , Frank Zappa, , , The Grateful Dead, , Hugh Masekela, and many others.

Sound recordings (including a mix of songs available online through Spotify) will be the primary source material for this course, with some in-class video footage. We will read a number of articles and excerpts available through the library’s e-res system.

Grades :

Class Participation: 10% “Reflections” on each class session’s study materials: 30% Comparative Essays: 30% (10% per essay) Live Performance Review: 10% Final Project: 20%

1 Attendance Policy :

While there are no specific penalties for missing a class (aside from “zero” grades for that day’s class participation), it is unlikely that any student who misses class with any frequency will be able to succeed. With significant emphasis on listening to recordings (including some not available on Spotify), the information and perspective presented in class will be very important. If you must miss class, it is your responsibility to submit that class period’s assignment on time and to catch up on any missed information. You are encouraged to find at least one “buddy” who can share notes with you and/or record the class if you should miss one. Assignments handed in late will be lowered by one letter grade per class period.

Assignments:

This is only a brief overview. More details on these assignments can be found in the “Assignment Addendum” supplement.

• “Reflections”: Each class you will be asked to write and submit (on the Discussion Boards on Moodle) reflections on what struck you in the music and readings for that day’s class. This is a fairly informal assignment (in that there are no “correct” answers aside from those which demonstrate that you fully absorbed the material), and the highest six grades (out of eight reflections, since none will be due on the first or last class) will be averaged at the end of the term.

• Comparative Essays: Each of these essays will compare several assigned pieces of music, picking apart the various elements that make up each performance. The “optional, un- graded essay” assigned early in the semester allows you to pick two songs of your choice (not necessarily from this course) and write in this analytical manner to get feedback about whether you are on the right track in anticipation of the graded essays.

• Live Performance Review: This will be an analysis of a live jazz performance. This affords you the opportunity to take visuals and surroundings into account when listening, while encouraging you to take advantage of the diverse live jazz-relevant offerings in the area in the summer (many of them free). Anything from a large outdoor festival to a formal concert to a low-key restaurant gig can qualify. Alternate arrangements can be made for any student logistically unable to attend a live performance, and ample suggestions will be offered.

• Final Project: This will be an in-depth examination of a specific topic relating to Davis and/or Coltrane. There will be an ongoing dialogue between professor and student to explore, find and narrow down an appropriate topic. It will take the form of a written essay along with a brief in-class presentation in which you will share a summary of your findings.

2 Class-by-class overview

Shown in italics after each class date are assignments due that day and quizzes to be given that day. See separate “Assignment Addendum” for descriptions of assignments, information about recordings and other details.

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Class 1 (Tuesday 6/27): Introduction to class; Meet the instruments; How jazz works – the basics

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Class 2 (Thursday 6/27): A Condensed Chronology of Jazz, Including Its Primary Sub-genres

Work out logistics of using “E-Res” (online reserves)

Work out logistics for using Spotify

Optional Ungraded Comparative Essay

Reading: Martin: “Types of Songs Found In Jazz” Schoenberg: “The Story of Jazz” and “Varieties of Jazz” (chapters 2 and 3 from NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Jazz )

Listening: “Maple Leaf Rag” by Dick Hyman “Dippermouth Blues” by King Oliver “Dead Man Blues” by Jelly Roll Morton “Tea For Two” by “ Airshaft” by “Shaw ‘Nuff” by Dizzy Gillespie “Ecaroh” by “The Nearness of You” by Gerry Mulligan and “So What” by Miles Davis “Free” by Ornette Coleman

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Class 3 (Thursday 7/6): Blues and Gospel

Initial Final Project Dialogue

Field Trip (roughly halfway through class) – Alica Olatuja at Wesleyan

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Reading: Ellison “Blues and Roots” and “All Jazzed Up” Lyons and Perlo: pg. 473-476 (“”) Crouch: pg. 258-270 (“Come Sunday: Duke Ellington, ”)

Listening: “Dippermouth Blues” by King Oliver “St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith “Dead Man Blues” by Jelly Roll Morton “After Hours” by Erskine Hawkins “Roll ‘Em Pete” by Joe Turner and Pete Johnson “Roll ‘Em Pete” by and Joe Williams “Billie’s Blues” by “Parker’s Mood” by “Monk’s Point” by “Part IV (Come Sunday)” by Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson “Let Thy People Go” by “Ecclusiastics” by Charles Mingus

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Class 4 (Tuesday 7/11): Latin Music

Comparative Essay 1 “Roll ‘Em Pete” by Count Basie (with Joe Williams) vs. Pete Johnson (with Joe Turner)

Reading: Lawn: “The Afro-Latin and Caribbean Connection” Gridley: pg. 341-344 (“”) Roberts: “Everything’s Coming Up Bossa”

