Course description:
This course examines the history, social significance, and musical style of jazz. It focuses on two of the central periods in the development of jazz: the Swing era (ca. 1930-45), which saw the rise of the “big bands” and the emergence of jazz as a great national popular music of America; and the Bebop era (ca. 1945-60), during which jazz became self-consciously difficult in the manner of so-called art music. Though the course requires no previous musical training, we will immerse ourselves in an intensive description of the music in order to understand better the extraordinary fusion of spontaneous creativity and careful intellectual structuring that characterizes jazz. We will also give in-depth consideration to socio-cultural dimensions of the music such as racial identity, American identity, and the impact of economic and technological factors.

Prerequisites:
There are no prerequisites for this course, other than an eagerness to learn about jazz music and an interest in spending a lot of time listening to it. It should be noted however that one of the assigned texts, Gunther Schuller’s monumental and comprehensive The Swing Era, includes many notated musical examples, and an ability to read these examples certainly can aid an appreciation of the music. Nevertheless, I will design my lectures so that they accommodate all backgrounds, in part through the use of charts and diagrams which can be followed as easily by those of you with no musical training as those of you who have such training. Also, exams and written assignments will be graded not for complex technical analyses but for critical understanding of style, history, and culture as expressed through ordinary language plus simple musical terminology which will have been explained earlier.