Way out East
cowboys and pioneer women on Berlin's jazz frontier
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v6i2.170Keywords:
European jazz, gender, nationalism, race, sexualityAbstract
Making sense of Europe’s ascendancy in the jazz world entails connecting and contrasting the ways American and European jazz musicians and communities use modalities of race, class, age, gender, sexuality and regional identity to assert proximity and distance within local, national and international contexts. This article argues that the ‘frontier’—conceptualized as both an actual place distinguished by a geographical and cultural distance from the American mainstream, and also as a constellation of ideas reconfigured by jazz musicians in the process of carving out their own self-reliant musical identities—offers one fruitful meeting-point for comparison. Riffing on historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s influential frontier thesis (1920) that cast the Western frontier as the quintessential site of Americanization, the broad issue considered is how the frontier, like jazz, can be appropriated and recoded as a new site of Europeanization by jazz musicians in Berlin.
References
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——(2010) ‘Play Your Own Thing, Play “Our” Thing: “Young German Jazz” und die deutsche Jazzidentita?t’. In Albert Mangelsdorff, Tension / Spannung, ed. Wolfram Knauer, 157–85. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag.
‘Berlin: Jazz-Hauptstadt Europas? Ein Roundtable’ (2003) Jazz Thing 49: 70–71.
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Carby, Hazel V. (1998) Race Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chinen, Nate (2005). ‘Brad Mehldau: Anything Goes’. JazzTimes http://jazztimes.com/articles/15241-brad-mehldau-anything-goes
Claxton, William and Joachim E. Berendt (1961) Jazzlife. Offenburg: Burda Druck und Verlag.
Crouch, Stanley (1999) Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives. New York: Vintage Books.
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Dinné, Ignaz (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 14 February.
Friedrich, Jörn (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 5 June.
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George, Nelson (1989) The Death of Rhythm and Blues. New York: Plume.
Gill, John (1995) Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Music. London: Cassell.
Heffley, Mike (2005) Northern Sun, Southern Moon: Europe’s Reinvention of Jazz. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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——(2000) ‘Jazz Performance as Ritual: The Blues Aesthetic and the African Diaspora’. In The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, ed. Ingrid Monson, 21–82. New York: Garland.
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——(2003) Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. New York: Knopf.
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——(1996) Jazz in Deutschland: Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung, Bd. 4. Hofheim: Wolke.
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——(2004) ‘Gittin’ to Know Y’all: Improvised Music, Interculturalism, and the Racial Imagination’. Critical Studies in Improvisation 1(1): 1–33.
——(2008) A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226477039.001.0001
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Minden, Michael, and Holger Bachmann (2002) Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear. Rochester: Camden House.
Monson, Ingrid (1996) Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——(2007) Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call out to Jazz and Africa. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195128253.001.0001
Nicholson, Stuart (2005) Is Jazz Dead? (Or Has It Moved to a New Address). New York: Routledge.
Nisenson, Eric (2000) Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and his World of Improvisation. New York: Da Capo Press.
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Pettinger, Peter (1998) Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Poiger, Uta G. (2000) Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Radano, Ronald M. (1994) New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reid, T. R. (2004) The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy. New York: Penguin Press.
Rustin, Nicole and Sherrie Tucker, eds (2008) Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1962) [1947] ‘I Discovered Jazz in America’. In Frontiers of Jazz, ed. Ralph de Toledano, 66–68. New York: Frederick Ungar.
Saul, Scott (2003) Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schiefel, Michael (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 3 March 2007.
Schlicht, Ursel (2008) ‘“Better a Jazz Album than Lipstick” (Lieber Jazzplatte als Lippenstift): The 1956 Jazz Podium Series Reveals Images of Jazz and Gender in Postwar Germany’. In Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, ed. Nicole Rustin and Sherrie Tucker, 291–319. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Schuller, Gunther (1999) [1958] ‘Sonny Rollins and the Challenge of Thematic Improvisation’. In Gunther Schuller, Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Shuller, 86–97. New York: Oxford University Press.
Schwörer, Werner, and Ekkehard Jost (1989) Jazzszene Frankfurt: Eine Musiksoziologische Untersuchung zur Situation Anfangs der Achtziger Jahre. Mainz: Schott Musikwissenschaft.
