Course
overview
Often cited as America’s
most innovative cultural expression, jazz has come to signify more than a musical genre
– the word bespeaks an era, a mythology, a style, perhaps even a state of mind. Its
influence on subsequent music as well as other art forms is still being measured and for
literature (our rough focus will be poetry, fiction, and essays) it has acted not only as
occasional subject but also as formal and stylistic catalyst. Students will study works by
writers such as Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, and Nathaniel Mackey in stereo with a variety
of jazz recordings, from Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller to Sonny Rollins and Sun Ra:
both the literary and the musical selections will span the history of jazz, from its
origins to now.
This
is a course about listening as much as it is about reading and writing. Students need not
have any previous knowledge of jazz music, but an open mind and attentive ears and eyes
are essential.
Marking
scheme
Evaluation
will be based upon performance in the following assignments: a “listening
journal” (worth 20% of the final grade); a brief seminar presentation (worth 15%); a
series of three writing experiments (worth 15%); a final essay (worth 30%); and class
participation (worth 20%). Students
will receive 15% of the grade by October 30, and should note that the last day to drop a
D2 course without penalty is November 6. In accordance with the university’s marking
guidelines, the instructor reserves the right to level final grades to a figure ending in
0, 2, 5, or 8.
Please
note that completion of all assignments is required to pass the course.
All assigned work must be submitted in hard copy: emailed assignments will not be
accepted. Note that completion of all assignments is required to pass the course.
Attendance and active participation in seminar are expected: students who miss more than
three seminars (without a signed note from a physician) forfeit the whole of their
participation mark. Attendance is not synonymous with participation, though late arrivals
and early departures may affect the participation mark.
Required
Texts
Ralph
Ellison, Invisible Man
Nathaniel Mackey, Atet A.D.
Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home
A
course reading kit is also on reserve at the library for photocopying.
Required
Music
The instructor will make available (at a nominal cost) a set of CDs. In addition, students
are required to obtain the following albums:
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
John Coltrane, A Love Supreme
Late policy
A
penalty of two percent (2%) for each day late, including weekends, will be incurred in all
cases except certified emergencies. Papers more than ten days late will not be accepted,
and a mark of zero will be given for the assignment. Requests for extensions sent by email
will not be entertained. All assigned work must be submitted typed and in hard copy:
emailed assignments will not be accepted.
Plagiarism
Simply:
don’t even think about it. Students are referred to Brock
University’s
official policy on plagiarism, and they are further advised that the instructor has an
especially low view of such behaviour. The course website includes a page titled “On
Citation” that students are encouraged to consult.
Medical
Emergencies
All students should familiarize themselves with Brock’s Medical Exemption policy and
follow its procedures if necessary (see
http://www.brocku.ca/healthservices/exemption.php).
Schedule
Note:
those texts below marked with an asterisk (*) are included in the course kit, on reserve
for copying in the Library.
| September
14 |
course introduction
|
| September
21 |
reading: Sterling
A. Brown, “Cabaret” *
Vladimir
Mayakovsky, “Because of a Bandleader” *
William
Carlos Williams, “Ol’ Bunk’s Band” *
Robert Goffin, “Hot Jazz” *
listening: Scott Joplin, “Maple Leaf Rag”
Jelly
Roll Morton, “King Porter Stomp”
Jelly Roll Morton, “Black Bottom Stomp”
Jelly Roll Morton, “Original Jelly Roll Blues”
Joe “King” Oliver, “Dipper Mouth Blues”
New
Orleans
Rhythm Kings, “Tiger Rag”
New
Orleans Rhythm Kings, “Shim-me-sha Wobble”
|
| September
28 |
reading: Langston Hughes, “Harlem Night Club” *
Frank
London Brown, “Jazz” *
Mina Loy, “The Widow’s Jazz” *
Carl Sandburg, “Jazz Fantasia” *
Frank Marshall Davis, “Jazz Band” *listening: Bix
Beiderbecke, “In the Mist”
Fats
Waller, “Twelfth
Street
Rag”
Fats
Waller, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”
Django Reinhardt, “It Don’t Mean a Thing”
|
| October
5 |
reading:
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” *
Eudora
Welty, “Powerhouse” * listening:
Duke Ellington, “Black and Tan Fantasy”
Count
Basie, “One
O’Clock
Jump”
Mary
Lou Williams, “Roll ’em”
Benny Goodman, “Sing Sing Sing (with a Swing)”
viewing:
YouTube selections
(1)
(2)
|
| October
12 |
[Thanksgiving: no class]
|
| October
19 |
reading:
Invisible Man
listening:
Louis Armstrong, “Black and Blue”
Louis
Armstrong, “Potato Head Blues”
Sidney Bechet, “Saturday Night Blues”
|
| October
26 |
reading:
Langston Hughes, “Song for Billie Holiday” *
Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” *
Joy Harjo, “Strange Fruit” * (TSS 68)listening:
Billie Holiday, “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”
Billie
Holiday, “Solitude”
Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit”
