Read more
Zusatztext 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. Informationen zum Autor Jasoc C. Bivins is a Professor of Religious Studies at North Carolina State University. Klappentext 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. Zusammenfassung Spirits Rejoice! takes its name from a record by jazz saxophonist of the mid-1960s, Albert Ayler--later used, with an exclamation point added, by Louis Moholo-Moholo--and is appropriated in Jason Bivins's book to express the overlap of religion and jazz music through history. Bivins explore themes that have resounded throughout the musical genre that are also integral to the practice of religions in the United States.Much writing about jazz falls into one of three categories: glorified record reviews or discographies; impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds and dense musicological analyses; or contextualizing it within institutions or extant narratives that are easier to analyze. Using religious studies as a point of comparison Bivins seeks to go beyond these approaches. Instead, he takes to heart a commonly invoked characteristic of jazz, and improvises on the standard questions and stories that might be told. Rather than producing a history or a series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice! will generate a collection of themes, pursuits, reoccurring foci, and interpretations. When ranging across the cultural history of American jazz, these themes emerge not just in the musicians' own words (in interviews, liner notes, or journals) but also from the bandstand, audience reception, and critical interrogation. Bivins looks at themes such as musical creativity as related to specific religious traditions, jazz as a form of ritual and healing, and jazz cosmologies and metaphysics, drawing conclusions that explore how "the sound of spirits rejoicing" challenges not only prevailing understandings of race and music, but also the way we think about "religion." Inhaltsverzeichnis Chapter One: First Meditations Chapter Two: Procession of the Great Ancestry: Traditions Jazz and Religious Chapter Three: Shadows on a Wall: Jazz Narrates American Religions Chapter Four: Urba...
