The collective organization of contemporary jazz musicians in the UK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v5i1-2.89Keywords:
jazz collectives, live jazz, venuesAbstract
This article examines the conditions under which jazz is created as a live music among young musicians in three major UK cities. The analysis uses approaches from political economy and cultural studies, including interviews with jazz musicians and promoters in these local jazz scenes, to explore how the participants organize themselves and, in particular, how they use ideas of collective working to achieve their ends. The authors make the case that the collective has become the primary organizing principle through which contemporary jazz musicians create performance opportunities, sustain production cultures and negotiate their relationships with the music industries in these scenes. This thesis is supported through a detailed examination of the work of local collectives, the semiotic use of collective organization, and the relationship of the collectives to the jazz educational programmes based in those cities.
References
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Whitehead, K. (1998) New Dutch Swing. New York: Billboard Books.
Wickes, J. (1999) Innovations in British Jazz: Volume One, 1960–1980. Chelmsford: Soundworld.
Bakriges, C. G. (2003) ‘Musical Transculturation: From African American Avant-Garde Jazz to European Creative Improvisation, 1962–1981’. In Jazz Planet, ed. E. T. Atkins, 99–114. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi.
Borgo, D. (2007) ‘Free Jazz in the Classroom: An Ecological Approach to Music Education’. Jazz Perspectives 1(1): 61–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060601061030
Burnett, R. (1996) The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry. London: Routledge.
Carr, I. [1973] (2008) Music Outside: Contemporary Jazz in Britain. London: Latimer New Dimensions.
Cohen, S. (2007) Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Connolly, M., and C. Rodley (2005) Jazz Britannia. BBC. 28 January; 4 and 11 February 2005.
Cook, R. (2001) Blue Note Records: The Biography. London: Secker & Warburg.
Cross, R. (2010) ‘“There is No Authority but Yourself”: The Individual and the Collective in British Anarcho-Punk’. Music and Politics (Summer). http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2010-2/cross.html
Dale, P. (2008) ‘It was Easy, it was Cheap, so What?: Reconsidering the DIY Principle of Punk and Indie Music’. Popular Music History 3(2): 171–93.
DeVeaux, S. K. (1997) The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Easlea, D. (2004) Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco. London: Helter Skelter.
George, N. (1986) Where Did our Love Go?: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound. London: Omnibus.
Harding, P. (2009) PWL from the Factory Floor. Bury: W.B. Publishing.
Hesmondhalgh, D. (1999) ‘Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre’. Cultural Studies 13(1): 34–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095023899335365
Higgins, L. (2007) ‘Growth, Pathways and Groundwork: Community Music in the United Kingdom’. International Journal of Community Music 1(1): 23–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/ijcm.1.1.23_1
Kahn, A. (2006) The House that Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. New York: W.W. Norton.
Kofsky, F. (1970) Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. New York and London: Pathfinder Press.
Laing, D. (2002) ‘The Jazz Market’. In The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, ed. M. Cooke and D. Horn, 321–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521663205.019
Lewis, G. E. (2002) ‘Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM in New York 1970 to 1985’. Current Musicology 71-73: 100–157.
—(2008) A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Looker, B. (2004) Point from which Creation Begins: The Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis. St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society Press.
Martin, H., and K. Waters (2006) Jazz: The First 100 Years. Belmont, CA and London: Thompson/Schirmer.
McCormick, N. (2009) ‘Xenomania: How to Write a Hit Song’. Daily Telegraph, 13 August. London: Telegraph Media Group.
McKay, G. (1996) Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties. London: Verso.
—(1998) ‘DIY Culture: Notes Towards an Intro’. In DIY Culture: Party and Protest in Nineties Britain, ed. G. McKay, 1–53. London and New York: Verso.
—(2005) Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
McKay, G., and B. Higham (2011) ‘Community Music: History and Current Practice, its Constructions of “Community”, Digital Turns and Future Soundings’. Swindon: Arts & Humanities Research Council.
Monson, I. T. (2007) Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call out to Jazz and Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, H. (2007) Inside British Jazz: Crossing Borders of Race, Nation and Class. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Negus, K. (1992) Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. London: E. Arnold.
Nicholson, S. (2005) Is Jazz Dead?: (or has it Moved to a New Address). London: Routledge.
Smith, L. (1973) ‘Creative Music and the AACM’. In R. Walser (1999), Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History, 315–23. New York: Oxford University Press.
Straw, W. (1997) ‘Communities and Scenes in Popular Music’. In The Subcultures Reader, ed. K. Gelder and S. Thornton, 494–505. London and New York: Routledge.
Szwed, J. F. (1997) Space is the Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra. Edinburgh: Payback.
Tapscott, H., and S. L. Isoardi (2001) Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Thiele, B., and B. Golden (1995) What a Wonderful World: A Lifetime of Recordings. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thompson, S. (2004) ‘Crass Commodities’. Popular Music and Society 27(3): 307–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007760410001733152
Wall, T. (2007) ‘David Murray: The Making of a Progressive Jazz Musician’. Jazz Research Journal 1(2): 173–203.
Whitehead, K. (1998) New Dutch Swing. New York: Billboard Books.
Wickes, J. (1999) Innovations in British Jazz: Volume One, 1960–1980. Chelmsford: Soundworld.
Published
2012-11-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Wall, T., & Barber, S. (2012). The collective organization of contemporary jazz musicians in the UK. Jazz Research Journal, 5(1-2), 89-112. https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v5i1-2.89
