In this remarkable book, Steven Feld, pioneer of the anthropology of sound, listens to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of jazz players in Ghana. Some have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended the innovations of John Coltrane with local instruments and worldviews. Combining memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, Feld conveys a diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests American nationalist and Afrocentric narratives of jazz history. His stories of Accra's j...

"World music" emerged as a commercial and musical category in the 1980s, but in some sense music has always been global. Through the metaphor of encounters, Music and Globalization explores the dynamics that enable or hinder cross-cultural communication through music. In the stories told by the contributors, we meet well-known players such as David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Ry Cooder, Fela Kuti, and Gilberto Gil, but also lesser-known characters such as the Senegalese Afro-Cuban singer ...

In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own words: how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life."Why did you leave Sierra Leone?"

Saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter has not only left his footprints on our musical terrain, he has created a body of work that is a monument to artistic imagination. Throughout Shorter's extraordinary fifty-year career, his compositions have helped define the sounds of each distinct era in the history of jazz.Filled with musical analysis by Mercer, enlivened by Shorter's vivid recollections, and enriched by more than seventy-five original interviews with his friends and associa...

This practical and enlightening book gives insight into almost every aspect of jazz musicianship---scale/chord theory, composing techniques, analyzing tunes, practice strategies, etc. For any level of player, on any instrument. Endorsed by Jessica Wiliams, Jerry Bergonzi, Bill mays, etc.

Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the g...

The Dirty Dozen meets Band of Brothers in this true story of how a rusty old New Orleans banana boat staffed with an unlikely crew of international merchant seamen, a gang of inmates from a local jail, and a French harbor pilot spirited out of Morocco by O.S.S. agents in the trunk of a Chevy, were drafted into service in WWII -- and heroically succeeded in setting the stage for Patton's epic invasion of North Africa.The largest amphibious invasion...

The first popular history of the former American slaves who founded, ruled, and lost Africa's first republic.In 1820, a small group of African Americans reversed the course of history and sailed to Africa, to a place they would name after liberty itself. They went under the aegis of the American Colonization Society, a white philanthropic organization with a dual agenda: to rid America of its blacks and to evangelize Africa. The settlers, eventually numbering in the...

Investigates the connections between jazz, sexual identity, and radical black politicsIn his controversial essay on white jazz musician Burton Greene, Amiri Baraka asserted that jazz was exclusively an African American art form and explicitly fused the idea of a black aesthetic with radical political traditions of the African diaspora. In the Break is an extended riff on “The Burton Greene Affair,” exploring the tangled relationship between black avant-gar...

You've heard the music and read the biographies. Now gain insight to the greats of popular music through their own words. This book is a collection of some of the most memorable quotes from the premier artists of pop, rock, jazz, and the blues.Comments on the business of making music are found here as well as many fascinating and often surprising observations on life in general.

The bass has been called "the most important instrument in any band." The bass player must create interesting lines under the chord changes, keep the "time flow" or "pulse" steady, and keep the form of the song together. This book is designed to help bassists create beginning to advanced walking patterns (smooth-sounding lines) that can be used in jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, Latin and country music. By explaining the basics of intervals, chords, and scales the author builds a framework for u...

"Uncover[s] the inner creative method in a band that was literally reinventing their music on a gig-by-gig basis . . . a compelling narrative." — All About JazzMiles Davis's Bitches Brew is one of the most iconic albums in American music, the preeminent landmark and fertile seedbed of jazz-fusion. Fans have been fortunate in recent years to gain access to Davis's live recordings from this time, when he was working with an ensemble that has come to ...