Spirits Rejoice!: Jazz and American Religion - Hardcover

Bivins, Jason C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0190230916 ISBN 13: 9780190230913

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

In Spirits Rejoice! Jason Bivins explores the relationship between American religion and American music, and the places where religion and jazz have overlapped.

Much writing about jazz tends toward glorified discographies or impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds. Rather than providing a history, or series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice! takes to heart a central characteristic of jazz itself and improvises, generating a collection of themes, pursuits, reoccurring foci, and interpretations. Bivins riffs on interviews, liner notes, journals, audience reception, and critical commentary, producing a work that argues for the centrality of religious experiences to any legitimate understanding of jazz, while also suggesting that jazz opens up new interpretations of American religious history. Bivins examines themes such as musical creativity as related to specific religious traditions, jazz as a form of ritual and healing, and jazz cosmologies and metaphysics. Spirits Rejoice! connects Religious Studies to Jazz Studies through thematic portraits, and a vast number of interviews to propose a new, improvisationally fluid archive for thinking about religion, race, and sound in the United States. Bivins's conclusions explore how the sound of spirits rejoicing challenges not only prevailing understandings of race and music, but also the way we think about religion.

Spirits Rejoice! is an essential volume for any student of jazz, American religion, or American culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Jason C. Bivins is Professor of Religious Studies at North Carolina State University and is an accomplished jazz guitarist.

Review:

"Bivins lets taste as well as conscience be his guide. He doesn't just address the traditional canon, with the sound and signifying of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts, Mary Lou Williams' Jazz Mass and the Saturday-night blues/Sunday-morning gospel dichotomy in myriad hard-bop and soul-jazz LPs. Rather, he interviews a swath of contemporary artists, from veterans of the New Thing to many 21st-century seekers." --Bradley Bambarger, Downbeat

"[A] fascinating look into the religious and spiritual elements of the jazz life, a subject long talked about but until now with little clarity. Bivins is uniquely qualified to speak about jazz and its place in the spiritual life of America. To those who have wondered how a music can be so involving and meaningful to its musicians and fans, this book provides an answer."--John Szwed, author of Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra

"[A] well-researched, meticulously annotated achievement. Jason Bivins elucidates the connection of jazz improvised music and religion and spirituality in a comprehensive way. Every manifestation of this connection in this musical art form is presented here. The book is more than that. It is-like William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience-a book of philosophy, which causes the reader to understand and feel, reaching the spiritual center within."--Connie Crothers, Improvising pianist, www.conniecrothers.net

"Jason Bivins has produced an intellectual tour de force, a prodigious work of far-flung research, impassioned analysis, and incandescent prose. By juxtaposing religion and jazz, Bivins challenges us to get our minds around two forms of social practice that continually press against and escape the bonds of language. This is an ecstatic book in every sense of the word."--David W. Stowe, author of How Sweet the Sound: Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans

"Spirits Rejoice! is not a historical narrative of jazz but instead reads like what jazz music is-structured but also loose, impromptu, and improvised. This passionate, intellectually stimulating analysis of jazz and the influence of religion on musicians sets a precedent for work to follow."--J. Foreman, Tarrant County College

"Given the century of jazz and religion intersecting, it's past time that we had this sort of questioning look into these spiritual entanglements, and Bivens nails what can't quite be nailed down."--PopMatters

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0190230916
• ISBN 13: 9780190230913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 392