Jazz Jobbing

Author(s):  
Thomas H. Greenland

This chapter examines jazz jobbing professionals' attraction for and attention to jazz, their roles as creative improvisers and co-performers, and their relationships with other jazz scene participants in New York City. It first considers how jazz entrepreneurs meet the challenges of doing business, suggesting that their lifestyle is an outgrowth of their ongoing enthusiasm for and commitment to the music. It then looks at professionals as co-improvisers and goes on to explain how their attention is influenced by job-related contingencies, and how this affects the way they hear and understand music. It also discusses professionals' active participation in the live music scene as well as their involvement in collaborative expressions of art in improvised jazz communities. The chapter shows that jazz professionals, as workers in the jazz art world, provide crucial services and support for performers, fans, venue operators, and each other while also “performing” off-stage for their own constituencies of viewers and readers.

Author(s):  
Thomas H. Greenland

This chapter examines how jazz fans, especially the most active concertgoers (the regulars), respond to a musical performance. It first considers how fans become part of jazz communities and how they contribute to the New York City jazz scene. It then shows how nonperforming musicians fill the performance space, suggesting that these offstage participants, who are also “performing” jazz, constitute the unseen scene, the silent and not-so-silent majority that forms an integral part of communal music-making. It also explains what happens when fans are in the house: how their musical tastes develop, how they view performers and performances, and how their private and public listening practices inform their understandings of and appreciation for jazz and jazz performances. The chapter concludes that when jazz audiences with “big ears” attend to and interact with live music and musicians, it creates a sympathetic environment where jazz can come alive.


1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-31
Author(s):  
Halina Rusak

My involvement as an artist and as an art librarian allows me to see a full spectrum of art history from its inception by an artist to its assessment by an art historian. It enables me to better understand the needs of faculty and students in the field of visual arts, as well as to interface effectively with faculty and scholars in art history. My gallery membership at SOHO 20 in New York City provides me with insight into art trends in the making. It demonstrates well a woman’s place in the contemporary art world, and a role of a critic in promoting or establishing an artist. I feel that this knowledge makes me a better librarian.


2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 386-406
Author(s):  
Alexandre Frenette

The sociological literature on creativity would suggest that collaboration between newcomers and more experienced members of an art world results in the fruitful combination of novelty and usefulness, though not without some conflict. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with workers from the popular recording industry (rock/pop) in New York City, this article extends the literature on creativity as collective action by showing how three types of intergenerational tensions (aesthetic, technological, and career) are embedded in the ways newcomers and experienced workers see themselves and each other as agents of change and stasis. I propose a new variable—leveraging age—a mechanism intergenerational collaborators use to resolve or override these tensions to ultimately maximize creativity in group contexts. Leveraging age, as a form of knowledge extraction, occurs in creative bureaucratic organizations and describes how newcomers and experienced workers dualistically draw on each other’s respective strengths (novelty and tradition). I primarily examine the bottom-up part of this process—how experienced workers draw on the insights of newcomers—by analyzing five leveraging-youth practices, which vary by level of formality and intentionality, but mostly limit the interactional challenges between the two groups.


Author(s):  
Quincy D. Newell

Jane Manning experienced the gift of tongues shortly after her conversion, an event she took as a confirmation of her decision to join the Mormons. The rest of the Manning family appears to have converted to Mormonism after her and, together with white converts from the area, they all left Connecticut for Nauvoo, Illinois, under the direction of LDS missionary Charles Wesley Wandell. The practice of racial segregation on boats and railways meant that for much, if not all, of their journey from Connecticut to New York City and then up the Hudson River and west on the Erie Canal, the black and white members of the group were separated from one another. At some point during the trip, the black members of the group were refused further passage, so the Mannings walked the rest of the way. Jane’s memory of this portion of the journey emphasized God’s providence. When they arrived in Nauvoo, they found a bustling city that was struggling to accommodate newly arrived converts, many of whom were poor and vulnerable to the diseases that plagued the city.


Author(s):  
June Howard

Reading Edith Wharton’s Old New York through the genre of regionalism reveals the complexity of her cosmopolitanism, and strengthens the case for reading the volume as a unified work. The chapter discusses relevant aspects of the cultural history of the decades in which the four stories are set (such as the associations of tuberculosis in “False Dawn” and the ormolu clock in “The Old Maid”) and reviews the early publication history of each story and the collection. Close readings trace how Wharton connects and contrasts the United States and Europe (especially New York City and Italy) and puts their correspondences with historical eras into play—challenging received notions of progress and the assumption that cultivated taste correlates with integrity. The chapter argues that the way Old New York maps time onto place enables the projection of alternative values within a work that remains publishable and legible in its own moment.


Author(s):  
Steve Zeitlin

This chapter traces the influence of certain programmatic priorities, philosophies, and strategies on shaping the vision of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the ways in which certain Festival notions of art and cultural equity have since suffused American culture. Tracing the impact of the Festival from a personal vantage point, the author explores the Festival's history, suggesting the under-acknowledged contribution of folklorists to American culture and the way the Festival has become a model for other nationally acclaimed organizations such as City Lore in New York City and Story Corps, events such as the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, and for media productions such as the Moth Radio Hour.


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