Thomas, Rolf (2005) ‘Bergsteiger’. Jazzthetik, June. http://www.yumpu.com/de/document/view/392434/jazzthetik-bergsteiger-rolf-thomas-act-music-vision
Tucker, Sherrie (2002) ‘Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies’. Current Musicology 71-73: 375–408.
——(2004) Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Turner, Frederick J. (1920) The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt & Co.
Walser, Robert (1993) ‘Out of Notes: Signification, Interpretation, and the Problem of Miles Davis’. The Musical Quarterly 77(2): 346–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mq/77.2.343
Weckert, Sandra (2008) Interview by author in Berlin, 2 July.
Wiggins, ‘Detroit’ Gary (2008) Interview by author in Berlin, 25 May.
Williams, K. Leander (2008) ‘Real Genius?’ http://jazztimes.com/articles/20902-real- genius
Wilmer, Valerie (1977) As Serious as Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz. London: Allison & Busby.
——(1989) Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This: My Life in the Jazz World. London: The Women’s Press.
Zwerin, Mike (2000) [1985] Swing Under the Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom. New York: Cooper Square Press.
Backhaus, Tobias (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 11 June.
Baldwin, James (1957) ‘Sonny’s Blues’. Available online: http://www.scribd.com/doc/7086554/Sonnys-Blues-by-James-Baldwin
Bares, William (2009) ‘Eternal Triangle: American Jazz in European Postmodern’. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
——(2010) ‘Play Your Own Thing, Play “Our” Thing: “Young German Jazz” und die deutsche Jazzidentita?t’. In Albert Mangelsdorff, Tension / Spannung, ed. Wolfram Knauer, 157–85. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag.
‘Berlin: Jazz-Hauptstadt Europas? Ein Roundtable’ (2003) Jazz Thing 49: 70–71.
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
Buell, Frederick (1994) National Culture and the New Global System. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Carby, Hazel V. (1998) Race Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chinen, Nate (2005). ‘Brad Mehldau: Anything Goes’. JazzTimes http://jazztimes.com/articles/15241-brad-mehldau-anything-goes
Claxton, William and Joachim E. Berendt (1961) Jazzlife. Offenburg: Burda Druck und Verlag.
Crouch, Stanley (1999) Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives. New York: Vintage Books.
Davis, Kimberly Chabot (1998) ‘“Postmodern Blackness”: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the End of History’. Twentieth Century Literature 44(2): 242–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/441873
Dinné, Ignaz (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 14 February.
Friedrich, Jörn (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 5 June.
Garton Ash, Timothy (2005) ‘The New Anti-Europeanism in America’. In Beyond Paradise and Power: Europe, America, and the Future of a Troubled Partnership, ed. Tod Lindberg, 121–36. New York: Routledge.
Gavin, James (2001) ‘Homophobia in Jazz’. JazzTimes, http://jazztimes.com/articles/20073-homophobia-in-jazz
George, Nelson (1989) The Death of Rhythm and Blues. New York: Plume.
Gill, John (1995) Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Music. London: Cassell.
Heffley, Mike (2005) Northern Sun, Southern Moon: Europe’s Reinvention of Jazz. New Haven: Yale University Press.
I. G. Jazz Berlin (2012) ‘Berlin–Jazzhauptstadt Europas: Potentiale, Probleme und Lo?sungen’. http://www.ig-jazz-berlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Positionspapier-IGJazzBerlin1.pdf
Jackson, Travis (1998) ‘Performance and Musical Meaning: Analyzing ‘Jazz’ on the New York Scene’. Doctoral dissertation. New York: Columbia University.
——(2000) ‘Jazz Performance as Ritual: The Blues Aesthetic and the African Diaspora’. In The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, ed. Ingrid Monson, 21–82. New York: Garland.
Jameson, Frederic (1992) Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Jarrett, Michael (1999) Drifting on a Read. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ‘Jazz in Deutschland’ (1999) Jazz Thing 27.
Kagan, Robert (2002) ‘Power and Weakness’. Policy Review 113: 3–28.
——(2003) Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. New York: Knopf.