Listening: “Manteca” by Dizzy Gillespie “” by “Un Poco Loco” by “Revolt / La Libertad Logico” by Eddie Palmieri “Mr. Bruce” by Roy Hargrove “Watermelon Man” by Mongo Santamaria “Soul Samba” by “Girl From Ipanema” by Astrud Gilberto “St. Thomas” by

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4 Class 5 (Thursday 7/13): Other “Ethnic” Music

Initial Final Project Proposal

Reading: Stowe: “Jazz That Eats Rice: Toshiko Akiyoshi’s Roots Music” Lavezzoli: “Indo-Blue Impressions: and the Birth of Indo-Jazz” Mandel: “Jazz In Africa: The ” (from the Oxford Companion to Jazz) Masekela: pg. 156-165 Giddins: “ (Afrobeats)” Gridley: pg. 338-340 (“Klezmer Jazz”)

Listening: “Kogun” by Toshiko Akiyoshi “Moon Cup” by Yusef Lateef “Mind Ecology” by Shakti “Your Lady” by John Coltrane “U-Dwi” by Hugh Masekela “The Call” by Randy Weston “Honeysuckle Rose” by “Satmer Hakafos #6” by Hasidic New Wave

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Class 6 (Tuesday 7/18): Pop

Comparative Essay 2 “Un Poco Loco” by Bud Powell vs. Tito Puente

Reading: Gridley: pg. 328-338 Morath: chapters 1 & 2 (“What Are Popular Standards” and “The Story of Popular Standards”) Nicholson: “Déjà vu Time All Over Again: Jazz Singers and Nu-Crooners” and “Between Image and Artistry: The Phenomenon” (from Is Jazz Dead? )

Listening: “In the Mood” by “Nature Boy” by “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” by Vince Guaraldi “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by Cannonball Adderley “The Nearness of You” by Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker

5 “The Nearness of You (live)” by Norah Jones “Almost Blue” by Diana Krall “Honeysuckle Rose” by Frank Vignola et al “What a Wonderful World” by Kenny G “To the Max” by Gerald Albright

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Class 7 (Thursday 7/20): Fusion (Rock Enters Jazz) and Jazz in the Rock World

Refined Final Project Proposal

Reading: Nicholson: “Fusions and Crossovers” (pg. 217-236 from The Cambridge Companion to Jazz ) Crouch: pg. 240-256 (“On the Corner: Miles Davis Sells Out”) Nicholson: “Make a Jazz Noise Here” (from Jazz-Rock: A History )

Listening: “Frelon Brun” by Miles Davis “Spanish Key” by Miles Davis “Vashkar” by Tony Williams “Birds of Fire” by Mahavishnu Orchestra “Black Market” by Weather Report “Beyond the Seventh Galaxy” by Return to Forever “Some Skunk Funk” by Brecker Brothers “God Bless the Child” by Blood, Sweat and Tears “Twenty Small Cigars” by Frank Zappa “East St. Louis Toodle-oo” by Steely Dan “Englishman In New York” by “Twisted” by Joni Mitchell

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Class 8 (Tuesday 7/25): R&B

Comparative Essay 3 “Spanish Key” by Miles Davis vs. “Beyond the Seventh Galaxy” by

Reading: Porter: pg. 370-377 (“Soul Jazz”) Nicholson: “Chain Reaction” (from Jazz-Rock: A History ) George: pg. 124-126 Gridley: pg. 344-345 (“Hip-Hop Jazz”)

6 Listening: “I Got a Woman” by “I Got a Woman” by Jimmy Smith “Compared to What” by Les McCann and Eddie Harris “Way Back Home” by the Crusaders “Valdez in the Country” by “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock “Watermelon Man” by the J.B.’s and Fred Wesley “Contusion” by Stevie Wonder “Verses from the Abstract” by A Tribe Called Quest “My Favorite Things” by OutKast

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Class 9 (Thursday 7/27) Western Classical Music

Live Performance Review

Reading: Tirro: “Ragtime” Kennedy: pg. 363 (“Jazz”) Williams: “ and the Modern Jazz Quartet: Modern Conservative” Teachout: “Jazz and Classical Music: To the Third Stream and Beyond” (from the Oxford Companion to Jazz)

Listening: “The Sycamore” by Dick Hyman “Concorde” by Modern Jazz Quartet “In a Mist” by Bix Beiderbecke “Will O’ the Wisp” by Miles Davis “Ebony Concerto” (movement 1) by Igor Stravinsky “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin “City of Glass: (Third Movement): Reflections” by “Peace Piece” by “’Round Midnight” by

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Class 10 (Tuesday 8/1): Final Project Presentations, Musical Loose Ends

(Final Project)

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7 Spotify Information

The listening examples you will be expected to study for class assignments can be found in playlists on Spotify (www.spotify.com). Spotify “Premium” (which as of this writing costs $10/month) allows for an ad-free environment and the capacity to listen to the tracks offline without purchasing them on ITunes or elsewhere. However, the free version of Spotify is also fully-functional for the purposes of this class if you can handle some commercials and are doing your listening from a web-connected computer (you can listen on a phone as well, but only in “shuffle” mode, which is less helpful).

