Jam sessions in Manhattan as rituals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v6i2.129Keywords:
ethnomusicology, jam session, jazz, ritualAbstract
This paper addresses the relationships between jazz jam sessions in Manhattan and the concepts of scene, ritual and race. These issues emerged during research that, from an ethnomusicological perspective, focused on the role of jam sessions in Manhattan as a privileged context for learning the performative styles of jazz, the development of the creative process, the construction of professional networks and the establishment of the status of musicians. Starting from the analysis of five venues of jazz performance in Manhattan, New York, arguably the most important stage for jazz performance in the world, I demonstrate the importance of participating in jam sessions in the professional careers of jazz musicians by examining their relationship with this performative occasion.
References
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Ake, David (2002) Jazz Cultures. Berkeley: University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520266889.001.0001
——(2010) Jazz Matters: Sound, Place, and Time Since Bebop. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Baker, Houston A., Jr. (1984) Blues, Ideology, and African-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baraka, Amiri (1971) Raise, Race, Rays, Rage. New York: Random House.
Becker, Howard S. (1951) ‘The Professional Dance Musician and his Audience’. American Journal of Sociology 57: 136–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/220913
Bell, Catherine (1989) ‘Ritual, Change and Changing Rituals’. Worship 63(1): 31–41.
——(1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Berliner, Paul. 1994. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226044521.001.0001
Cameron, William Bruce (1954) ‘Sociological Notes on the Jam Session’. Social Forces 33: 177–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2573543
Chernoff, John Miller (1979) African Rhythm, African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DeVeaux, Scott (1997) The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Douglas, Mary (1973) Natural Symbols. New York: Random House.
Esman, Aaron H. (1951) ‘Jazz—a Study in Cultural Conflict’. American Imago VIII (June): 219–26.
Feld, Steven (1994) ‘Aesthetics as Iconicity of Style (Uptown Title); or, (Downtown Title) “Lift-Up-Over Sounding”: Getting into the Kaluli Groove’. In Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, ed. Charles Keil, 109–50. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Feld, Steven, and Keith Basso (1996) ‘Introduction’. In Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith Basso. Santa Fé, NM: School of American Research Press.
Fields, Barbara J. (1982) ‘Ideology and Race in América’. In Region, Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, 143–77. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gioia, Ted (1989) ‘Jazz and the Primitivist Myth’. Musical Quarterly 73(1): 130–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mq/73.1.130
Halbwachs, Maurice (1950) La Mémoire Collective. Paris: PUF.
Hodeir, André (1956) Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence. New York: Grove Press.
Jackson, Travis A. (1998) ‘Performance and Musical Meaning: Analysing “Jazz” on the New York Scene’. PhD thesis, Columbia University.
——(2000) ‘Jazz Performance as Ritual: The Blues Aesthetic and the African Diaspora’. In The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, ed. Ingrid Monson, 23–82. New York: Garland.
——(2002) ‘Jazz as Musical Practice’. In The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, ed. Mervyn Cooke and David Horn, 83–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kelley, Robin D. G. (1994) Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. New York: The Free Press.
Kingsbury, Henry (1988) Music, Talent and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1953) ‘La notion de structure en ethnologie’. In Anthropologie Structurale, 303–351. Paris: Plon.
——(1955) Tristes Trópicos. Lisbon: Edições 70.
——(1956) ‘Les organizations dualist existent-elles?’ In Anthropologie Structurale, 99–128. Paris: Plon.
Martin, Henry (1988) ‘Jazz Harmony: A Syntactic Background’. Annual Review of Jazz Studies 4: 9–30.
——(1994) Charlie Parker and Thematic Improvisation. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Merriam, Alan P. (1956) ‘Songs of the Ketu Cult of Bahia, Brazil’. African Music 1(3): 53–67.
——(1958) ‘Characteristics of African Music’. Journal of the International Folk Music Council 11: 13–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/834848
——(1959) ‘African Music’. In Continuity and Change in Africa Cultures, ed. William Basom and Melville J. Herskovits, 49–86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Merriam, Allan P., and Raymond W. Mack (1960) ‘The Jazz Community’. Social Forces 38(3) (March): 211–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2574084
Monson, Ingrid (1991) ‘Musical Interaction in Modern Jazz: An Ethnomusicological Perspective’. PhD thesis, New York University.
