Product Details

IAJRC Journal

...intriguing...points the way for further discussions of jazz from a strategy of textual interpretation....

Beat

...he may be the Stephen Hawking of jazz criticism....a fascinating book....an extremely valuable overview of the music....

Joseph Murphy

Norman Weinstein has crafted a valuable work that, with its adherence to scholarship and careful analysis stands as the most successful attempt to address the enduring influence of African imagination on American Jazz. Norman Weinstein has written an animated and intelligent examination of what in American jazz reflects African origins and imaginings. He lets the text develop naturally, with sound scholarship and psychological cunning. ... Weinstein cuts through the gristle to reveal the bone of racism and appropriation working in counterpoint to the authentic esthetic and cultural history of the music. This psychological approach with its debt to Jung and Bachelard, gives "A Night in Tunisia" compelling contextual depth lacking in most jazz scholarship..

Library Journal

Jazz buff Weinstein outlines the styles of 13 musicians while connecting their diverse sounds to an Afrocentric vision. This connection, he claims, runs deeper than most jazz writers acknowledge. The characteristics of African music, which include rhythm, vocal styles, and improvisation, appear frequently in the jazz music of non-Africans of all races. While somewhat uneven in presentation (a chapter parodying Duke Ellington's personification of jazz as a woman strikes an especially false note), the book may interest serious jazz fans--if only so they can argue with it. Musicians discussed include Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, George Russell, Randy Weston, Max Roach, and Yusef Lateef, among others. Appendixes list jazz recordings that include African themes. For large subject collections.-- Bonnie Jo Dopp, Dist . of Columbia P.L.

Booknews

Weinstein examines the way jazz composers have creatively explored images and ideas about Africa, spotlighting the African recordings of 13 major musicians, and also offering a comprehensive discography cataloging the recordings of dozens more. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents