BOOK REviewS

This section includes reviews of books on jazz subjects by a number of writers. Reviewers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. When contributing please include the title of the book and its author, the name of the publisher, the date of publication, the book’s ISBN number, and the number of pages in the book. Please also provide, if possible, a high resolution scan of the book’s cover. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of reviews in this folder.

JAZZ DIASPORA: MUSIC AND GLOBALISATION

by Bruce Johnson

Reviewed by Ted Nettelbeck

February 5, 2020

Professor Bruce Johnson is arguably Australia’s foremost scholar of Australian jazz history. Throughout his long career as an academic, jazz trumpeter and jazz advocate he has produced an extensive list of publications, including The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz (1987), the first and most impressive encyclopaedic account of the Australian jazz scene from its beginnings around 1917 up to the time of publication. His latest book, Jazz Diaspora: Music and Globalisation (2020)… extends his previous challenges (Johnson, 2002, in press) to the predominant US-centric account of jazz history (denoted throughout as the “canonical model”)…

KINDRED CHORDS: AUSTRALIAN MUSICAL FAMILIES

by Loretta Barnard

Reviewed by Ted Nettelbeck

June 30, 2020

I am aware of a small but well-established field of study within Psychology that is concerned with the role of parental influences on the development of music abilities in children. For the most part, this work has focussed on how parents’ behaviours can direct or guide their children’s involvement with music although, as outlined below, there has also been some interest in how behavioural genetics can answer questions about the extent to which musical abilities can be advanced by inherited characteristics.  However, as far as I know, Loretta Barnard is the first to address these topics as they apply to established Australian musicians of note. She has done this while interviewing these musicians about their lives, by seeking the opinions of the musicians themselves and of their family members, about how they became involved in music and what they think were their main influences…

BLACK ROOTS WHITE FLOWERS: A HISTORY OF JAZZ IN AUSTRALIA

by Andrew Bisset

Reviewed by Ian Neil

Encore magazine, December, 1979

Here is the final paragraph of this informative and valuable book: Jazz in Australia is here to stay. Its popularity may wax and wane but it will always have a hard core of adherents. Developments in music in the USA will continue to be its major influence, but more and more Australian musicians are thinking and composing for themselves (and finding a public who will let them do so) which gives Australian jazz a certain independent momentum of its own. This momentum can be traced, growing in strength, from the early vaudeville days, through big bands, to the present. Australia probably has as many jazz musicians per head of population as any other country, but their interests are not enslaved to current fashions overseas…