——(1994) ‘Doubleness and Jazz Improvisation: Irony, Parody and Ethnomusicology’. Critical Inquiry 20(2): 283–313. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/448712
——(1995) ‘The Problem with White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse.’ Journal of the American Musicological Society 48(3): 396–422. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3519833
——(1996) Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——(1997) ‘What’s Sound Got to Do with It? Jazz, Poststructuralism and the Construction of Cultural Meaning’. In Creativity in Performance, ed. Keith Sawyer, 95–112. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.
——(1999) ‘Riffs, Repetition, and Theories of Globalization’. Ethnomusicology 43(1) (Winter): 31–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/852693 Monson, Ingrid, ed. (2000) The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. London: Routledge.
Murray, Albert (1970) The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy. New York: Da Capo.
——(1976) Stomping the Blues. New York: Da Capo. Nelson, Lawrence D. (1995) ‘The Social Construction of the Jam Session’. Jazz Research Papers (IAJE) 1995: 95–100.
Nettl, Bruno (1995) Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant (1987) Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Peterson, Joseph M. (2000) ‘Jam Session: An Exploration into the Characteristics of an Uptown Jam Session’. Masters thesis, Rutgers University.
Pinheiro, Ricardo (2008) ‘Jammin’ After Hours: A Jam Session em Manhattan, Nova Iorque’. PhD dissertation, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
——(2011) ‘Aprender Fora de Horas: A Jam Session em Manhattan Enquanto Contexto Para a Aprendizagem do Jazz’. Acta Musicologica 83(LXXXIII)(1): 113–34. International Musicological Society.
——(2012) Jazz Fora de Horas: Jam Sessions em Nova Iorque. Lisbon: Universidade Lusíada Editora.
Pocius, Gerald (1991) A Place to Belong: Community Order and Everyday Space in Calvert, Newfoundland. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Powell, Richard J. (1989) ‘The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism’. In The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism, ed. Richard J. Powell, 19–25. Washington, DC: Washington Project for the Arts.
——(1994) ‘Art History and Black Memory: Toward a “Blues Aesthetic”’. In History and Memory in African-American Culture, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Robert O’Meally, 228–43. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pressing, Jeff (1978) ‘Towards an Understanding of Scales in Jazz’. Jazzforschung 9: 25–35.
Radano, Ronald (1993) New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226701943.001.0001
Radano, Ronald, and Philip Bohlman (2000) Music and the Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ratliff, Ben (1997) ‘Syncopated Homecoming: Jazz Swings Back Uptown’. New York Times, 18 April.
Schechner, Richard (1987) ‘The Future of Ritual’. Journal of Ritual Studies 1(1): 5–33.
Schuller, Gunther (1968) Early Jazz: Its Roots and Music Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
——(1989) The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shields, Rob (1991) Places on the Margin: Alternate Geographies of Modernity. London: Routledge.
Small, Christopher (1987a) Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African-American Music. London: John Calder; New York: Riverrun Press.
——(1987b) ‘Performance as Ritual: Sketch for an Enquiry into the True Nature of a Symphony Concert’. In Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event, ed. Avron Levine White, 6–32. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Stewart, Alex (2007) Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520249530.001.0001
Stewart, Milton L. (1973) ‘Structural Development in the Jazz Improvisation Technique of Clifford Brown’. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.
——(1979) ‘Some Characteristics of Clifford Brown’s Improvisational Style’. Jazz Forschung (Jazz Review) 11: 135–64.
Straw, Will (1997) ‘Communities and Scenes in Popular Music’. In The Subcultures Reader, ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, 494–505. New York: Routledge.
Strunk, Steven (1979) ‘The Harmony of Early Bop: A Layered Approach’. Journal of Jazz Studies 6: 4–53.
——(1983) ‘Bebop Melodic Lines: Tonal Characteristics’. Annual Review of Jazz Studies 3: 97–120.
Tirro, Frank (1974) ‘Constructive Elements in Jazz Improvisation’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 27(2) (Summer): 285–305. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/830561
Turner, Victor (1967) The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
——(1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine.
——(1977) ‘Symbols in African Ritual’. In Symbolic Anthropology: A Reader in the Study of Symbols and Meanings, ed. J. L. Dolgin, D. S. Kemnitzer and D. M. Schneider, 183–94. New York: Columbia University Press.
——(1983) ‘Body, Brain and Culture’. Zygon 18(3): 221–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.1983.tb00512.x
——(1986) The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.
