• Home
  • About
    • Jazz Beyond Jazz
    • Howard Mandel
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Archives for December 2010

Last glance 2010: great performances and best beyond jazz

There’s not much time left, so here are three of my best memories of live music over this crazy year, and a couple handfuls of favorite recordings that promise to be listenable for quite a while forward — 

[Read more…]

Fighting history and myth re racial politics in jazz

I completely disagree with the point of Randall Sandke‘s bookWhere the Dark and the Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz. sandke book cover.jpegRather than celebrate a century of inter-racial collaboration modeling society’s progress on civil rights, instead Sandke proposes that a cabal of journalists, scholars and left-leaning “activist” producers exaggerated black musicians’ centrality while downplaying white Americans’ contributions to jazz. He thinks white musicians deserve more attention and credit, if jazz is a true meritocracy; I think instead that the generally accepted shape of jazz’s narrative and its canon is representative of jazz’s meritocracy, and that white musicians for the most part have gotten plenty of notice, plus fame and fortune frequently disproportionate to their artistic achievements. Read my review at JJANews.org — and look for Sandke, a composer-trumpeteras well as author, to post a response, here or there.

howardmandel.com
Subscribe by Email or RSS
All JBJ posts

American Bandstand loved Captain Beefheart

In 1966, long before the original Hairspray, black and white teens danced together to the bass overdrive and deep croak of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Today blues lovers, avant-gardists and fans of dada, surrealism and abstract expressionism mourn and celebrate the Captain, aka Don Van Vliet. If you don’t believe people jitterbuged to “Diddy Wah Diddy,” watch the clip. And thanks to Jim Macnie for bringing it to my attention. 

howardmandel.com
Subscribe by Email |
Subscribe by RSS |
Follow on Twitter
All JBJ posts |

James Moody, bop saxophonist, flutist, humorist: 3/25/25 – 12/9/10

Sad news: Jazz giant James Moody died of pancreatic cancer today, age 85. This is confirmed on Moody’s own website. A brilliant improviser who emerged from Dizzy Gillespie’s big band to join the young turks of bebop (Monk, Bags, Klook, Blakey) in the late 1940s, he became internationally admired for his tenor sax and flute mastery and on-stage good cheer, as when he’d sing both male and female parts to “Moody’s Mood for Love,” his etched-in-gold solo given lyrics by his pal Eddie Jefferson.

[Read more…]

Seasonal electricity: jazz “fusion” in NYC

Fusion, fission, energy and virtuosity reign supreme over coming holiday weeks as jazzers beyond genre constraints fill New York clubs. Starting tonight (Dec. 9) double-necked guitar madman Dave Fiuczynski fires up Iridium with ripping alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and jam-band idol John Medeski on keybs; jazz sambas and tangos, ex-Milesian Mike Stern and smooth trumpeter Chris Botti, soul-drench organist Dr. Lonnie Smith and the Bad Plus follow. Details here, at my new column for City Arts-New York. And below — Fuze, vocalist Dean Bowman + Roy Hargrove knock out Miles Davis’ “What It Is” from Decoy (1984, and still state-of-jazz-funk).


 


howardmandel.com
Subscribe by Email |
Subscribe by RSS |
Follow on Twitter
All JBJ posts |

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

@JazzMandel

Tweets by @jazzbeyondjazz

More Me

I'll be speaking:

JBJ Essentials

Archives

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license