Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana - Hardcover

Feld, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082235148X ISBN 13: 9780822351481

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2012

Synopsis

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 Accra's jazz cosmopolitanism feature Ghanaba/Guy Warren (1923–2008), 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 country's 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 Coltrane's 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.

About this title

Review:

"How to evoke the brilliant insight and empathy of Steven Feld's acoustemological memoir of music and musicians in Accra? To start, imagine E. T. Mensah, Shirley Temple, John Coltrane, and Ludwig van Beethoven riding (quasi-legally) in the back of a vividly motto-festooned Ghanaian trotro truck, cool-running a memory-drenched, complexly overlapping soundscape of highlife evergreens, Afriphonic jazz hollers, hallelujah choruses, ratcheting sewer toads, and honking India-rubber bulb horns. Centered on the voices, stories, and ambitions of a compelling cast of characters—Ghanaian musicians whose diversely linked experiences chart the layered, contradictory flows and deep reefs of globalization—Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is a fundamental and stimulating contribution to the literature on musical cosmopolitanism and the study of contemporary urban culture in Africa.”—Christopher Waterman, Dean, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture

"Steven Feld has written an astonishing book: at once a sweetly told adventure story, biographies of some very important but virtually unknown African musicians, a shrewd look at the world we live in and think we know, and hidden within it all, a sly critique of the history of jazz."—John F. Szwed, Director, Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University

“The chapters in which Feld listens and retells the stories of these mercurial musicians are compelling, and throw up original and profound material. . . . Feld is brilliant at articulating the multiple overlapping narratives and experiences that both obfuscate and animate diasporic dialogues, and in that process his book attains its own world-historical significance.” (Tony Herrington The Wire)

“This fascinating book opens up jazz from the African perspective. Whether he’s discussing with Nortey the Africanization of his saxophone and his absolute dedication to the music of John Coltrane or explaining Ghanaba’s musical relationship with Max Roach, Feld brings a full picture to the broadening cultural aspects of Africans playing their own type of jazz.” (Jon Ross Downbeat)

“[A] vital statement about the infinitely nuanced nature of cultural exchange between Africa and America, and how our fullest understanding of jazz history might be furthered by enquiries like this.” (Kevin Le Gendre Jazzwise)

“In addition to his effective usage of the storytelling mode, Feld provides an exemplary illustration of the seamless integration of multiple roles as a documentary filmmaker, musician, anthropologist, historian, and tour promoter. . . . Feld realizes that not all Ghanaians would view these musicians as cosmopolitans, but that fact seems to actually reinforce his discussion of the discourse on cosmopolitanism and its relationship to race, class, and other structures of power. Indeed, he opens many doors for his readers and tells us stories of why these types of music making are important beyond Ghana. He leads us to a more refined understanding of cosmopolitanism, not to provide a series of answers, but to provoke in each of us more thoughtful questions about our music, our research, and ourselves.” (Dave Wilson Ethnomusicology Review)

“A successful fusion of anthropology and aesthetics that illuminates the musical and cultural links—and differences—between African and American jazz, this is also a fascinating memoir of one person’s attempt to understand the urban culture of Ghana in an age of globalization.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Feld reveals the high degree of cosmopolitanism in jazz-pop related musics and the huge role that race and class play in constraining the players. Deciphering the intertextuality of African American life and music requires an expert like Steven Feld. He has done a masterful job.” (Philip K. Bock Journal of Anthropological Research)

“With rich and diverse examples, Feld demonstrates the pervasiveness of cosmopolitan outlooks among jazz musicians in Accra, whether mobile or immobile, socially powerful or powerless, rich or poor... Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is an important theoretical intervention in ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ and a powerful narrative about jazz as an African diasporic art form from the standpoint of musicians in Accra.”  (Stephen Hager Notes)

“Jazz Cosmopolitanism is a lively and important book, one that uses the vehicles of dialogue and sound to unearth the complex cultural and political dynamics that connect a group of urban Africans to the diaspora and wider world. It is a fun, invigorating, and worthwhile read. . . . Jazz  Cosmopolitanism is a book that continues to resonate when finally put down. I highly recommend picking it up.”  (Nate Plageman Journal of African History)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 082235148X
• ISBN 13: 9780822351481
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328