In this remarkable book; Steven Feld; pioneer of the anthropology of sound; listens to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of jazz players in Ghana. Some have traveled widely; played with American jazz greats; and blended the innovations of John Coltrane with local instruments and worldviews. Combining memoir; biography; ethnography; and history; Feld conveys a diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests American nationalist and Afrocentric narratives of jazz history. His stories of Accras jazz cosmopolitanism feature Ghanaba/Guy Warren (1923ndash;2008); the eccentric drummer who befriended the likes of Charlie Parker; Max Roach; and Thelonious Monk in the United States in the 1950s; only to return; embittered; to Ghana; where he became the countrys leading experimentalist. Others whose stories figure prominently are Nii Noi Nortey; who fuses the legacies of the black avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s with pan-African philosophy in sculptural shrines to Coltrane and musical improvisations inspired by his work; the percussionist Nii Otoo Annan; a traditional master inspired by Coltranes drummers Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali; and a union of Accra truck and minibus drivers whose squeeze-bulb honk-horn music for drivers funerals recalls the jazz funerals of New Orleans. Feld describes these artists cosmopolitan outlook as an "acoustemology;" a way of knowing the world through sound.
#4191746 in eBooks 2009-03-09 2009-03-09File Name: B007AQTFVW
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