Thriving On A Riff: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Literature and Film: Jazz and Blues Influences in African American Literature and Film

Thriving on a Riff builds on the growing interest in jazz and blues as cross-cultural influences. Focusing here on literature and film, the book's expert contributors trace the music's changing roles in a range of key contexts, from the Harlem Renaissance to Hollywood, bebop fiction to blues poetics.

Graham Lock is a freelance writer, Special Lecturer in American Music, University of Nottingham, and author, Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music (Quartet, 1988), Chasing the Vibration: Meetings with Creative Musicians (Stride, 1994), and Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington and Anthony Braxton (Duke, 1999), and editor, Mixtery: A Festschrift for Anthony Braxton (Stride, 1995).

David Murray is Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham, and author, Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Early Indian-White Exchanges (Massachusetts UP, 2000), Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts (Indiana UP, 1992), and Matter, Magic and Spirit: Representing Indian and African American Belief (Pennsylvania UP, 2007).