Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 2 - Ethnographic Transcription and the Jazz Auto/Biography

  • Jessica E. Teague
  • Book:
    Sound Recording Technology and American Literature
    Published online:
    07 May 2021
    Print publication:
    20 May 2021, pp 56-92

  • Summary

    Given the increasingly important role that music, especially jazz, played in the American literary soundscape, my second chapter explores two instances of jazz autobiography: Alan Lomax’s Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” (1950) and Sidney Bechet’s Treat It Gentle (1960). Through my analysis, I reveal the critical intervention of Zora Neale Hurston in shaping the practices of transcription so that the voices represented on the page adhere to the “laws of sound.” While the tendency has been to read Lomax and Bechet’s books in the context of popular jazz autobiography, I argue that the avant-garde nature of their transcription practices warrant their consideration alongside more canonical works of modernist prose. These books are not oral histories but rather aural histories that require readers to think critically about the sonic identities of musicians who themselves experimented with recording technology.