Ella Fitzgerald, “How High the Moon”
Anita O’Day, “How High the Moon”
viewing:
“Fine and Mellow” (Holiday,
Young, etc.) on YouTube
|
| November
2 |
reading: James
Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” *
Richard
Yates, “A Really Good Jazz Piano” *listening:
Dizzy Gillespie, “Salt Peanuts”
Bud
Powell, “The Scene Changes”
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
Amiri Baraka, “When Miles Split”
|
| November
9 |
reading: Jack Spicer, “Song for Bird and Myself” *
Robert Creeley, “Chasing the Bird” *
Geoff Dyer, excerpt from But Beautiful *
Ralph Ellison, “On Bird, Bird-Watching and Jazz” *listening:
Thelonious Monk, “Straight No Chaser”
Thelonious
Monk, “Epistrophy”
Charlie Parker, “Ornithology”
Charlie Parker, “Lover Man”
|
| November
16 |
reading: Michael S. Harper, “Dear John, Dear Coltrane” *
Edward
Kamau Braithwaite, “Trane” *
Sonia Sanchez, “a/coltrane/poem” *
Harryette
Mullen, “Playing the Invisible Saxophone en el
Combo de las
Estrellas” *listening: John Coltrane, A Love
Supreme
|
| November
23 |
reading:
The Bear Comes Home (pages 6-227)
listening: Coleman Hawkins, “Yeah Man!”
Coleman
Hawkins, “Lover Come Back to Me”
Lester Young, “I Can’t Get Started”
Charles Mingus, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”
|
| November
30 |
reading:
The Bear Comes Home (pages 228-478)
Thulani
Davis, “Expandable Language” *listening: Ornette Coleman, “Free Jazz”
Sonny Rollins, “The Bridge”
Sonny Rollins, “It’s All Right with Me”
Dexter Gordon, “Love for Sale”
?
Thelonious Monk, “Well, You Needn’t”
|
| December
3 |
reading:
Nathaniel Mackey, Atet A.D.
Cecil
Taylor, “Garden” * listening:
Sun Ra, “Untitled (Echoes of the Future)”
Cecil
Taylor, Air Above Mountains
|
Assignments
(1) Listening Journal: Students will keep a regular journal in which they record their
impressions of the music to which they have been listening. This specifically and
primarily includes the assigned listening for each class, but students are welcome to
include related discussion of other music (other jazz to which they have been listening,
or to other kinds of music). The purpose of the journal is twofold: to think about what
jazz is, and to develop a form and approach –or, as the case may be, forms and
approaches– to writing about the music. Entries, expected to be made weekly (though
more are welcome as students see fit) should
be dated. The complete journal, which is to be typed and double-spaced, is due December 4.
(2)
Seminar Presentation: Each student will lead discussion on a given literary work in one
class. This presentation is not a lecture but rather a provocation and facilitation of
conversation. Presenting students can choose a focus or theme as they like (so long as
these connect to the course subject), and they should be ready to ask as well as answer
questions (thus, some previous thinking and even research ought to be in evidence).
Presenting students may build on previous discussions as well as refer to or draw upon
whatever relevant secondary readings they may have made. Presentations ought to run
roughly 15-25 minutes.
(3)
Writing Experiments: Three or four short assignments will be given without set schedule or
prior warning (if time allows for four, only the student’s best three will be counted
in the marks).
(4)
Final Essay: 15-18 pages. Due December 10.
Further
Reading
There
are, of course, a great many volumes on jazz history, musicology, and influence, both
general and specific in focus, but here follows a very short list of supplementary
material that may prove useful to students of this course.
David
Ake, Jazz Cultures (2002)
Alfred
Appel, Jr., Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and
Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce (2002)
Joachim-Ernst
Berendt, The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and
Beyond (trans. H. and B. Bredigkeit with Dan Morgenstern, 1975)
Paul
F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of
Improvisation (1994)
Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz (1946)
Michael
Borshuk, Swinging the Vernacular: Jazz and African
American Modernist Literature (2006)
Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble, eds., The Other
Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue (2004)
Krin
Gabbard, ed., Jazz Among the Discourses (1995)
Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (1997)
John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle: Jazz After
1958 (1984)
Robert O’Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American
Culture (1998)
Robert
O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin,
eds., Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (2004)
David
Meltzer, ed., Reading Jazz (1993)
Keren Omry, Cross-Rhythms: Jazz Aesthetics in
African-American Literature (2009)
Eric
Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African
American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (2002)
Nichole T. Rustin and Sherrie Tucker, Big Ears:
Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies (2008)
Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin’
to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It (1955)
Martin
Williams, Jazz Masters of New
Orleans
(1967)
David
Yaffe, Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American
Writing (2005)
Also
recommended: www.jazzstudiesonline.org
|
