Journal of Jazz Studies (JJS)
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176 research outputs found
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Imaginary Gardens: Solarpunk Illusions and Realities in the "Garden City" of Singapore
No full textBy extending its vision in 2014 of building a sustainable state through the framework of a “Garden City”, Singapore has set itself up to become the world’s first “Smart Nation”. With a focus on energy and resource solutions, the city-state has heavily relied on state-driven technocratic interventions to create what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Long calls “meaningful and fulfilled lives” for all. This technocratic, human-centered development draws a parallel to “Solarpunk”, a model of environmental utopia. The Solarpunk genre gathers speculative fiction works which imagines post-transitional climatic utopias. This model draws ties to the concepts of circular economies, degrowth economies, and decolonization of energy. Inspired by energy and environmental humanities scholar Rhys Williams, it can be understood that the Solarpunk environmental model offers the elements necessary for ongoing global energy transition. It is important to note that Singapore’s current energy transition solutions, embedded in its Smart Nation vision, inform some Solarpunk imaginaries. Specifically, it utilizes an interdisciplinary method by conducting a close reading of both designer and governmental reports on two smart projects in Singapore: Gardens by the Bay and Jewel Changi Airport. It compares the aesthetic, design, purpose, and meaning of these structures to existing conceptions of Solarpunk. These projects embody Solarpunk in their aesthetic and ethos, but they are appropriated for uses and meanings that undermine this embodiment. While Singapore’s ecologically reflective solutions offer some climatic hope, they reaffirm the need to rethink the energy transition in the name of climatic justice, freedom, and environmental harmony
Jazzwomen: Marian McPartland's Unpublished Book on Women in Jazz
No full textIn 1978, jazz pianist Marian McPartland signed a contract with Oxford University Press to write a survey history on women in jazz. By 1987, McPartland had given up on the project, instead releasing All In Good Time, a featured collection of previously published works. This case study examines and uncovers McPartland’s unpublished book titled Jazzwomen. Through a close examination of her grant proposals, research notes, transcribed interviews, book proposal, and extant drafts found in her archive, I trace how McPartland’s research attempted to reconfigure the historical narrative of jazz and recover the enduring role women played. Through the intersectional lens of advocacy, which involved collaboration across McPartland’s self-created network, I demonstrate how Jazzwomen represents the many difficulties McPartland and other women faced to produce scholarship on their history
Book Review: Hearing Double: Jazz, Ontology, Auditory Culture. By Brian Kane. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. 303 pp. $49.99.
No full textThe Impact of DNA Analysis Technology on the Rate of NAGPRA Repatriations
No full textThis paper investigates whether recent advancements in DNA analysis technology have impacted the rate with which Native American remains are repatriated, or returned, to linear descendants or culturally affiliated tribes. The purpose of this study is to determine whether DNA analysis technology has effected repatriation rates specifically in Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) cases. This paper compiles information for all NAGPRA notices published in the National Register to conduct a statistical analysis of the rate of repatriations between 2011 and 2021. The resulting figures demonstrate that DNA analysis technology had an extremely slight effect on the rate of repatriation. The paper then concludes that this may be due to the difficulties in implementing DNA analysis as a culturally acceptable Archaeological methodology
Book Review: Jazz á la Creole: French Creole Music & The Birth of Jazz. By Caroline Vézina. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2022. 248pp. 30.00 paperback.
No full textBecoming Ella Fitzgerald’s Biographer: Oral Interview from March 13, 2024, W 35th St., NYC
No full textOral interview from March 13, 2024, W 35th St. in New York City, expanded and edited in June 2024.
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song. by Judith Tick. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2023. 592pp. $40.00
Book Review: Learning Jazz: Jazz Education, History, and Public Pedagogy. By Ken Prouty. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. 244pp. 30.00 paperback.
No full textListening to Electric Miles: Creativity, Authorship, and Identity in the Jack Johnson Sessions
No full textThis project considers a case study from the archive of modern recorded jazz—Miles Davis’s Jack Johnson (1971)—as a means to address the collaborative aesthetic, technical, and social dimensions of record production. The release of The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (2003) contains a number of alternate takes and “inserts” that were cut up and spliced together to create extended tracks on several albums by Davis released from 1971 to 1974. Drawing on recent work in popular music studies, ethnomusicology, and studies in the art of record production, I ask how this studio collaboration affects our notions of authorship and creativity in jazz. In other words, what is the relationship between the countless decisions in the studio and the sound that results? I will study studio practices and interactions in an integrated fashion, bringing together technological, practical, social, and creative/artistic components through a detailed consideration of the construction of a specific track from the album, “Yesternow.” The study of this little-discussed album by a canonical artist allows us to show how a specific approach to recording, as well as changes in recording technology, can be correlated with sonic and formal differences, and social relations. 
