This book provides an interpretive framework for understanding how African American creative improvisers think of musical space. Featuring a Foreword by eminent scholar Robin D.G. Kelley, this is the first critical improvisation studies book that uses Black Geographies theory to examine the spatial values of musical expression in the improvisational and compositional practices of trumpeters Terence Blanchard and Ambrose Akinmusire, drummers Billy Higgins and Terri Lyne Carrington, and pianist Andrew Hill. Bar lines in this book serve as a notational and spatial metaphor for social constraints connected to systemic and structural white supremacy. Crossing them therefore applies not only to conceptions of Black spatiality in musical practices but also to how African American musicians address structural barriers to fight the social injustices that obstruct freedom and full citizenship for African Americans and other marginalized groups. Defined by both liminal and quotidian reality, Black musical space, like Black feminist thought, is about theorizing through the lived experiences of Black people which reflect different genders, sexual identities, political stances, across improvisational eras. Using this theory of Black musical space, the book explains how these dynamic musicians explicitly and implicitly articulate humanity through compositional and improvisational practices, some of which interface with contemporary social movements like Black Lives Matter. Consequently, Crossing Bar Lines not only fills a significant gap in the literature on African American, activist musical improvisation and contemporary social movements, but it gives the reader an understanding of the complexity of African American musical practices relative to fluid political identities and sensibilities.
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