ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

MEANING IT: TRUTH, TRUMP, UNIVERSALITY AND CULTURAL AMNESIA

by John Shand

Jackie Orszaczky Music Lecture delivered at The Basement, Sydney, on May 30, 2017

For this lecture John Shand won the inaugural Arts Journalism Award, part of the Walkley Arts Awards, in mid-2017

My obituary for Jackie Orszaczky in The Sydney Morning Herald concluded with: “Some marvel at the breadth of his endeavour, but to Orszaczky it was all music; all life rendered in sound.” I believe these two ideas are interrelated: that all music is one and that a deeper truth emerges when life is being expressed rather than notes merely being played...

BRINGING UP THE BODIES: COGNITIVE AGENCY IN JAZZ

by Bruce Johnson

Paper presented at the first national conference of the Australasian Jazz and Improvisation Research Network, in Melbourne, June 2-4,  2017.

What I want to argue for today is a revision of the dominant discourse framing creative agency in jazz. There are three reasons for this objective. First because that discourse tries to fit jazz into a box that was designed to contain something else, and it therefore deforms our understanding of the music. Second, that deformation functions to situate jazz as a second-rate category of music. Third, it also limits the potentiality of studies of improvisational forms to take a leading role in developments in the understanding of cognition...

COLLECTIVE AUTONOMY: A PATH TOWARDS ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE

by Phil Treloar

JazzChord, Feb/Mar, 2002

Normally, music stands in relation to the community in some meaningful way; it carries a message, it signifies beauty, it enables people to march together in step, it provides relief from the humdrum of daily life, it gives rise to the solemnity of ritual, it provides means for artistic expression, and so on. Within these contexts, conglomerates of signs and symbols enable the music’s meaning, purpose, or function, even when not overt…