Katz, William (2005) The Black West: A Documentary and Pictoral History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States. New York: Harlem Moon.
Kerouac, Jack (1976) [1958] On the Road. New York: Penguin Books.
——(1996) Jazz in Deutschland: Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung, Bd. 4. Hofheim: Wolke.
Lemke, Katherine (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 7 May.
Lewis, George (1996) ‘Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives’. Black Music Research Journal 16(1): 91–122. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/779379
——(2004) ‘Gittin’ to Know Y’all: Improvised Music, Interculturalism, and the Racial Imagination’. Critical Studies in Improvisation 1(1): 1–33.
——(2008) A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226477039.001.0001
Loch, Siggi (2006) Love of My Life. Edel CLASSICS GmBH, Hamburg, Germany.
Lübke, Kai (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 1 August.
Mailer, Norman (1957) ‘The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster’. Dissent (Fall). http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-white-negro-fall-1957
McKay, George (2005) Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822387282
Minden, Michael, and Holger Bachmann (2002) Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear. Rochester: Camden House.
Monson, Ingrid (1996) Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——(2007) Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call out to Jazz and Africa. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195128253.001.0001
Nicholson, Stuart (2005) Is Jazz Dead? (Or Has It Moved to a New Address). New York: Routledge.
Nisenson, Eric (2000) Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and his World of Improvisation. New York: Da Capo Press.
Oberwittler, Jörg (2013) ‘Hauptstadt des Jazz’. Berliner Akzente Online. http://www.berliner-akzente.de/stadt_szene/hauptstadt-des-jazz.php
Pettinger, Peter (1998) Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Poiger, Uta G. (2000) Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Radano, Ronald M. (1994) New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reid, T. R. (2004) The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy. New York: Penguin Press.
Rustin, Nicole and Sherrie Tucker, eds (2008) Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1962) [1947] ‘I Discovered Jazz in America’. In Frontiers of Jazz, ed. Ralph de Toledano, 66–68. New York: Frederick Ungar.
Saul, Scott (2003) Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schiefel, Michael (2007) Interview by author in Berlin, 3 March 2007.
Schlicht, Ursel (2008) ‘“Better a Jazz Album than Lipstick” (Lieber Jazzplatte als Lippenstift): The 1956 Jazz Podium Series Reveals Images of Jazz and Gender in Postwar Germany’. In Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, ed. Nicole Rustin and Sherrie Tucker, 291–319. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Schuller, Gunther (1999) [1958] ‘Sonny Rollins and the Challenge of Thematic Improvisation’. In Gunther Schuller, Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Shuller, 86–97. New York: Oxford University Press.
Schwörer, Werner, and Ekkehard Jost (1989) Jazzszene Frankfurt: Eine Musiksoziologische Untersuchung zur Situation Anfangs der Achtziger Jahre. Mainz: Schott Musikwissenschaft.
Thomas, Rolf (2005) ‘Bergsteiger’. Jazzthetik, June. http://www.yumpu.com/de/document/view/392434/jazzthetik-bergsteiger-rolf-thomas-act-music-vision
Tucker, Sherrie (2002) ‘Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies’. Current Musicology 71-73: 375–408.
——(2004) Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Turner, Frederick J. (1920) The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt & Co.
Walser, Robert (1993) ‘Out of Notes: Signification, Interpretation, and the Problem of Miles Davis’. The Musical Quarterly 77(2): 346–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mq/77.2.343
Weckert, Sandra (2008) Interview by author in Berlin, 2 July.
Wiggins, ‘Detroit’ Gary (2008) Interview by author in Berlin, 25 May.
Williams, K. Leander (2008) ‘Real Genius?’ http://jazztimes.com/articles/20902-real- genius
Wilmer, Valerie (1977) As Serious as Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz. London: Allison & Busby.
——(1989) Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This: My Life in the Jazz World. London: The Women’s Press.
Zwerin, Mike (2000) [1985] Swing Under the Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom. New York: Cooper Square Press.
Published
2013-12-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Bares, W. K. (2013). Way out East: cowboys and pioneer women on Berlin’s jazz frontier. Jazz Research Journal, 6(2), 170-200. https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v6i2.170
