1st Edition
Jazz and Literature An Introduction
Jazz and Literature: An Introduction presents an original collection of essays from leading international scholars, examining an array of musical and literary interconnections including improvisation, multicultural influences, poetry, modernism, the Beat movement, jazz forms, noir, solo and collective expression, global perspectives on jazz and literature, etc. This volume sheds light on the critical and creative discussions of music and literature, showing the evolving relevance of jazz in the twenty-first century. The book also includes a special section dedicated to interviews with writers, musicians, and creatives such as U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, Anthony Joseph, Geoff Dyer, Paul Hirsch, Dickie Landry, and Dwandalyn R. Reece. This volume is an ideal resource for students of music and literature and for academics interested in the creative dialogues between jazz and literature.
INTRODUCTION
Maria Antónia Lima and Mia Funk
PART I - JAZZ AND LITERATURE: ELECTIVE AFFINITIES
1 Jane Austen and John Coltrane
Allen Michie
2 Does Early Jazz Express Freedom or Possibility?
Amedeo D’Adamo
3 Modern Jazz Quintet: Hughes, Joans, Kaufman, Cortez, Komunyakaa
A. Robert Lee
4 Race and Cut-Up Improvisational Aesthetics: William Burroughs and Jazz
Benjamin J. Heal
5 Jazz and Futurism in Italy 1910–1935
Francesco Martinelli
6 David Bowie’s Blackstar: Jazz, War, and Seventeenth-Century Literary Connections in “’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” and “Sue”
James Rovira
7 Jazz as Modernity’s Challenge in Interwar Spain
Juan Herrero-Senés
8 Sounds in the Dark: Jazz in Noir Narratives
Maria Antónia Lima
9 Jazz in Brazilian and Portuguese Poetry
Mário Avelar
10 Truth Has to Be Given in Riddles: Literary Influences in the Portuguese Jazz Scene
Nuno Catarino
11 Jazz, Body, and Soul: Yusef Lateef’s Autophysiopsychic Practice
Sam Reese
12 Varieties of Religious Experience through Jazz in Cortázar’s “The Pursuer”
William Levine
PART II - EXPERIENCES OF CREATIVE INTERFACES
13 Hvor En Var Baen: Places of Childhood
Haftor Medbøe
14 Four Musicians and Six Characters: Narrative Categories in Contemporary Free Jazz
José Dias
15 The Creative Process: Storytelling as an Improvisational Process
Mia Funk
16 Morte d’Miles: Time with a Virtuoso
Peter Weller
17 Inside the Mind and Heart of the Free Improviser – an Improvisation
Robert Dick
18 Notes on Improvising While Composing: Dutch Writer J. Bernlef on Writing with Jazz
Scott Rollins
PART III - THE CREATIVE PROCESS 1: INTERVIEWS
19 Music, Space, Sensation, and the Creative Process
Ada Limón
20 Jazz, Poetry, Improvisation, and the Art of Memory
Anthony Joseph
21 Portugal, Cultural Memory, and the Language of Jazz
Bernardo Moreira
22 Jazz and the Time of the Novel
Bruce Evan Barnhart
23 An Improvised Life
Dickie Landry
24 African American Music and Storytelling: A Curator’s Perspective
Dwandalyn R. Reece
25 Improvisation and Freedom, Passion and Purpose
Edmar Castañeda
26 Jazz, Film, Graphic Novels, and The Discovery of Sound
Filipe Melo
27 Writing Between the Notes
Geoff Dyer
28 On Music and the Intersection of Life and Craft
Jericho Brown
29 A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time
Natalie Hodges
30 A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away
Paul Hirsch
31 Zen, Blues, Simplicity, and The Art of Songwriting
Rick Carnes
32 Songwriting and Self-Exploration
Sharon Kovacs
PART IV - THE CREATIVE PROCESS 2
33 Poems
For Ray
Ana Castillo
That Cat Named Bird
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
My Romance
Gerald Fleming
Rahsaan Roland Kirk at the Village Vanguard
Jeffrey Greene
Chet Baker
J. Bernlef
Forever Monkin’ it
Malik Ameer Crumpler
Forward Avenue Blues (for Katherine Dunham)
Michael Simms
Other Leavings, Other Lives
Yvette Centeno
PART V - THE CREATIVE PROCESS 3
34 Artworks
Mia Funk, The Audience: Jazz Masters
Edward Tadiello, Sax’n
Danilo Beyruth, Igor Monti, Joe Clark and Kyle Higgins, Deep Cuts, No. 1
Mia Funk, The Audience: Guinness Cork Jazz Festival 30th Anniversary
Júlio Quirino, Saxophonist Improvising
Dickie Landry, Blue Door
Mia Funk, Billie Holiday
Gloria Pacis, Saturday Night
Ana Castillo, Portrait of Bill Evans—Everybody Sings Bill Evans
Sharon Kovacs, Child of Sin
Index
Biography
Maria Antónia Lima is Associate Professor at the University of Évora, in Portugal, where she completed her PhD on the fiction of Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. She is a researcher at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES) and teaches American Literature at the University of Évora. She was President of the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies (APEAA) and a Board Member of the European Society for the Studies of English (ESSE). Her publications include international essays in specialized journals and critical volumes, as well as books on Gothic and the relationships between literature and the arts.
Mia Funk is an artist, podcast host, writer, and creative educator. Founder of The Creative Process international educational initiative, podcast, and travelling exhibition, her varied work sees her leading workshops and mentoring students around creativity, critical thinking, environmental ethics, and humanities disciplines. Her work appears in public and private collections, including the U.S. Library of Congress, Office of Public Works, and Centre Culturel Irlandais de Paris. She’s received the Prix de Peinture from the Salon d’Automne and exhibited in the Grand Palais. Funk served on the National Advisory Council of the American Writers Museum and serves on the advisory board of the European Conference for the Humanities.
