doi:10.1558/jazz.v7i2.26905
Editorial
In recent years, the textual analyses of musical works and the abstracted belief in the ‘music itself’ have given way to more nuanced studies of musical practices within specific cultural contexts. And yet, as jazz studies continues to expand in terms of new research methods and disciplinary perspectives, the relationship between musical analysis, musical processes and broader social, cultural and critical debates needs to be investigated further. Scholars such as Deborah Mawer, for example, have argued for the need to redress a perceived imbalance within current jazz writings in an attempt to focus more on sound and music as a creative practice:
[W]hile it would rightly be deemed essentialist to offer musical interpretation of jazz without appropriate and sensitive socio-cultural understanding, the opposite is also the case; to ignore the actual musics created would be to undervalue the musicians concerned, performers and composers alike, and simply to lose out (Mawer 2014: 1–2).
Despite this understandable desire to foreground musical creativity in jazz studies, the issue of analytical methodology remains a contested and controversial issue, especially given the music’s primary status as either a live or recorded music. Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, Nicholas Cook has encouraged scholars to broaden the parameters of musicology, to think differently about the musical object in relation to creative practices:
In a nutshell, musicology was set up around the idea of music as writing as opposed to music as performance… The experience of live or recorded performance is a primary form of music’s existence, not just the reflection of a notated text. And performers make an indispensible contribution to the culture of creative practice that is music… [W]e need to think differently about what sort of an object music is, and indeed how far it is appropriate to think of it as an object at all (Cook 2013: 1).
Responding to these issues, the contributors to this issue of Jazz Research Journal tackle the question of musical analysis and performance practices in innovative and contrasting ways. Alex Lubet’s ‘Oscar Peterson’s Piano Prosthesis’ analyses Peterson’s post-stroke performances through methods developed in disability studies. Whilst the impact of Peterson’s stroke was often played down by the artist’s record company and sections of the media, Lubet reinvigorates the study of Peterson’s music, providing a framework for understanding the complexity, musical interplay and role that disability played in Peterson’s late style. Marian Jago’s ‘Jedi Mind Tricks’ explores the role of visualization and mental techniques in the creative practices of Lennie Tristano. Drawing on recent studies of brain plasticity, subject interviews and ethnographic analysis, Jago investigates Tristano’s methods and imaginative techniques and explores their relationship to skills acquisition and pedagogical practices. David Cosper’s ‘The Sonic Camera’ challenges traditional methods of musical analysis and the problematic use of visual metaphors in musical discourse. Focusing on the music of Ben Allison, Cosper proposes a new cinematic narrative approach to musical analysis which engages with music both as performative practice and as a creative experience for the listener.
Together, each contribution feeds into discussions about the boundaries of musicology, the primacy of performance and recorded experiences in jazz, and the ongoing tensions between musical analysis and interdisciplinary research methods.
References
Cook, Nicholas. 2013. Beyond the Score: Music as Performance. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mawer, Deborah. 2014. French Music and Jazz in Conversation: From Debussy to Brubeck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139775359