Walker, Katherine (2010) ‘Cut, Carved, and Served: Competitive Jamming in the 1930s and 1940s’. Jazz Perspectives 4(2): 183–208. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2010.506032
Waterman, Richard A. (1952a) ‘Hot Rhythm in Negro Music’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1: 24–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/829662
——(1952b) ‘African Influence in the Music of the Americas’. In Acculturation in the Americas, ed. Sol Tax, 207–18. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——(1963) ‘On Flogging a Dead Horse: Lessons Learned from the Africanisms Controversy’. Ethnomusicology 7: 83–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/924543
Ake, David (2002) Jazz Cultures. Berkeley: University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520266889.001.0001
——(2010) Jazz Matters: Sound, Place, and Time Since Bebop. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Baker, Houston A., Jr. (1984) Blues, Ideology, and African-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baraka, Amiri (1971) Raise, Race, Rays, Rage. New York: Random House.
Becker, Howard S. (1951) ‘The Professional Dance Musician and his Audience’. American Journal of Sociology 57: 136–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/220913
Bell, Catherine (1989) ‘Ritual, Change and Changing Rituals’. Worship 63(1): 31–41.
——(1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Berliner, Paul. 1994. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226044521.001.0001
Cameron, William Bruce (1954) ‘Sociological Notes on the Jam Session’. Social Forces 33: 177–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2573543
Chernoff, John Miller (1979) African Rhythm, African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DeVeaux, Scott (1997) The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Douglas, Mary (1973) Natural Symbols. New York: Random House.
Esman, Aaron H. (1951) ‘Jazz—a Study in Cultural Conflict’. American Imago VIII (June): 219–26.
Feld, Steven (1994) ‘Aesthetics as Iconicity of Style (Uptown Title); or, (Downtown Title) “Lift-Up-Over Sounding”: Getting into the Kaluli Groove’. In Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, ed. Charles Keil, 109–50. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Feld, Steven, and Keith Basso (1996) ‘Introduction’. In Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith Basso. Santa Fé, NM: School of American Research Press.
Fields, Barbara J. (1982) ‘Ideology and Race in América’. In Region, Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, 143–77. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gioia, Ted (1989) ‘Jazz and the Primitivist Myth’. Musical Quarterly 73(1): 130–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mq/73.1.130
Halbwachs, Maurice (1950) La Mémoire Collective. Paris: PUF.
Hodeir, André (1956) Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence. New York: Grove Press.
Jackson, Travis A. (1998) ‘Performance and Musical Meaning: Analysing “Jazz” on the New York Scene’. PhD thesis, Columbia University.
——(2000) ‘Jazz Performance as Ritual: The Blues Aesthetic and the African Diaspora’. In The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, ed. Ingrid Monson, 23–82. New York: Garland.
——(2002) ‘Jazz as Musical Practice’. In The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, ed. Mervyn Cooke and David Horn, 83–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kelley, Robin D. G. (1994) Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. New York: The Free Press.
Kingsbury, Henry (1988) Music, Talent and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1953) ‘La notion de structure en ethnologie’. In Anthropologie Structurale, 303–351. Paris: Plon.
——(1955) Tristes Trópicos. Lisbon: Edições 70.
——(1956) ‘Les organizations dualist existent-elles?’ In Anthropologie Structurale, 99–128. Paris: Plon.
Martin, Henry (1988) ‘Jazz Harmony: A Syntactic Background’. Annual Review of Jazz Studies 4: 9–30.
——(1994) Charlie Parker and Thematic Improvisation. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Merriam, Alan P. (1956) ‘Songs of the Ketu Cult of Bahia, Brazil’. African Music 1(3): 53–67.
——(1958) ‘Characteristics of African Music’. Journal of the International Folk Music Council 11: 13–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/834848
——(1959) ‘African Music’. In Continuity and Change in Africa Cultures, ed. William Basom and Melville J. Herskovits, 49–86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Merriam, Allan P., and Raymond W. Mack (1960) ‘The Jazz Community’. Social Forces 38(3) (March): 211–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2574084
Monson, Ingrid (1991) ‘Musical Interaction in Modern Jazz: An Ethnomusicological Perspective’. PhD thesis, New York University.
——(1994) ‘Doubleness and Jazz Improvisation: Irony, Parody and Ethnomusicology’. Critical Inquiry 20(2): 283–313. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/448712
——(1995) ‘The Problem with White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse.’ Journal of the American Musicological Society 48(3): 396–422. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3519833
——(1996) Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——(1997) ‘What’s Sound Got to Do with It? Jazz, Poststructuralism and the Construction of Cultural Meaning’. In Creativity in Performance, ed. Keith Sawyer, 95–112. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.
——(1999) ‘Riffs, Repetition, and Theories of Globalization’. Ethnomusicology 43(1) (Winter): 31–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/852693 Monson, Ingrid, ed. (2000) The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. London: Routledge.
