Here are two bits of news for you: This Friday and Saturday (June 11th/12th) there’s an international jazz festival on in Seoul. There are free shows in the park. Not sure if there are pay concerts also — I wish David Sanchez would have a giant 3 hour gig but I doubt it. Maybe at some other venue, while he’s here? Seems like a shame to come just for 6 songs, no matter how extended the improvisations might be. I just found out about this on Marmot’s , need to look into it more. A jazz fan among my students …
Tag: jazz
Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War by Penny Marie von Eschen
This is a book I bought to have some background on the use of jazz as part of Cold War-era promotion of America abroad, primarily for research on a longer work I was (and still am) considering writing set in the world of “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues.” Interestingly, during the Cold War (from the 1950s through the 1970s) jazz music and jazz musicians were used by the American government in the same way circuses were used by the USSR, as part of what we now so often call a “hearts and minds” campaign carried out throughout the …
“Jazz? Yes Please… As Long as There’s No Actual Jazz or Colored Folks!”
UPDATE (17 April 2010): I feel I ought to clarify one thing, but if I put it here, it won’t make sense, so I’m adding it to the end of the post. ORIGINAL POST: There’s isn’t quite a sign up at the Incheon Airport saying that, but there might as well be. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I was talking with a student I know about this. He was scrambling for a topic to do with Korea reception of Western popular culture (past and present) and I asked him who the most famous American rapper is in Korea. Who is it? …
Pop Top 40…
One of the big jazz films for me, when I was a teenager and getting into the stuff, was Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues. I know, I know… the integration of the music into the film is shaky at points, as some have pointed out. I don’t remember it being quite shaky as that guy claimed, but there were things I kind of raised an eyebrow at back in the day — though also a lot of things I thought it got kind of right. After all, the film had style, and it imagined a world where jazz was cool, …
Hiromi & FOTC
Music of the day, suddenly accessible as I reordered tags and crap on my iPod. It really sucks that everything is so dependent on tagging and so on — my cheaper-but-non-haptic MP3 Player is at least bright enough to pay attention to folder structures. Anyway, listen up: [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ggL_2hk9DyI” width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /] It’s a bit, I don’t know… I don’t have a word for what I’m thinking. I used to life very “out” music, stuff that was atonal, free, wild; this music isn’t like that. But it’s really damned good for what it is, just the same, and …