New Day Jazz
Justin Desmangles
This afternoon in the 5 o'clock hour, I am joined by author Ed Pavlic for a discussion of his most recent book, Who Can Afford to Improvise?: James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners. ____________More than a quarter-century after his death, James Baldwin remains an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics. In Who Can Afford to Improvise? Ed Pavlić offers an unconventional, lyrical, and accessible meditation on the life, writings, and legacy of James Baldwin and their relationship to the lyric tradition in black music, from gospel and blues to jazz and R&B. Based on unprecedented access to private correspondence, unpublished manuscripts and attuned to a musically inclined poet’s skill in close listening, Who Can Afford to Improvise? frames a new narrative of James Baldwin’s work and life. The route retraces the full arc of Baldwin’s passage across the pages and stages of his career according to his constant interactions with black musical styles, recordings and musicians.________Presented in three books — or movements — the first listens to Baldwin, in the initial months of his most intense visibility in May 1963 and the publication of The Fire Next Time. It introduces the key terms of his lyrical aesthetic and identifies the shifting contours of Baldwin’s career from his early work as a reviewer for left-leaning journals in the 1940s to his last published and unpublished works from the mid-1980s. Book II listens with Baldwin and ruminates on the recorded performances of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, singers whose message and methods were closely related to his developing world view. It concludes with the first detailed account of “The Hallelujah Chorus,” a performance from July 1, 1973, in which Baldwin shared the stage at Carnegie Hall with Ray Charles. Finally, in Book III, Pavlić reverses our musically inflected reconsideration of Baldwin’s voice, projecting it into the contemporary moment and reading its impact on everything from the music of Amy Winehouse, to the street performances of Turf Feinz, and the fire of racial oppression and militarization against black Americans in the 21st century.___________Always with an ear close to the music, and avoiding the safe box of celebration, Who Can Afford to Improvise? enables a new kind of “lyrical travel” with the instructive clarity and the open-ended mystery Baldwin’s work invokes into the world.
Genre
Jazz
Missed the Show?
Artist | Song | Album | Label | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers | A Night in Tunisia | A Night in Tunisia | Blue Note | August 14, 1960 |
Miles Davis Quintet | Footprints | Miles Smiles | Columbia | October 24, 1966 |
Margaret Walker (Gloria Foster) | We Have Been Believers | A Hand is on the Gate | Verve-Folkways | Sept. 1966 |
Max Roach&/ Abbey Lincoln | Prayer / Protest / Peace | Freedom Now Suite | Candid | September 6, 1960 |
Airbreak | ||||
Nina Simone | I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free | Silk & Soul | RCA | c. 1967 |
Claude McKay | If We Must Die | Anthology of Negro Poets | Folkways | c. 1940 |
Aretha Franklin | Do Right Woman - Do Right Man | I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You | Atlantic | c. 1967 |
Mahalia Jackson | I Found the Answer | Great Gettin' Up Morning | Columbia | c. 1959 |
Amiri Baraka | Dope | Before Columbus Foundation Poet | Folkways | c. 1982 |
Ray Charles | What'd I Say | What'd I Say | Atlantic | February 18, 1959 |
Jackie & Roy | Whisper Not | Bits & Pieces | ABC-Paramount | c. 1957 |
Airbreak | ||||
Oscar Brown Jr. | Afro-Blue | Sin & Soul | Columbia | c. 1959 |
Abbey Lincoln | Afro-Blue | Abbey is Blue | Riverside | c. 1959 |
John Coltrane | Afro-Blue | Live at Birdland | Impulse! | October 8, 1963 |
Sonia Sanchez | To Fanon | a sun lady for all seasons reads her poetry | Folkways | c. 1970 |
Charles Mingus | Ysabel's Table Dance | Tijuana Moods | RCA | Summer 1957 |
Airbreak | ||||
Ray Charles | One Mint Julep | Genius + Soul = Jazz | Impulse! | December 1960 |
Ray Charles | In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down) | Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul | ABC-Paramoun | July 1963 |
Thelonious Monk Trio | You Are Too Beautiful | The Unique Thelonious Monk | Riverside | Spring 1956 |
Thelonious Monk Trio | Just You, Just Me (excerpt) | The Unique Thelonious Monk | Riverside | Spring 1956 |
Interview with Ed Pavlic Part One | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part One | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part One | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part One | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part One |
Billie Holiday | Billie's Blues | Strange Fruit b/w Billie's Blues | Atlantic (Commodore) | c. 1944 |
Interview with Ed Pavlic Part Two | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part Two | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part Two | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part Two | Interview with Ed Pavlic Part Two |