Deracinated Flower: Toshiko Akiyoshi's “Trace in Jazz History”
Jazz Perspectives Vol. 4, No. 1, April 2010, pp. 35–57 Deracinated Flower: Toshiko Akiyoshi’s “Trace in Jazz History” Kevin Fellezs TaylorRJAZ_A_469936.sgm10.1080/17494061003694147Jazz1749-4060Original2010041000000AprilKevinFellezskfellezs@ucmerced.edu Perspectives and& Article Francis (print)/1749-4079Francis 2010 (online) I’m trying to draw from my heritage and enrich the jazz tradition without changing it. I’m putting into jazz, not just taking out. Toshiko Akiyoshi1 Across her musical career, the Japanese-American composer and pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi has pursued an ideal of creative transcultural “rootlessness.” She has devel- oped this aesthetic by rendering non-jazz influences, drawn most notably from Japa- nese musical aesthetics, within a jazz context. Across the 1970s, her active infusion of traditional Japanese musical elements into large-ensemble jazz compositions and arrangements reflected her changing attitude regarding both the creative aesthetics and musical affiliations enabled by nationality, ethnicity, and gender, on the one hand, and musical practices, repertoire, and instrumentation, on the other. By viewing Akiyoshi’s music through the perspective of this “rootless” ideal, we gain invaluable insight into the production and representation of jazz during the 1970s, a time when transcultural expression was changing the sounds as well as the meanings of the genre. In this essay, I explore both how Akiyoshi’s “rootless” creative aesthetic was a result of her musical experiences, and how this personal history reinforced her nascent mistrust of any presumptive links between authentic jazz and the contentious catego- ries of race, gender, and nationality. Moreover, I argue that the ways in which gender Downloaded By: [Fellezs, Kevin] At: 19:12 23 July 2010 “rules” framed her work significantly affected her aesthetic and career decisions.
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