On his book Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition
Cover Interview of August 08, 2010
The wide angle
After teaching jazz history for years, several independent observations led me to the concept of a book on jazz icons.
I began to see how the behaviour of musicians was tied to broader value systems and mythologies. For example, I was amazed by the way in which students (and the books and magazines they were reading) would often relate intensely to certain musicians but would also refuse to enter into critical dialogue about legendary jazzmen of the past.
Similarly, I was interested to know why musicians—both students and professionals—sought to distance themselves from the benefits of formal training and would use the anecdotal accounts of musicians as gospel truths.
After a while, I began to think about the way in which the whole language of jazz seemed to reinforce certain values and mythologies, from evoking the macho gunslinger who works at the frontier to suggesting the regal and sophisticated.
Rather than treating the language of jazz innocently, I began to think about how and why this language was used and for what purpose. This led into general theories about icons in art and the impact they have on the present day. The way certain people are invested with meaning or become symbolic usually has something to do with the status of art and its relationship to society in general.
Equally, I wanted to demonstrate how critical and philosophical questions about jazz and the music’s relationship to certain myths can be found in everyday life. For example, I begin the book with a discussion of the use of Miles Davis in Michael Mann’s film Collateral, which starred Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. This typical Hollywood portrayal of jazz feeds into a discussion of how jazz figures have become iconic, are used to reinforce certain stereotypes and have been invested with new meaning.
I also look at the way in which jazz is advertised and marketed today to examine the way in which the notion of a ‘Great Tradition’ influences the behaviour of contemporary artists.
From a wide angle, the book explores how and why legendary figures are needed in order to tell historical stories and examines the potential impact of turning jazz music into a museum piece.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The wide angle
After teaching jazz history for years, several independent observations led me to the concept of a book on jazz icons.
I began to see how the behaviour of musicians was tied to broader value systems and mythologies. For example, I was amazed by the way in which students (and the books and magazines they were reading) would often relate intensely to certain musicians but would also refuse to enter into critical dialogue about legendary jazzmen of the past.
Similarly, I was interested to know why musicians—both students and professionals—sought to distance themselves from the benefits of formal training and would use the anecdotal accounts of musicians as gospel truths.
After a while, I began to think about the way in which the whole language of jazz seemed to reinforce certain values and mythologies, from evoking the macho gunslinger who works at the frontier to suggesting the regal and sophisticated.
Rather than treating the language of jazz innocently, I began to think about how and why this language was used and for what purpose. This led into general theories about icons in art and the impact they have on the present day. The way certain people are invested with meaning or become symbolic usually has something to do with the status of art and its relationship to society in general.
Equally, I wanted to demonstrate how critical and philosophical questions about jazz and the music’s relationship to certain myths can be found in everyday life. For example, I begin the book with a discussion of the use of Miles Davis in Michael Mann’s film Collateral, which starred Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. This typical Hollywood portrayal of jazz feeds into a discussion of how jazz figures have become iconic, are used to reinforce certain stereotypes and have been invested with new meaning.
I also look at the way in which jazz is advertised and marketed today to examine the way in which the notion of a ‘Great Tradition’ influences the behaviour of contemporary artists.
From a wide angle, the book explores how and why legendary figures are needed in order to tell historical stories and examines the potential impact of turning jazz music into a museum piece.