Jazz : An American Journey

Rating:
Summary: Jazz 101 Textbook Rates an A
Review: This attractively designed and well-written history is intended for nonmusician college students, but makes a fine introduction for anyone. The author, a professor at BYU's School of Music, traces the evolution of jazz within its larger cultural climate, contending that "the emphasis on context makes it possible to see how social conditions gave birth to musical style." According to Harker, "The conviction that jazz can and should be presented within a vivid historical setting reflects the direction of much jazz scholarship of recent years."

Perhaps, but do social conditions really give birth to musical style? Harker's backgrounding is vivid enough, but he fails to demonstrate much cause and effect. Historical context, I suspect, scarcely accounts for creative genius.

Another problem is that, in venturing beyond his academic specialty, the professor sometimes defies credibility. For instance, Harker situates the Cuban Missile Crisis a year earlier than it occurred, and goes completely off the deep end when he asserts, "The assassinations in 1968 of Martin Luther King and longtime civil rights advocate and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy seemed proof enough that white supremacists would stop at nothing to preserve the old ways." Say what?

In April 1969, following a 15-week trial that produced testimony by scores of eyewitness and evidence such as a notebook in which the accused had written beforehand "RFK must die," and after deliberating for three days, a Los Angeles jury convicted Palestinian-born anti-Israeli Arab Sirhan Sirhan of the first-degree murder of Robert F. Kennedy, a longtime pro-Israel advocate. A month later, the trial judge condemned Sirhan to death in the gas chamber, although California abolished capital punishment before Sirhan could be executed. To this day, his appeals long exhausted, Sirhan remains in prison, the only person ever indicted in the case. Of course that hasn't prevented conspiracy theories, de rigueur for 1960s political assassinations, from haunting RFK's murder. Yet Brian Harker may have earned a special place among wackos in attributing the crime to white supremacists. Too bad the professor neglects to document his explosive charge.

Fortunately, when he sticks to jazz, which is most of the time, Harker gets practically everything right. He does ascribe a 1948 magazine spread on Dizzy Gillespie to TIME, when (as Dizzy's autobiography recounts and an archival check confirms) it was actually LIFE. Harker also claims that Paul Desmond's "Take Five" was co-written by Joe Morello, which will come as news to Dave Brubeck. But these lapses in detail are notable only because they're exceptions.

Especially commendable is that Professor Harker avoids the pitfalls of political correctness, presenting different sides of controversial issues fairly and without advocacy, inviting students to listen and make up their own minds.

Overall, it's hard to imagine a better college-level introductory text than Brian Harker's JAZZ: AN AMERICAN JOURNEY. It almost makes me want to move to Utah and enroll at BYU.