The tunes you will need to download can be found by “following” me (username noahbaerman) or by using links attached to the Listening Guide for each class.

General Written Assignment Guidelines

Length listed is based on a double-spaced essay with a 12-point “standard” font (Times New Roman, Arial/Helvetica, etc.).

Assignments should be submitted in Moodle and will be returned (with comments and grades) there as well.

The grading of written assignments takes the following components into account: - Writing (including “mechanics” like spelling, grammar and punctuation) - Sufficient study of the music in question - Documentation (typically in the form of citing specific musical moments/happenings that illustrate whatever point you are making; this also applies to citing outside sources, but there will be little occasion to do so) - Understanding/assimilation of concepts and information presented in class - Depth of analysis

Assignments handed in late will be lowered by one letter grade per class session. Up-to-date grades can be found in the “Gradebook” on Moodle.

Listening to Music

Jazz is primarily an aural tradition. As such, the ability to hear things is the foremost tool we use in understanding the music. Most of our class time will be devoted to listening.

Some notes about listening assignments:

- Absorbing and understanding music can’t be “crammed,” whether you are playing it or listening to it. It is a process that must take place over a period of time. Please take that into consideration when pacing your studying and listening – smaller but frequent “chunks” of listening tend to work better than concentrated “cramming sessions” before class (or the night before a paper is due), and your work will bear witness to this fact.

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- As with reading, it is useful to be sensitive to your lucidity level when you begin a session of listening. Just as, when tired, one can read the same paragraph over and over without absorbing its content, listening to music without concentrating will have limited study value. If you are simply looking for a general impression of a song, this can be fine. Just don’t mistake that sort of listening for the sort of studying necessary to get the most out of the listening for a course like this.

This is especially relevant if music typically functions in your life as “background sound.” There is nothing wrong with that, it is simply important to realize that greater levels of attentiveness and concentration are necessary in this context. Just as you would not expect to get much out of reading a chapter from a book while checking your email or cooking dinner, this music warrants your undivided attention when the time comes to really study it.

- Recognize that even under the best of circumstances you can only absorb a limited amount of information in a single listening to a piece of music. Try “zoning in” and listening to more specific elements with each successive listening session. For example: - Listening #1: Get a general feel for the music. - Listening #2: Determine the overall structure to the piece (for example, introduction, melody, solo, piano solo, repeat of melody with the last melody phrase repeated three times). - Listening #3: Focus on the way the song’s melody (if it has one) is played and on the playing of each soloist. - Listening #4: Focus on the rhythm section. - Listening #5: Focus on the soloists’ interaction with the rhythm section. - Listening #6: Pick a particular member (or two) of the rhythm section on whom to focus.

This could go on ad infinitum, exploring different elements of a particular musician’s performance and the interactions between different combinations of musicians. Your own levels of experience, perceptiveness, seriousness and curiosity may lead you to give a particular piece more or fewer “spins.” Just realize that if you are writing an essay and listen to the same song 10 times, you are simply doing your job (and should tell that to any household members who would prefer that you move on to something else).

- Whether you are preparing to write a Comparative Essay or simply doing your regular listening assignment, look for significant similarities and differences between musicians and recordings. Doing this will give you a deeper understanding of the common elements that define a sub-genre or “movement” and of the divergent elements that define the styles of more individualistic musicians.

As you gain more experience, you will become better able to judge what constitutes a “significant” similarity or difference. For example, “song #1 was 4 minutes long, while song #2 was only 3 minutes and 55 seconds” probably does not qualify as a significant difference, nor does “both songs sound jazzy” qualify as a noteworthy similarity.

9 - While a listening assignment may pertain to the specific unit to be covered in the upcoming class, you are encouraged to revisit that music following the class. What you have learned in class will likely impact your perception of the music and your ability to hear things within it. Consider this to be another form of reviewing your notes or readings after a class has taken place. Likewise, revisiting tracks from earlier in the semester can be illuminating as you put the pieces together.

General Advice On Writing About Music

The following explanation is here to shed some light on the topic of writing analytically about music. General principles of writing (use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation, organize your thoughts, etc.) apply as well, but there are some specific elements to writing about music that may be less familiar to folks who have not taken music courses before. The approach of reading something from a book or website and paraphrasing it to make a point is not particularly relevant here, as the bulk of your “data” should be drawn from the recordings themselves, save for such things as personnel information (e.g. referring to the drummer by name). A good musical description revolves around details (each instrument is doing such-and-such) and the more details (relevant ones) you include, the better. In all cases, you are encouraged to draw conclusions and make connections, with the details serving as your back-up to give credibility and substance to your statements. Generally speaking, if analyzing a single piece of music (particularly in a Comparative Essay), this involves discussing what each instrument is contributing to the sound. As relevant, this may also include the impact of the sounds you cite, the ways the musicians interact with one another and the cumulative sounds of instrument groups (horn section, rhythm section, etc.). If one instrument stands out as being a particularly important element at a given moment, then by all means draw more attention to that. Just recognize that, for example, a Comparative Essay that does not discuss the drumming is missing something (unless, in fact, there are no drums on the track in question). Along these lines, general statements are less effective. For example, if you write “they play with a good beat,” or “the sound is mellow,” those statements are incomplete unless backed up with details about who is doing what to create the general impact discussed. Even less effective are personal “feeling” statements (“this song made me happy” or “this song was better than that one” or “I was dancing as I listened to this”) and more abstract descriptions (“it was like a song that you could listen to at work” or “the trombone made me picture a walk in the park with a puppy”) – all of these examples are harmless and could be part of a good essay or Discussion Board post, but only if augmented by the details of the recordings being discussed. Still more problematic is excessive use of peripheral statements, things that relate to the song or artist but are not drawn from study and analysis of the assigned recordings. This is very important to keep in mind. There will be a fair share of historical information in this course, and it is certainly interesting and important to know where Thelonious Monk was born, for example, or who his music teacher was, and if you are writing a Discussion Board post about the reading, then by all means mention those things if you want to. However, in most cases stating these kinds facts will not serve any function other than taking up space that should be filled with genuine analysis – your analysis. Perhaps the worst variation on this (which in some cases

10 crosses the line into plagiarism) is the excessive use of peripheral statements that are not credited to their sources. If you say that his Criss Cross was one of the greatest jazz albums of the , there are two problems. The first is that this statement says nothing of substance about what is happening with the music, which should be the focal point of your writing, so you are probably wasting space to begin with. The second problem is that a subjective statement like that presumably comes from somewhere, and you are responsible to credit your source. Be assured that if you make a genuine effort to do the analysis that is expected of you, you will be rewarded even if the results are not initially highly refined from day one. The idea is that through paying attention to the guidelines and making use of the feedback available, you will become increasingly able to write about the details of the music. A two-page essay that focuses on musical analysis and leaves no important stone unturned will always get a better grade than a longer essay that is written skillfully but only has one and a half pages of actual analysis, padded with other things. “Extra stuff” (opinions, general statements, peripheral facts, quotes, etc.) will not necessarily hurt your grade, assuming that it is above and beyond your substantial analysis. Just keep in mind that for grading purposes, the length is determined by the amount of space devoted to analysis – the rest is just taking up room on the page. Introductions and conclusions, while fine, will generally be considered “filler” if they are not adding anything to the discussion. Particularly if time is tight, your best bet is to cut to the chase and focus entirely on the musical analysis.

Online Reserves

Assigned readings will be available through Wesleyan Electronic Reserve. Once you’ve done this once or twice, it should be pretty intuitive. - Go to the Wesleyan library system homepage at www.wesleyan.edu/libr - Click on the “Course Reserves” link (the third one on the left, under the catalog links) - Click “Connect to ERes, the electronic reserve system to retrieve online readings” - Enter your Wesleyan username and password - Click on the first link, “Electronic Reserves & Reserves Pages” - Using the menu selections, search by course number (615), course name (“Jazz Cross- Pollination”) department (GLSP Arts) or instructor name (Baerman) - Click on the link for the “Jazz Cross-Pollination” course - Enter the following password: “ARTS615” (yes, that’s the course number) - At this point you will find a menu from which you can select and click on the reading you intend to study.

Technical notes: - These readings are in PDF format and require Adobe Acrobat Reader software, which is free to download if you do not already have it. - You can print the documents or read them on the computer screen. In the latter case you may have to adjust the page orientation (using the “rotate view clockwise” command) and “zoom in” to make things legible. - If you have trouble connecting to electronic reserves, you may need to adjust your proxy settings – for information, check out www.wesleyan.edu/libr/proxy.htm

11 - If you have not used ERes recently for other classes, it is possible that you are not in their database and will need to follow the corresponding link on the login page. Do this sooner rather than later to ensure that you will be ready to use the system when the time comes to do your first readings. - You can also find “hard copies” of all of these readings at the Wesleyan Science Library’s Reserve Desk (note: summer readings are held there, not at Olin Library).

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