Jazz is a music of journeys, migration, and global mobility – from the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade to global travels for escape, exchange, or putting down roots. Having migrated via changing modes of transportation and media communication, the sounds, musicians, and theories of jazz have led to today's diasporic jazz world of global and local encounters. This book features articles that deal with jazz in various geographic areas such as Japan or Israel, orchestras travelling to Egypt or invited to the USA, and so-called expatriate jazz musicians taking up residence in Europe. By sharing their research about jazz on TV, on records, and at festivals, the authors from different disciplines demonstrate how jazz studies today engage with movement in the music's past to question and shape its future. This collection of writings has its origins in the VI Rhythm Changes Conference "Jazz Journeys," which took place in Graz (Austria) and where the International Society for Jazz Research celebrated its 50th anniversary.

One author's personal odyssey through the jazz scene in Japan

Finalist for the 2019 Jazz Journalists Association Book of the Year About Jazz, Jazz Awards for Journalism "Is there jazz in China?" This is the question that sent author Eugene Marlow on his quest to uncover the history of jazz in China. Marlow traces China's introduction to jazz in the early 1920s, its interruption by Chinese leadership under Mao in 1949, and its rejuvenation in the early 1980s with the start of China's opening to the world under Premier Deng Xiaoping. Covering a span of almost one hundred years, Marlow focuses on a variety of subjects--the musicians who initiated jazz performances in China, the means by which jazz was incorporated into Chinese culture, and the musicians and venues that now present jazz performances. Featuring unique, face-to-face interviews with leading indigenous jazz musicians in Beijing and Shanghai, plus interviews with club owners, promoters, expatriates, and even diplomats, Marlow marks the evolution of jazz in China as it parallels China's social, economic, and political evolution through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Also featured is an interview with one of the extant members of the Jimmy King Big Band of the 1940s, one of the first major all-Chinese jazz big bands in Shanghai. Ultimately, Jazz in China: From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression is a cultural history that reveals the inexorable evolution of a democratic form of music in a Communist state.

Shortlisted for the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2022 Quyền Văn Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the most preeminent jazz musicians in Vietnam. Considered a pioneer in the country, Minh is often publicly recognized as the “godfather of Vietnamese jazz.” Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam tells the story of the music as it intertwined with Minh’s own narrative. Stan BH Tan-Tangbau details Minh’s life story, telling how Minh pioneered jazz as an original genre even while navigating the trials and tribulations of a fervent socialist revolution, of the ideological battle that was the Cold War, of Vietnam’s war against the United States, and of the political changes during the Đổi Mới period between the mid-1980s and the 1990s. Minh worked tirelessly and delivered two breakthrough solo recitals in 1988 and 1989, marking the first time jazz was performed in the public sphere in the socialist state. To gain jazz acceptance as a mainstream musical art form, Minh founded Minh Jazz Club. With the release of his debut album of original compositions in 2000, Minh shaped the nascent genre of Vietnamese jazz. Minh’s endeavors kickstarted the momentum, from his performing jazz in public, teaching jazz both formally and informally, and contributing to the shaping of an original Vietnamese voice to stand out among the many styles in the jazz world. Most importantly, Minh generated a public space for musicians to play and for the Vietnamese to listen. His work eventually helped to gain jazz the credibility necessary at the national conservatoire to offer instruction in a professional music education program.

Jazz Journey: A Guide for Listening explores jazz music from its 19th Century forerunners through today. The text takes readers on an historical audio and video tour of select jazz performances of the last hundred years. All of the major styles of jazz--including the predecessors of jazz, Ragtime and Blues--are covered, including New Orleans style, Chicago style, Stride piano, Swing, Bebop, Cool, Hard Bop, modal, Free jazz, freer jazz, and Fusion. Major performers include Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Horace Silver, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, among others. For easy access to the music described in the text, the revised first edition features an online, active learning component with links to audio and video recordings, as well as listening guides. Jazz Journey is an ideal reading and listening experience for jazz appreciation courses for non-majors. It can also be used in jazz history classes for music and jazz studies majors.

Describes a young musician's discovery of how music is played from the inside-out, rather than just on the outside.

This text places explains how and why jazz evolved as it did, as it emphasizes chronology, historical cause and effect, and the interactions between music and American history and culture.