Call for Papers: Creative Practice in Jazz Research
Call for Papers: Creative Practice in Jazz Research
Jazz Research Journal special issue, November 2024
Editors: Haftor Medbøe, Edinburgh Napier University (UK); Tom Sykes (Liverpool Hope University, UK)
Creative practice is at the heart of jazz, and practice-led and practice-based research plays an increasingly significant part in jazz studies and beyond (see, for example, Vear (ed.) 2021; Bulley and Şahin 2021; Kahr (ed.) 2022). Yet the value of creative practice as a scholarly activity is still contested within the academy. For example, as Shaw (2021) notes, ‘the delivery of doctoral training in UK universities sometimes offers a version of universal researcher identity that excludes practice-based researchers’. Moreover, the discussion of practice does not sit comfortably with all practitioners, as Derek Bailey confessed in his influential book: ‘[t]urning again from improvising to writing about improvisation was done reluctantly; they are very different activities, it seems to me, and not always compatible’ (Bailey 1992: xiii).
Jazz Research Journal invites authors to contribute to a special issue on creative practice in jazz, which may include (but is not limited to) the following approaches and topics:
Artistic and practice-led research;
Practice as research/Practice is research;
Creative practice as activism;
Creative identity within the jazz canon;
Disrupting the jazz canon;
Jazz practices from ethnographic and/or autoethnographic perspectives;
Reflexive, experimental, and critical writing as creative practice within the history of, or associated with, jazz;
Intersections between creative practice and the music industries;
Creative practice(s) in the classroom;
Creative collaborations.
Jazz Research Journal invites submissions in a variety of formats: for example, 8,000-word essays, 1,200-word provocations, and reflective or creative writing with links to recorded and/or visual media. Musicians, with or without academic affiliation, are warmly invited to contribute, as are collaborations between academics and industry professionals (etc). We use the term ‘jazz’ in its broadest sense and welcome different interpretations thereof. We are particularly keen to read about intersections between creative practice and prevalent social, political and economic environments.
Please send a 300 word abstract or summary of the proposed work along with brief bios of all contributors to h.medbø[email protected] and [email protected] by 5pm GMT 18 th September. These will be considered by the editorial team and the wider Editorial Board.
All invited pieces will be blind peer reviewed by appropriate experts and accepted pieces included in an Autumn 2024 special issue of the journal. Decisions on abstracts will be returned by the end of September, and first drafts due on the 15 th of January 2024.
References
Bailey, D., 1992. Improvisation: its nature and practice in music (2 nd edn.). London: British Library Sound Archive.
Bulley, J. and Şahin, Ö., 2021. Practice Research – Report 1: What is practice research? And Report 2: How can practice research be shared? London: PRAG-UK.
Kahr, M. (ed.), 2022. Artistic Research in Jazz: Positions, Theories, Methods. New York and Abingdon: Routledge.
Shaw, B., 2021. Working the space: augmenting training for practice-based research. In Vear, C. (ed.), The Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research. London: Routledge, Chapter 1.6.
Vear, C. (ed.), 2021. The Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research. London: Routledge.
Further reading
Berliner, P.F., 2009. Thinking in jazz: The infinite art of improvisation. University of Chicago Press.
Bertinetto, A.G., 2016. “Do not fear mistakes–there are none”–The mistake as surprising experience of creativity in jazz. In Education as Jazz (pp.85-100). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Iyer, V., 2004. Exploding the narrative in jazz improvisation. In Uptown conversation: The new jazz studies (pp. 393-403). Columbia University Press.
Iyer, V., 2004. Improvisation, temporality and embodied experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11(3-4), pp.159-173.
Kamoche, K. and Cunha, M.P.E., 2001. Minimal structures: From jazz improvisation to product innovation. Organization studies, 22(5), pp.733-764.
MacDonald, R.A. and Wilson, G.B., 2006. Constructions of jazz: How jazz musicians present their collaborative musical practice. Musicae Scientiae, 10(1), pp.59-83.
