Dizzy À La Mimi: Jazz, Text, and Translation
Published in the Journal of the Society for American Music 11/2 (2017) Dizzy à la Mimi: Jazz, Text, and Translation BENJAMIN GIVAN hen jazz circulates across cultural, national, and geographic boundaries, interesting things often happen. From its beginnings as an American W Afrodiasporic art form, the music has grown to encompass a vast worldwide array of subidioms, and while some of its original sociopolitical functions and stylistic elements endure in new contexts, others are decidedly altered or reinterpreted.1 Inevitably, a great deal is lost—and much is gained—in translation. Indeed, the metaphor of translation, along with various concepts and methodological strategies drawn from the field of translation studies, has lately offered a small number of jazz scholars, such as historian Celeste Day Moore and musicologist Brigid Cohen, enlightening ways of understanding the music’s international diffusion and transformation.2 This recent research exemplifies a broader interdisciplinary convergence of musicology, literary criticism, and translation studies.3 Yet much more remains to be said about jazz’s globalization from a translational perspective. In this regard, it is hard to imagine a more inviting place to begin than For their advice and support, I thank Luciane Beduschi, Wolfram Knauer, Ellie Martin, Celeste Day Moore, and Isabelle Perrin. 1 Among the many publications dealing with jazz from a global perspective are E. Taylor Atkins, “Toward a Global History of Jazz,” in Jazz Planet, ed. E. Taylor Atkins (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), xi–xxvii; Luca Cerchiari, “Introduction,” in Eurojazzland: Jazz and European Sources, Dynamics, and Contexts, ed. Luca Cerchiari, Laurent Cugny, and Franz Kerschbaumer (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012), vii–xviii; Stuart Nicholson, Jazz and Culture in a Global Age (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2014); and Jazz Worlds/World Jazz, ed.
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