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.

DON HARPER: AN EXPATRIATE RETURNED

by Eric Myers

Jazz Magazine, Summer/Autumn, 1986

Don Harper returned to live in Australia in 1983, after nearly 30 years as an expatriate in England. A brilliant violinist, he was able to carve out a distinguished career in the competitive English music profession, playing jazz, classical, country-&-western music, and other musical idioms. He was busy for many years in the recording studios as a performer, arranger and composer. Now, back in Australia, he heads up a jazz studies program at Wollongong University, south of Sydney, and has been performing with his group the Australian Chamber Jazz Ensemble…

TOM BAKER: APOSTLE OF SWING

by Eric Myers

Jazz Magazine, Summer/Autumn, 1984

For many years there have been two major schools of jazz in Sydney: known loosely as the traditional and the modern. The traditional school has chiefly been concerned with classic jazz of the 1920s, which has been the main inspiration for the pre-eminent trumpet/trombone/clarinet line-up in Australian jazz since the 1940s. The modern school has chiefly been concerned with bebop and post-bebop jazz since around 1945. One of the more interesting recent developments, however, has been the apparent emergence of a strong third school — what might be called a ‘swing’ movement…

AUSTRALIAN JAZZ HISTORY: A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW

by John Whiteoak & Bruce Johnson

Currency Companion to Music & Dance in Australia, 2003

The most prominent strand in the early history of Australian jazz is American influence on Australia popular music in the 1920s—the jazz age. Professional musicians ‘jazzed’— jazzed up—popular music in keeping with Australian interpretations of the exuberance and excitement of entertainment fashions in the jazz age. African—American elements in early Australian jazz largely represented a long tradition of highly mediated African—American influence on popular music and dance, which blackface minstrels brought here in the 1850s. Black American jazz held little interest or esthetic appeal for Australians until the 1930s…