Edition: Paperback, 2000

Description: 354 Pages REVIEWS:
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DESCRIPTION:
Anyone interested in learning about a distinctly American music--jazz--will welcome this newest addition to the popular 101 reference series. Jazz may not be America's only original art form, but it is the quintessential American music. Noted anthropologist, critic and musical scholar John F. Szwed takes readers on a tour of the music's tangled history and explores how it developed from an ethnic music to become America's most popular music and then part of the avant garde in less than fifty years. Jazz 101 presents the key figures, history, theory and controversies that shaped its development, along with a discussion of some of its most important recordings. It offers insightful commentary on how jazz helped shape twentieth-century American painting, film, poetry, dance, fiction, pop and classical music, and the consciousness of what it means to be American.

BIOGRAPHY:
John F. Szwed is currently a professor of anthropology, African and African-American studies, music and American studies at Yale University. He has written eight books on music and African-American culture and numerous articles and reviews on related subjects. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship. He lives in Trumbull, Connecticut.