Events

This presentation proposes a way of understanding the formation of jazz as part of a broader transnational exchange of culture. It argues that the processes by which jazz came into being closely resemble others taking place in Cuba, Brazil, and elsewhere, and thus calls for an optic that positions jazz as part of a hemispheric exchange of cultural influences that extend beyond the United States. In order to explore the interrelations between jazz and other music developing concurrently, the analysis explores similarities between the Cuban danzón and manifestations of jazz in New Orleans of the 1910s as a case study. Danzones share a number of common musical features with early jazz recordings including origins in nineteenth-century brass band repertoire, sectional formal structures, and the foregrounding of multiple, simultaneous forms of improvisation. Analysis suggests that “jazz” and “Latin jazz” should not be considered discrete categories, but rather part of an interrelated history of black diasporic cultural innovation and exchange.

Robin Moore (PhD, The University of Texas at Austin, 1995), Professor of Ethnomusicology, has received awards including fellowships from the ACLS, the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. His book publications include  Nationalizing Blackness: afrocubanismo and artistic revolution in Havana, 1920-1940(University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), Music and Revolution Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba  (The University of California Press, 2006),  Music in the Hispanic Caribbean(Oxford University Press, 2010), Musics of Latin America (W.W. Norton, 2012), Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance(Oxford University Press, co-authored with Alejandro Madrid, 2013), College Music Curricula for a New Century (Oxford Press, 2017), and Fernando Ortiz on Music (Temple University Press, 2018). His recent awards include the Robert Stevenson Award from the American Musicological Society the Bela Bartok Award for outstanding ethnomusicology publication from ASCAP, both from 2013. Since 2005, he has served as editor of the Latin American Music Review.

A passcode will be sent to all Music Majors on the day of this event.