CMPCP/IMR Performance/Research seminar 3
'Music from the hybridies': jazz as national and trans-national practice
Tony Whyton (University of Salford)
3 June 2011
17:00 - 18.30
Chancellor's Hall, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London
WC1
Sponsored by the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative
Practice (CMPCP) and the Institute for Musical Research (IMR)
Taking its title from an album by the Norwegian group Farmer's Market, this
seminar examines the concept of national sound in jazz and the ways in which
European jazz practice has previously been understood as a vehicle for
asserting national identity. Drawing on performance examples from a range of
European musicians, from Jan Gabarek to John Tchicai, Django Bates to Han
Bennink, I suggest that European jazz practice works more effectively as a
model for challenging cultural stereotypes and geographical boundaries than
as an embodiment of national sound. Jazz is a practice that developed in
Europe both through transatlantic influences and exchanges, so is ideally
placed to explore wider issues surrounding identity and inheritance,
enabling unique perspectives on how culture is exchanged, adopted and
transformed. The session draws on research questions from the HERA-funded
Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities
<http://www.rhythmchanges.net> project, and explores the way in which jazz
practice feeds into bigger questions of politics, cultural identity and the
changing Europe today.
Tony Whyton is Reader in Music in the School of Media, Music and Performance
at the University of Salford. He is the author of Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths
and the Jazz Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and the project
leader for the HERA-funded research programme 'Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures
and European Identities'. Tony was the founding editor of the
interdisciplinary journal The Source: Challenging Jazz Criticism and
currently co-edits the internationally peer-reviewed Jazz Research Journal.
He is also editor of the jazz volume of the forthcoming Library of Essays on
Popular Music published by Ashgate.
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