3.0

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In the words of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “The will to power for black Americans was the will to write; and the predominant mode that this writing would assume was the shaping of a black self in words.” What did the shaping of the black self in words mean for those whose primary mode of expression was musical and improvisational? In their autobiographies and memoirs, jazz musicians’ discursive self-invention would appear to be born of materials and processes akin to those of jazz itself: full of polyrhythms, spontaneous riffing, call and response, and turnarounds. This course examines the autobiographies and memoirs of central figures, such as Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. We will ask what relationship these texts bear to musical performances and personas: compositionally, aesthetically, and as represented by other media. For example, do they perpetuate or rather stand in opposition to various jazz mythologies such as the musicians’ intuitive genius or sensationalized drug use? What roles do these myths serve? If together jazz autobiographies can be said to constitute a genre, might these sophisticated textual performances comprise a counter-narrative to official histories of jazz and speak a different kind of truth to power?