Writing jazz biography
race, research and narrative representation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v2i2.119Keywords:
biographical writing, race, Gadamer, oral history fieldwork, jazz research and writingAbstract
The historical biography has come to be viewed with suspicion by those who recognise that the genre’s literary emplotment and narrative demands can waylay the scholarly search for objective historical “truth”. This article explores these biographical narrative conventions and applications – and proposes new approaches to researching and writing within the biographical format – in the context of historical jazz studies. The piece begins by considering, with reference to several biographies of the saxophonist John Coltrane, both the ways that biographical narratives are constituted from disparate source materials and the ideological agendas and political problems that attend this creative act. The article argues that, in the course of doing biographical work, these issues might begin to be accounted for and dealt with by rethinking of the nature of historical-biographical “research”, and by way of hermeneutic, historical-dialogical method of the kind outlined by Hans-Georg Gadamer; with a theoretical approach delineated (and with reference to the author’s own experiences as a jazz biographer), the article goes on to engage with the processes and politics of this research stage, discussing oral history fieldwork and its textual representation, placing special emphasis on encounters of race so often inherent to jazz research and writing. Finally, the piece returns to the act of biographical writing itself, and outlines what, in light of the foregoing discussion, might be considered as new aims, values and strategies for the jazz biographical narrative, and perhaps for biography more generally.
References
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Daniels, Douglas Henry. 1987. ‘Oral History, Masks, and Protocol in the Jazz Community.’ Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987): 143–64.
DeVeaux, S. 1995. Jazz in America: Who’s Listening? National Endowment for the Arts Research Division Report #31. Carson: Seven Locks Press.
Foucault, M. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Gabbard, K. ed. 1995. Jazz among the Discourses. Durham: Duke University Press.
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Gennari, J. 2006. Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Shapiro, N., and N. Hentoff. 1955. Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It. New York: Dover.
Simpkins, C. O. 1975. Coltrane: A Biography. Perth Amboy, NJ: Herndon House Publishers.
Smith, M. 2001. John Coltrane: Jazz, Racism and Resistance. London: Redwords.
Spady, J. G. 1993. ‘Sun Ra Brings Solar Precepts to Phree Music and Black Arts Movement.’ Philadelphia New Observer (June 9): 17, 22.
Thomas, J. C. 1975. Chasin’ the Trane: The Music and Mystique of John Coltrane. New York: Da Capo Press.
Tomlinson, G. 1993. Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others. University of Chicago Press.
White, H. 1978. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
—1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Representation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wilson, R. 1991. ‘Producing American Selves: The Form of American Biography.’ In Contesting the Subject: The Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, ed. William Epstein, 167–93. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Woolf, V. 1942. ‘The Art of Biography.’ In The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, 119–26. London: The Hogarth Press.
Baker Jr, H. A. 1980. The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Barz, Gregory F., and Timothy J. Cooley, eds. 1997. Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Berliner, P. 1994. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bohlman, Philip V. 1997. ‘Fieldwork in the Ethnomusicological Past.’ In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, eds Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley, 139–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Braudel, F. 1972. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. 1. London: Fontana.
Burke, P. 1992. History and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Clifford, J. 1986. ‘Introduction: Partial Truths.’ In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, eds James Clifford and George Marcus, 1–26. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Cohen, N., and M. Fitzgerald. 2002. Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books.
Cole, B. 1993 [1976]. John Coltrane. New York: Da Capo Press.
Collingwood, R. G. 1961. The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Daniels, Douglas Henry. 1987. ‘Oral History, Masks, and Protocol in the Jazz Community.’ Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987): 143–64.
DeVeaux, S. 1995. Jazz in America: Who’s Listening? National Endowment for the Arts Research Division Report #31. Carson: Seven Locks Press.
Foucault, M. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Gabbard, K. ed. 1995. Jazz among the Discourses. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gadamer, H-G. 1989. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. 2nd edn; London: Sheed and Ward.
Geertz, C. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge: Polity Press.
—1993. ‘Thick Description: Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture.’ In Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 3–32. London: Fontana.
Gennari, J. 2006. Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.
Hall, J. C. 2001. Mercy, Mercy Me: African-American Culture and the American Sixties. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harlos, C. 1995. ‘Jazz Autobiography: Theory, Practice, Politics.’ In Representing Jazz, ed. Krin Gabbard, 131–66. Durham: Duke University Press.
Jones, L. [A. Baraka]. 1999 [1963]. ‘Jazz and the White Critic.’ In The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, ed. William J. Harris, 179–86. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Le Goff, J. 1992. History and Memory. Trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lipsitz, G. 2004. ‘Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz.’ In Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, eds Robert G. O’Meally, et al., 9–26. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lopes, P. 2002. The Rise of a Jazz Art World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marcus, L. 1994. Auto/Biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Michelfelder, D. P., and R. E. Palmer, eds. 1989. Dialogue and Deconstruction: The GadamerDerrida Encounter. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Monson, I. 1996. Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nisenson, E. 1995. Ascension: John Coltrane and his Quest. New York: Da Capo.
O’Meally, R. G. ed. 1998. The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
O’Meally, R. G., et al. eds. 2004. Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies. New York: Columbia University Press.
Outlaw, L. T. 1974. ‘Language and Consciousness: Toward a Hermeneutic of Black Culture.’ Cultural Hermeneutics 1: 403–13.
—1983. ‘Philosophy, Hermeneutics, Social-Political Theory: Critical Thought in the Interest of African-Americans.’ In Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, ed. Leonard Harris, 60–87. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
Perchard, T. 2006. Lee Morgan: His Life, Music and Culture. London: Equinox.
Porter, L. 1988. ‘Some Problems in Jazz Research.’ Black Music Research Journal 8/2: 195–206.
—1998. John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Rampersad, A. 1983. ‘Biography, Autobiography, and Afro-American Culture.’ The Yale Review 73: 1–16.
Sasaki, B. 1996. ‘Changing The Subject: Introduction.’ In The Seductions of Biography, eds Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff, 85–89. New York: Routledge.
Serequeberhan, T. 2000. Our Heritage: The Past in the Present of African-American and African Existence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Shapiro, N., and N. Hentoff. 1955. Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It. New York: Dover.
Simpkins, C. O. 1975. Coltrane: A Biography. Perth Amboy, NJ: Herndon House Publishers.
Smith, M. 2001. John Coltrane: Jazz, Racism and Resistance. London: Redwords.
Spady, J. G. 1993. ‘Sun Ra Brings Solar Precepts to Phree Music and Black Arts Movement.’ Philadelphia New Observer (June 9): 17, 22.
Thomas, J. C. 1975. Chasin’ the Trane: The Music and Mystique of John Coltrane. New York: Da Capo Press.
Tomlinson, G. 1993. Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others. University of Chicago Press.
White, H. 1978. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
—1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Representation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wilson, R. 1991. ‘Producing American Selves: The Form of American Biography.’ In Contesting the Subject: The Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, ed. William Epstein, 167–93. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Woolf, V. 1942. ‘The Art of Biography.’ In The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, 119–26. London: The Hogarth Press.
Published
2007-12-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Perchard, T. (2007). Writing jazz biography: race, research and narrative representation. Popular Music History, 2(2), 119-145. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v2i2.119
