Central Avenue Jazz: Los Angeles Black Music of the Forties

1988 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Marmorstein
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Central Avenue

“Straight Life”: The Jazz Journey of Art Pepper

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-176
Author(s):  
Reva Marin
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Early Recognition ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Central Avenue

This chapter examines the haunting autobiography of Art Pepper, one of the leading jazz saxophonists of the postwar period, reading it against recent work on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue and West Coast jazz, more generally. Pepper’s account of his experiences with Black music and culture reprises some of the central themes of this study, including a white jazzman’s early recognition of the Black roots of jazz, his desire to belong to that world, and the euphoria and limitations of jazz interracialism. As the only autobiography in this book coauthored by a woman, Straight Life opens pathways for considering women’s resistance to the misogyny and rigid gendering that has dominated jazz culture. Laurie Pepper’s account of her central role during her husband’s final decade illuminates the authority and influence of a jazzwoman in a study of texts in which women’s voices are generally on the periphery or absent entirely.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 169-170
Author(s):  
Steven Loza
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
The People ◽  
Central Avenue

This epilogue presents the author's account of attending the eighteenth annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival in Los Angeles in the summer of 2013. The Gerald Wilson Orchestra was the main feature and closing act of the day, and the author says that describing the music, the people, the dancing, and the magical vibes of the orchestra's performance is an eternal description of Wilson and his life. He concludes that Wilson made sense in a world too often beyond sense, and goes on to explain that he inspires the author and so many others to always go beyond, to always believe, to always love, and to “always tell the truth”.

Black Music Traditions of Central Avenue

1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Turner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Black Musicians ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The City ◽  
Central Avenue

Because of the early development of an African American community on Central Avenue, the city of Tampa, Florida provides an excellent environment to document Black music traditions in the southeastern region of the United States. By the late nineteenth century, an urban Black working class had formed on Central Avenue. Black musicians were part of a distinct cultural community, including divergent lifestyles, which were organically linked to the rural and urban life experiences of Black people in the United States and the Caribbean.

Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 202
Author(s):  
A. Scott Currie ◽  
Clora Bryant ◽  
Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje ◽  
Eddie S. Meadows
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Central Avenue

scholarly journals Soul, Afrofuturism & the Timeliness of Contemporary Jazz Fusions

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Solis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Musical Expression

The rise of jazz-R&B-hip hop fusions in contemporary Los Angeles offers an opportunity to reflect on the ways jazz matters to black audiences today. Drawing on recent Afrofuturist art and theory as well as on Amiri Baraka's analysis of the “changing same” in black music, this essay traces out the significance of work by artists as diverse as Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, and Robert Glasper, positing that their music tells us that jazz matters not only in itself, but also in its continuing capacity to engage in cross-genre dialogues for musicians and audiences who hear it as part of a rich continuum of African American musical expression.

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