Letter from the Editor

Abstract

Over the past few years, jazz has been a topic of some debate in the mainstream press, perhaps more so than usual. The release of the film Whiplash, focusing on a drummer in a collegiate jazz band led by a domineering conductor (a role for which veteran character actor J.K. Simmons won an Academy Award) generated a good deal of controversy. Within jazz circles, many felt the film presented a caricature of jazz, as an art form in which correctness and precision are privileged over artistry and communication. Similarly, a (perhaps unsuccessful) satirical article in the New Yorker presented legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins as a bitter, jaded figure, whose life had been “wasted” on playing jazz. Justin Moyer, writing in a decidedly non-satirical opinion piece in the Washington Post, suggested that jazz was “boring... overrated... [and] washed up.” Reactions to these slights against the music were immediate and vociferous, as jazz’s defenders vigorously resisted these characterizations of jazz in Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, and extended essays of their own. Fierce debates over jazz are, of course, nothing new, as even a brief scan of the pages of Downbeat, JazzTimes, and other publications (including academic journals such as the one you are reading at this very moment) will reveal. But in the age of the immediacy of social media, and around the clock opinion journalism, we sometimes lose sight of the importance of the public role of deep, probing, informed scholarship, and I suggest that it is good to reflect, in this spirit, on the work that we all do. We at Jazz Perspectives hope that the “image” of jazz which is presented to the public is one in which the music continues to be understood as a vital, dynamic, and everevolving art form, and which sparks lively, spirited, but collegial debate amongst its practitioners, be they performers, scholars, or fans. This issue of Jazz Perspectives is divided into two main thematic sections, each with a pair of distinctive, yet resonant works. In the first section, Sven Bjerstedt and Ofer Gazit engage with issues emerging from transnational jazz communities. Bjerstedt’s study examines the oft-used metaphor of storytelling in jazz improvisation, contrasting ways in which this commonly espoused idea is treated within prevailing (i.e., American) jazz discourses, with those of artists in a particular national context, in this case Sweden. Based on an extensive ethnographic survey of prominent jazz musicians on the contemporary Swedish jazz scene, Bjerstedt’s essay provides a window into the ways in which jazz musicians in global contexts engage with (and frequently depart from) the sometimes America-centric literature on jazz. His informants must constantly negotiate their own unique identities within these national and, increasingly, transnational spaces. Ofer Gazit’s essay on jazz in immigrant communities in Brooklyn likewise addresses issues of transnationality. Specifically, Gazit examines, again, as part of a broad ethnographic study, the role played by jam sessions in helping immigrant Jazz Perspectives, 2015 Vol. 9, No. 1, 1–2, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2015.1134863