MUS 258
Jazz and African Cultures Spring 2018
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

In this course, students will explore the many historical and aesthetic relationships between the practice of jazz and West African expressive culture. In the first unit, the course will examine the networks of African culture, global economics, and power in the slave trade, with particular attention to the rhythmic, vocal, and spiritual cultures of Fon, Yoruba, Ashanti, and Kongo people and their transformations in the Caribbean, South America, and later New Orleans music, blues, and early jazz. The second unit of the course will take students through the history of jazz musicians who drew explicitly on African culture as a source of inspiration, for example Randy Weston, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey. This unit will also expose students to the development of the Latin jazz scene in New York City. In the third unit of the course, students will engage and experiment with 20th and 21st century African musics like Afrobeat, brass band music, highlife, South African jazz, and Chimurenga music that create fusions between local traditions and global, black diasporic styles like jazz, funk, salsa, and hip hop. Throughout the course, contextual readings will be combined with practical musicianship exercises and short composition projects. Students will create a final performance or composition project in the style of one of the musicians or traditions covered in the course. By the end of the course, students will come away with a deeper understanding of jazz’s aesthetic foundations in African culture, and the ways that this relationship has been transformed over time through musicians’ practice.
The Class: Format: lecture; combination of lecture, discussion, and studio
Limit: 20
Expected: 15
Class#: 3927
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: attendance and participation, short writing and practical assignments, and a final research and/or performance project
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: majors in Music, Africana Studies, and Anthropology/Sociology
Distributions: Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Attributes: MUS World Music/Ethnomusicology

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