What sounds throughout these stories is the universal voice of humanity that is the essence of the music.

Albert provides a survey of the impact of jazz on both American and foreign fiction, along with an annotated listing of almost 400 short stories, novels, plays, and jazz fiction criticism. Access is augmented by an index of novels, plays, and short stories and by a general index. Albert examines the strong impact jazz and the blues have had on fiction. The annotated listing of 400 novels, short stories, and jazz fiction criticism will serve as a resource for those doing research in both music and literature, as well as serving as a reading guide for jazz devotees who are looking for literature with a jazz motif. Access is augmented by an index of novels, plays, and short stories and by a general index.

Jazz can be uplifting, stimulating, sensual, and spiritual. Yet when writers turn to this form of music, they almost always imagine it in terms of loneliness. In Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness, Sam V. H. Reese investigates literary representations of jazz and the cultural narratives often associated with it, noting how they have, in turn, shaped readers’ judgments and assumptions about the music. This illuminating critical study contemplates the relationship between jazz and literature from a perspective that musicians themselves regularly call upon to characterize their performances: that of the conversation. Reese traces the tradition of literary appropriations of jazz, both as subject matter and as aesthetic structure, in order to show how writers turn to this genre of music as an avenue for exploring aspects of human loneliness. In turn, jazz musicians have often looked to literature—sometimes obliquely, sometimes centrally—for inspiration. Reese devotes particular attention to how several revolutionary jazz artists used the written word as a way to express, in concrete terms, something their music could only allude to or affectively evoke. By analyzing these exchanges between music and literature, Blue Notes refines and expands the cultural meaning of being alone, stressing how loneliness can create beauty, empathy, and understanding. Reese analyzes a body of prose writings that includes Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and midcentury short fiction by James Baldwin, Julio Cortázar, Langston Hughes, and Eudora Welty. Alongside this vibrant tradition of jazz literature, Reese considers the autobiographies of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, as well as works by a range of contemporary writers including Geoff Dyer, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and Zadie Smith. Throughout, Blue Notes offers original perspectives on the disparate ways in which writers acknowledge the expansive side of loneliness, reimagining solitude through narratives of connected isolation.

Broad in scope, meticulously researched, and including titles that have long been inaccessible, this resource is an overview of the history of the genre from its beginning to the present."--BOOK JACKET.

This book explores jazz as a cultural lodestone and source of critical inquiry for over a century.

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa is well known for his jazz poetry, and this book is the first to bring together the verve and vitality of his oeuvre. The centerpiece of this volume is the libretto "Testimony." Paying homage to Charlie Parker, "Testimony" was commissioned for a radio drama with original music by eminent Australian composer and saxophonist Sandy Evans. Remarkably rich and evocative, encompassing a wide range of musical energy and performers, this moving affirmation of Parker's genius became a milestone in contemporary radio theater. Twenty-eight additional poems spanning the breadth of Komunyakaa's career are included, including two never previously published. Accompanying the poems are interviews and essays featuring Komunyakaa, Evans, radio producer Christopher Williams, jazz critic Miriam Zolin, jazz writer and editor Sascha Feinstein, and musical director, Paul Grabowsky. Sascha Feinstein writes the foreword. The print edition includes two CDs with the entire Australian Broadcast Company recording of Testimony, ebook contains imbedded audio. Check for the online reader's companion at testimony.site.wesleyan.edu.

This book presents papers by eleven European scholars that explore the ambivalent representations of an American West that follows “no single trajectory, creating instead a series of lines and rhythms, always moving, crossing, and folding” (Neil Campbell). The papers explore the use of the American West as an ideal or a realistic setting in different cultural productions, ranging from music (“Sing-along Melodies of the West”) to film (“Western Images in Motion”) or comics (“Graphic Representations of the American West”), and including popular cultural fields like podcasts, fashion, and gastronomy (“Performing the West”).