100 books like Space Is the Place

How do jazz musicians think about what they are doing when they are improvising within a group? How do they learn to do such a thing in the first place – going their own way, but still going there together?

This is an immersion into the minds of musicians, starting with their earliest days and going through the rigors of learning their craft and then mastering it. The combination of discipline and freedom, hard work and wild inventive joy, finding an individual voice, and being part of the larger whole – the things that make improvisation a breath-taking artistic high-wire act – come together in this book.

I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but this book made me wish I was a jazz musician.

I came across this book when I decided to focus my graduate study on the history of jazz and was reading everything I could find. It’s a short book, full of incredible vintage photographs, and it taught me so much about what swing is, how music and dance are joined at the hip. How it’s all rooted in the blues. And about the link between the “Saturday Night Function” of celebrating life with music and dance, followed a few hours later by the “Sunday Morning Function,” singing and celebrating God and community in church. The two are not all that far apart. Along with Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray was probably the first author to write about jazz with a real sense of lyricism and poetry. In this book, the writing itself carries the energy and exuberance of jazz.

Everyone knows that jazz is intimately and inextricably linked to Africa, but no book does a better job of breaking down just how strong this relationship is. Pianist Randy Weston and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik are pretty well known, but Kelley uncovers lots of fascinating new material on both musicians and their transnational connections. Drummer Guy Warren and vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin were new to me and both turned out to have incredible backstories. Kelley is as compelling on the jazz scenes of Cape Town and Lagos as he is on the more familiar haunts of Chicago and New York. It was such an exciting historical moment, with one African nation after another breaking free of their colonial subjugators. The jazz world was bursting with creativity. Anything seemed possible. Kelley knows the jazz world inside and out and writes beautifully.

Michael Denning was my dissertation advisor in grad school and one of the most impressive scholars of American culture that I know. What I like about Noise Uprising is that it gives us a whole new perspective on the beginnings of jazz. No longer is American jazz at the center of the universe. Instead, it’s a small piece of a larger mosaic of popular music that stretched from Havana and Rio to Seville, Cairo, Jakarta, and Honolulu. Before reading this book I had no idea that musical recording even went on in all these far-flung places, beginning in 1925, even before the great wave of recordings appeared from Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Jelly Roll Morton. We learn about the origin and first recordings of such major genres as samba, son, tango, flamenco, tarab, kroncong, and hula. All of these styles were deeply embedded in the social and political struggles… show more.

Don’t let the (original) lengthy subtitle, with its nearly forty-year-old date reference, put you off; this is a deeply original and highly engaging account of the music and philosophy of one of America’s most prolific and consistently creative musicians: composer, improviser, educator and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton. With a double narrative that deftly alternates between lofty discussions of subjects such as metaphysics, mysticism, language, and astrology, and the daily grind of a challenging twelve-date tour of England by a Braxton quartet in the winter of 1985, Forces in Motion cleverly captures much of the complexity, intelligence, ambition and humour of its uncompromising subject. At one point Lock describes Braxton as “an alchemist, a man who opens doors you didn’t know existed”; the same can be said of the book itself. A perfect marriage of musician and writer. 

New Musical Figurations is a profile of AACM composer Anthony Braxton. One of the best-known AACM musicians, Braxton is also one of the most influential: while writing hundreds of compositions and touring the world with his many ensembles, he has also found time to teach some of the best composers and improvisers of the twenty-first century, including Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson, Steve Lehman, and Tyshawn Sorey. Braxton continues to compose and perform today, and New Musical Figurations explores the ideas and philosophies that motivate his creative practices and draw new generations of listeners to his music.

I have so many reasons why this is one of my all-time favorite books. Berton’s descriptions of music, specifically jazz or music in general, are superb. Ralph Berton describes himself as a precocious 13-year-old (an understatement!), when in 1924 he meets Bix Beiderbecke, seven years his senior, and idolizes him. This relationship is a great part of the book’s charm. The Berton family—with its vaudeville background, two famous musical brothers (besides the child genius Ralph), and a Jewish mother—is another part of the appeal. But the heart of the book is his affectionate, penetrating portrait of Bix, derived from personal experience. He examines the myths and legends, sometimes debunking and sometimes reinforcing them. A magical, bittersweet book that often brought me to tears. Exceptional writing.

I highly value Condon’s ability to describe the daily anxiety and desperation of the poor jazz musicians, who constantly struggled to find work and pay the rent. He does so with great good humor. He tells a good story and he’s got a million of them, including a few about gangsters, but mostly about the many great jazz musicians like Bix Beiderbecke, whom he worked with and knew well. His many terse stories prove that brevity is the soul of wit. His dialogue is worthy of Ben Hecht—he’s good at wisecracks. I was sorry when the book came to an end.

Terry Gibbs played vibes (vibraphone) with several of the most famous big bands during the Swing Era, than formed his own small groups, then led big bands himself starting in 1956. Steeped in Swing, he also held his own with the modernists. Perhaps his most amazing accomplishment was putting together his Dream Band, which recorded at least 68 selections, arranged by all the best arrangers in the business, in four different clubs in Hollywood, mostly in 1959. It was a 'dream band' because although the big band era was over, all the best musicians on the West Coast wanted to play in this one because the music was so much fun. Gibbs was in his 90s when his book came out; he knew how lucky he had been, and his book is full of joy and love.

I loved this book because it spoke directly to me. Jost looks at jazz music and in particular the development of free jazz.

It all fits together and flows so easily. He includes discussions on different musicians, their impact on free jazz music and explains how different areas within America developed their own subgenres of music. This book contains so many ‘aha!’ moments which is why I recommend it.