Murray, Albert (1970) The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy. New York: Da Capo.
——(1976) Stomping the Blues. New York: Da Capo. Nelson, Lawrence D. (1995) ‘The Social Construction of the Jam Session’. Jazz Research Papers (IAJE) 1995: 95–100.
Nettl, Bruno (1995) Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant (1987) Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Peterson, Joseph M. (2000) ‘Jam Session: An Exploration into the Characteristics of an Uptown Jam Session’. Masters thesis, Rutgers University.
Pinheiro, Ricardo (2008) ‘Jammin’ After Hours: A Jam Session em Manhattan, Nova Iorque’. PhD dissertation, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
——(2011) ‘Aprender Fora de Horas: A Jam Session em Manhattan Enquanto Contexto Para a Aprendizagem do Jazz’. Acta Musicologica 83(LXXXIII)(1): 113–34. International Musicological Society.
——(2012) Jazz Fora de Horas: Jam Sessions em Nova Iorque. Lisbon: Universidade Lusíada Editora.
Pocius, Gerald (1991) A Place to Belong: Community Order and Everyday Space in Calvert, Newfoundland. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Powell, Richard J. (1989) ‘The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism’. In The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism, ed. Richard J. Powell, 19–25. Washington, DC: Washington Project for the Arts.
——(1994) ‘Art History and Black Memory: Toward a “Blues Aesthetic”’. In History and Memory in African-American Culture, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Robert O’Meally, 228–43. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pressing, Jeff (1978) ‘Towards an Understanding of Scales in Jazz’. Jazzforschung 9: 25–35.
Radano, Ronald (1993) New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226701943.001.0001
Radano, Ronald, and Philip Bohlman (2000) Music and the Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ratliff, Ben (1997) ‘Syncopated Homecoming: Jazz Swings Back Uptown’. New York Times, 18 April.
Schechner, Richard (1987) ‘The Future of Ritual’. Journal of Ritual Studies 1(1): 5–33.
Schuller, Gunther (1968) Early Jazz: Its Roots and Music Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
——(1989) The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shields, Rob (1991) Places on the Margin: Alternate Geographies of Modernity. London: Routledge.
Small, Christopher (1987a) Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African-American Music. London: John Calder; New York: Riverrun Press.
——(1987b) ‘Performance as Ritual: Sketch for an Enquiry into the True Nature of a Symphony Concert’. In Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event, ed. Avron Levine White, 6–32. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Stewart, Alex (2007) Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520249530.001.0001
Stewart, Milton L. (1973) ‘Structural Development in the Jazz Improvisation Technique of Clifford Brown’. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.
——(1979) ‘Some Characteristics of Clifford Brown’s Improvisational Style’. Jazz Forschung (Jazz Review) 11: 135–64.
Straw, Will (1997) ‘Communities and Scenes in Popular Music’. In The Subcultures Reader, ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, 494–505. New York: Routledge.
Strunk, Steven (1979) ‘The Harmony of Early Bop: A Layered Approach’. Journal of Jazz Studies 6: 4–53.
——(1983) ‘Bebop Melodic Lines: Tonal Characteristics’. Annual Review of Jazz Studies 3: 97–120.
Tirro, Frank (1974) ‘Constructive Elements in Jazz Improvisation’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 27(2) (Summer): 285–305. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/830561
Turner, Victor (1967) The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
——(1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine.
——(1977) ‘Symbols in African Ritual’. In Symbolic Anthropology: A Reader in the Study of Symbols and Meanings, ed. J. L. Dolgin, D. S. Kemnitzer and D. M. Schneider, 183–94. New York: Columbia University Press.
——(1983) ‘Body, Brain and Culture’. Zygon 18(3): 221–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.1983.tb00512.x
——(1986) The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.
Walker, Katherine (2010) ‘Cut, Carved, and Served: Competitive Jamming in the 1930s and 1940s’. Jazz Perspectives 4(2): 183–208. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2010.506032
Waterman, Richard A. (1952a) ‘Hot Rhythm in Negro Music’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1: 24–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/829662
——(1952b) ‘African Influence in the Music of the Americas’. In Acculturation in the Americas, ed. Sol Tax, 207–18. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——(1963) ‘On Flogging a Dead Horse: Lessons Learned from the Africanisms Controversy’. Ethnomusicology 7: 83–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/924543
Published
2013-12-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Pinheiro, R. N. F. (2013). Jam sessions in Manhattan as rituals. Jazz Research Journal, 6(2), 129-150. https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v6i2.129
