Marshall Winslow Stearns and the Politics of Jazz Historiography

Dunkel, Mario

doi:10.5406/americanmusic.30.4.0468

Cited by 18 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…However, his support of hot jazz was grounded in a very different political agenda, since it was based on heavy criticism of racism in the US music industry and society, in keeping with the leftist cultural front during the Depression. 130 The dimension of the IFHC which concerned 'minorities internationalism' was one of scale. Persuaded that they defended the only form of jazz worthy of being considered art, IFHC members saw themselves as a minority amid the wider jazz audience.…”

Section: The Ifhc and 'Minorities Internationalism'mentioning

confidence: 99%

From the History of Jazz in Europe towards a European History of Jazz: The International Federation of Hot Clubs (1935–6) and ‘Jazz Internationalism’

GUERPIN¹

2022

J. R. Music. Assoc.

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‘Hot clubs’ proliferated all over Europe and the United States during the 1930s. For a brief period (1935–6), they joined forces in an International Federation of Hot Clubs (IFHC), the main purpose of which was to link together devotees in search of American hot jazz recordings at a time when they were difficult to find and buy in Europe, since that sub-genre was less popular and commercially successful than what was then called ‘straight’ jazz. The expression ‘hot jazz’ was coined by jazz musicians at the end of the 1920s and referred to a style based on performance and improvisation rather than on the composition and performance of written parts. A founder of the Hot Club de France (HCF) in 1932, the French jazz critic Hugues Panassié was the first to establish a hierarchy between these two styles:

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Section: The Ifhc and 'Minorities Internationalism'mentioning

confidence: 99%

From the History of Jazz in Europe towards a European History of Jazz: The International Federation of Hot Clubs (1935–6) and ‘Jazz Internationalism’

GUERPIN¹

2022

J. R. Music. Assoc.

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“…56 Writers such as John Hammond and Marshall Stearns in the United States, Leonard Feather in Great Britain, and Hughes Pannasié in France drew from contemporaneous trends in folklore and anthropology to craft a discourse that disputed what was at the time a prevailing narrative: that white artists such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Paul Whiteman were jazz's originators and highest quality contributors. 57 This rhetoric, however, presented a fairly obvious contradiction within white jazz magazines as it escalated around the same time they introduced "all-star" band polls. Such band polls, despite escalating acknowledgement of African Americans' central contributions to jazz, frequently featured majority-white lineups.…”

Section: The Rhetorical Makings Of a Mythic Clash: Racialized Discursmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Spinnin' the Webb”: Representational Spaces, Mythic Narratives, and the 1937 Webb/Goodman Battle of Music

Wells¹

2020

J Soc American Mus

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Benny Goodman and Chick Webb's 1937 battle of music has become a mythic event in jazz historical narratives, enshrined as the unique spectacle that defines Harlem's Savoy Ballroom and its legacy. While this battle has been marked as exceptional and unique, as an event it was a relatively typical instantiation of the “battle of music” format, a presentational genre common in black venues during the 1920s and 1930s. Within African American communities, battles of music re-staged ballrooms as symbolically loaded representational spaces where dueling bands regularly served as oppositional totems that indexed differences of locality (Chicago vs. New York), gender (men vs. women), ethnicity (Anglo- or African American vs. Latin), or race (black vs. white). This article details the ten-year history of battles of music that preceded the Webb/Goodman battle and that made its signifying rhetoric legible within African American communities. It then argues that the disconnect between the battle's relatively typical signifying rhetoric and its subsequent enshrinement as an exceptional event occurred due to a specific confluence of circumstances in the mid-1930s that shaped its immediate reception and subsequent legacy: Goodman's emergence as the “King of Swing” during a new period of massive mainstream popularity for swing music, a coterminous vigilance among both white and black jazz writers to credit black artists as jazz's originators and best practitioners, and the emergence of athletes Jesse Owens and Joe Louis as popular black champions symbolically conquering white supremacy at home and abroad.

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Introduction

2024

At the Vanguard of Vinyl

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The introduction argues that one of the most significant and enduring changes in jazz during the 1950s was the practice of record making. To support this assertion, this introduction takes several approaches. It outlines the genesis of the long-playing (LP) format and discusses record production in the pre-LP era. It explores why a cultural history of the jazz LP must attend to Black jazz musicians and their work to redefine notions of Black expertise, Black labor, and Black capital in the early Cold War era. Finally, it outlines four interrelated frameworks that define the book’s overall approach: (1) the contestations over recording format, (2) the reorientation of race within the record business, (3) the creation of new forms of technological mediation, and (4) the codification of jazz’s historical narrative. A summary of each chapter is included.

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Marshall Winslow Stearns and the Politics of Jazz Historiography

Cited by 18 publications

References 31 publications

From the History of Jazz in Europe towards a European History of Jazz: The International Federation of Hot Clubs (1935–6) and ‘Jazz Internationalism’

From the History of Jazz in Europe towards a European History of Jazz: The International Federation of Hot Clubs (1935–6) and ‘Jazz Internationalism’

“Spinnin' the Webb”: Representational Spaces, Mythic Narratives, and the 1937 Webb/Goodman Battle of Music

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