Horowitz 1982). They allow a researcher to investigate issues that audio recordings and published sources alone cannot illuminate. By situating themselves in the context(s) of performance and allowing the data gathered to shape their analyses, researchers studying living performers emphasize what they might learn from people, particularly the individuals and groups who perform and otherwise participate in musical events.25
Indeed, one might argue that attempts to assert jazz’s status as an art music in the academy have depended on the erasure of the “extramusical” from its study, an erasure that deemphasizes the music’s roots in and continued interactions with African diaspora cultures and other African American musics (Radano 1993, 15–21; Horn 2002, 28). As a result, works by African American writers whose perspectives on the music and its relation to African American and American cultures have been critical in illuminating the music’s cultural functions have until recently been overlooked by jazz scholars. To be sure, the work of Baraka (1963, 1967a), Ellison (1964c, 1986), and Murray (1970, 1976) contains historical errors and misapprehensions of specific musical-technical matters, but its importance lies in its ability to articulate the spirit of the music, not only via cultural foundations but also via the music’s meanings within and inseparability from the African American communities that have nurtured it.26 In other words, these writers raise questions about the meaning of jazz performance that are concerned with, in saxophonist Antonio Hart’s charged phrase, “what the music is really about” (Hart 1995) for one group of people intimately involved with it. And as writing on and the study of jazz have become ensconced in the academy and in conservatories, particularly since the 1950s, those writings that come from outside established academic disciplines or mainstream jazz criticism have, like the music’s cultural connections, been underemphasized (for further discussion, see Gennari 1991; Gabbard 1995; Ramsey 1999).
Drawing inspiration from those writers’ cultural focus, I have used ethnographic methods as well as the theories and methods of ethnomusicology to try to get at one version of what the music is “really about.” Particularly inspirational for me have been Alan Merriam’s model of cyclical relationships between concept, behavior, and sound (1964, 32–35); Timothy Rice’s focus on formative processes—how music is historically constructed, socially maintained, and individually created and experienced (1987, 472–80); and issues pertinent to the ethnography of musical performance (McLeod and Herndon 1980; Béhague 1984). The authors of these models individually and collectively propose ways of viewing music as a dynamic process, including but not limited to a sound object. Though I do not make explicit reference to these concepts at every point, they are embedded in the arguments in subsequent chapters, especially those related to the value of “native” categories in understanding music making, the importance of musical events, and the ways in which musicians and fans respond strategically to questions about music making.
How do participants in musical performances or events engage with the various cultural matrices that surround and inform, and are surrounded and informed by, musical performance?27 One might argue, as Steven Feld does, that as they attend to or participate in a musical event, they come to comprehend it, to understand its meanings, through a series of “interpretive moves” (1994b, 86–89). Such moves, which he describes as locational, categorical, associational, reflective, and evaluative, can be highly individual and idiosyncratic, for they draw upon each individual’s past experiences.28 By extending Feld’s argument, one comes to see that such individual understandings become social or cultural meanings when they are shared among and/or debated by participants. That is, “Collective systems of meanings are created as individuals reveal their individual understandings to one another … through [their] input into the shared perspective from individual experience…. The collective system of meanings is also cumulative, like the individual consciousness. It expands as individuals face new experiences together, inform each other of individual perceptions against the background of what they already have in common, or discover additional facets of their individual systems of meanings to be shared” (Hannerz 1980, 284).
The musical event, participation in it, responses to it, and talk about it force participants to face new experiences together, share perceptions, and discover new ways to share their understandings. The resultant meanings, then, are never wholly fixed. They are constantly emerging and being shaped through the interpretive moves of various participants in musical events and the contribution of those moves to and their acceptance (or rejection) in larger systems of meaning. For my purposes, then, musical meaning is what emerges from the shared and variable understandings that participants bring to and create through participation in musical events (see Jackson 2000).
Moreover, as the wording above indicates, meanings never emerge ex nihilo. Individuals who participate in musical events bring with them understandings from other kinds of musical events and other realms of activity; they bring ways of deploying interpretive moves that may have as much to do with jazz performance as with other kinds. In that sense, the discourses of meaning that surround jazz performance and its interpretation are inseparable from and overlap in significant ways with other discourses about meaning, the nature of “artistic creation,” and the functions of music, for example. Attempting to understand the meanings that are attached to and emerge from jazz performance, then, means entering into a complex discourse always and already in progress (Williams 1977, 35–42; Lipsitz 1990, 99–100), one that has tangible connections to other discourses.
My method of understanding that process of discourse merging and development has been to focus on the jazz scene in New York City, where I conducted fieldwork continuously between July of 1994 and December of 1995 and more sporadically from 1997 to 2001. Some aspects of my fieldwork were informed by the research I did between January and July of 1992, also in New York City, for a master’s thesis (Jackson 1992). The contacts I made with musicians for the earlier project allowed me to begin understanding and mapping the jazz scene and to see it and the performances that take place on it as the most appropriate unit of investigation (rather than an era, an individual musician, or a body of recordings). Through following some of those musicians in the time between my first fieldwork period and my second, I gained access to and an understanding of the larger network of individuals, venues, record labels, educational institutions, and media that comprise the scene that I describe in chapters 3 and 4.
In the summer of 1994 I began contacting some of the musicians I had met previously, such as guitarist Peter Bernstein, saxophonist Antonio Hart, and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, to interest them in my new project. I explained to them that I was interested in observing their performances and recording sessions to gain a better understanding of the workings of the scene and their place in it. In addition, I told them that I would welcome suggestions for other musicians whose perspectives they thought I should seek. I also reestablished the few relationships I had with recording industry personnel, most notably Sharon Blynn, then at Verve Records. In addition, to acquaint myself with what was happening on the New York scene and beyond, I started systematically reading the national and local jazz periodicals (Down Beat, JazzTimes, and Cadence) as well as jazz-related articles in newspapers such as the New York Times and the Village Voice. I focused not only on feature articles and short news items but also on reviews of recordings and advertisements. In the process I familiarized myself with a number of performers, producers, and recording industry personnel of whom I had not previously been aware; learned something of the current activities of ones about whom I already was aware; and gained greater understanding of their backgrounds and relationships to one another and the scene. Through these different forms of inquiry, I started to develop a picture of the variety of jazz activity occurring in the city. Each individual with whom I was personally acquainted led or introduced me to others. They also kept me apprised of performances, recordings, recording sessions, and other information about the functioning of the scene.
Particularly toward the end of August 1994, I started regularly attending the performances of musicians I knew as well as the performances of others. During breaks, I would introduce myself to the musicians and to interested
