ENGLISH 69: BLUES, JAZZ, AND AMERICAN CULTURE

proposed new course, Spring 2003, Peter Schmidt,
English Literature Dept., Swarthmore College
Can words help us understand musicians and the power of music? Is Wynton Marsalis right---jazz is the musical form that best teaches democratic values? This course will study how blues and jazz have shaped key modes and ideas in American culture, including American literature. The syllabus may include critical essays by Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, George Lipsitz, and Tricia Rose; anthologies of poetry and prose celebrating jazz; excerpts from Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz; novels about musicians by Albert Murray, Paule Marshall, and Rafi Zabor; and cultural histories such as Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Daniel Belgrade’s The Culture of Spontaneity, Jon Panish’s The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture, and Nathaniel Mackey’s Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturalism, and Experimental Writing.

For more details, see below. NOTE: the syllabus design is still in progress; last revised 4-01-02]

details:
Fiction and Poetry

Albert Murray, Train Whistle Guitar [novel]
Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home [novel]
Major Jackson, Leaving Saturn [poems]


selections by Ellison, Baldwin, Petry, Hughes, and others, such as John Clellon Holmes, The Horn or Go!
and/or Xam Wilson Cartiér, Be-bop, Re-bop
Documentaries, Essays, and Anthologies

Ralph Ellison, “Living with Music,” “On Bird...,” “Blues People” “The Little Man at Chehaw Sation,” and other essays

Ken Burns, Jazz [video documentary] (excerpts)

The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, ed. Robert O’Meally NY: Columbia UP, 1998

Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose, Art Lange and Nathaniel Mackey, eds. 70 Pages, Coffee House Press, February 1993 ISBN: 1566890012

Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can't Be Free Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

Critical Texts
Albert Murray, The Hero and the Blues

Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

Daniel Belgrad, The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America Paperback, 344 Pages, University of Chicago Press, October 1999 ISBN: 0226041905

Jon Parish, The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture

 selections from:

Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, NH : Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

George Lipsitz, excerpts from Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture and Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place

Nathaniel Mackey, Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturalism, and Experimental Writing Trade Paperback, 313 Pages, University of Alabama Press, March 2000 ISBN: 0817310320