Overview

The richest place in America's musical landscape is that fertile ground occupied by jazz. Scott DeVeaux takes a central chapter in the history of jazz--the birth of bebop--and shows how our contemporary ideas of this uniquely American art form flow from that pivotal moment. At the same time, he provides an extraordinary view of the United States in the decades just prior to the civil rights movement. DeVeaux begins with an examination of the Swing Era, focusing particularly on the position of African American musicians. He highlights the role played by tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, a ""progressive"" committed to a vision in which black jazz musicians would find a place in the world commensurate with their skills. He then looks at the young musicians of the early 1940s, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, and links issues within the jazz world to other developments on the American scene, including the turmoil during World War II and the pervasive racism of the period. Throughout, DeVeaux places musicians within the context of their professional world, paying close attention to the challenges of making a living as well as of making good music.He shows that bebop was simultaneously an artistic movement, an ideological statement, and a commercial phenomenon. In drawing from the rich oral histories that a living tradition provides, DeVeaux's book resonates with the narratives of individual lives. While The Birth of Bebop is a study in American cultural history and a critical musical inquiry, it is also a fitting homage to bebop and to those who made it possible.

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9780520216655

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Reviews

A fine history of jazz. --The Economist

"A ""fine history of jazz."" --The Economist"

DeVeaux (Music/Univ. of Virginia) puts bop into a historical, social, and economic context, using oral histories and musical analyses as well as period materials to examine an epochal shift in the jazz paradigm. Bebop, DeVeaux argues, is the the fulcrum on which jazz history turns. More than that, he adds, it is the shadowy juncture at which the lived experience of music becomes transformed into cultural memory, as the last witnesses to the changes in the music die off. Did bebop represent an evolutionary stage in jazz history or a revolutionary rupture? For the author the answer is not so clear-cut as the question implies. He constructs a richly researched and densely constructed history that tries to understand the development of bebop as the result of musical decisions, economic pressures, and the uniquely American nexus of cash and race. He begins by tracing the career of Coleman Hawkins, an astute choice, because Hawkins was one of the first jazz musicians to expatriate himself to Europe for a significant period, the first great tenor sax soloist jazz produced - an innovator and one of the first to embrace the new sounds. Equally important, at the height of the big-band period, Hawkins thrived as a freelancer, thereby pointing the way for the young rebels to come. Of course, it is Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie who are most closely identified with the rise of bop, and DeVeaux gives them full treatment, but one of the strengths of this excellent book is the attention it devotes to the life of the working musician, to the exigencies of the road and the economics of making music as they impacted the less-fabled players. At a time when shrill controversy is raging throughout jazz criticism and historiography, this measured, thoughtful, and exceptionally well-documented volume is a welcome antidote. Although there are extensive and highly technical musical analyses, the less sophisticated jazz fan will find much here to prize as well. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Scott DeVeaux is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Jazz in America: Who's Listening? (1995) and coeditor of The Music of James Scott (1992).

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