Building on the concept of a “teaching community,” Heble and his contributors explore what it might mean for teachers and students to reach outside the walls of the classroom and attempt to establish meaningful connections between the ideas and theories they have learned and the broader community beyond campus. Utilizing a case study approach, the chapters in this volume are conceptually and practically useful for teachers and students involved in thinking about and implementing community-...

An imaginative and passionate synthesis of form and function, Landing on the Wrong NOte goes beyond mainstream jazz criticism, outlining a new poetics of jazz that emerges not from the ivory tower but from the clubs, performances, and lives of today's jazz musicians.

For decades, festivals have been important sites of inquiry for folklorists and ethnomusicologists alike as celebrations of culture. Moving beyond traditional discussions of staged culture and multiculturalism, however, this edited volume explores how festivals may be mobilized as strategic forms of direct action.Festival Activism is a diverse collection of case studies from scholars, performers, and arts administrators, all of whom deftly argue that festivals do more than...

The Fierce Urgency of Now links musical improvisation to struggles for social change, focusing on the connections between the improvisation associated with jazz and the dynamics of human rights struggles and discourses. The authors acknowledge that at first glance improvisation and rights seem to belong to incommensurable areas of human endeavor. Improvisation connotes practices that are spontaneous, personal, local, immediate, expressive, ephemeral, and even accidental, while rig...

Improvisation is a performance practice that animates and activates diverse energies of inspiration, critique, and invention. In recent years it has coalesced into an exciting and innovative new field of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry, becoming a cornerstone of both practical and theoretical approaches to performance.The Improvisation Studies Reader draws together the works of key artists and thinkers from a range of disciplines, including theatre, music, literature, film, and...

In People Get Ready, musicians, scholars, and journalists write about jazz since 1965, the year that Curtis Mayfield composed the famous civil rights anthem that gives this collection its title. The contributors emphasize how the political consciousness that infused jazz in the 1960s and early 1970s has informed jazz in the years since then. They bring nuance to historical accounts of the avant-garde, the New Thing, Free Jazz, "non-idiomatic" improvisation, fusion, and other forms...

This book offers compelling new perspectives on the revolutionary potential of improvisation pedagogy. Bringing together contributions from leading musicians, scholars, and teachers from around the world, the volume articulates how improvisation can breathe new life into old curricula; how it can help teachers and students to communicate more effectively; how it can break down damaging ideological boundaries between classrooms and communities; and how it can help students become more thoug...