Listen up: ‘How to Listen to Jazz’

“How to Listen to Jazz” by Ted Gioia (Basic Books)

By Matt Schudel

May 11, 2016

“I am the world’s greatest listener,” Duke Ellington wrote in his autobiography, “Music Is My Mistress.” It was far from an idle boast, because it was Ellington’s talent for listening that made him the greatest jazz composer ever.

He understood the abilities and instincts of his musicians so well that he wrote a remarkable body of work built on their individual strengths. All of us, Ted Gioia writes in his latest book, “How to Listen to Jazz,” could benefit from Ellington’s keen-eared approach to music.

[Book review: ‘A Life of Duke Ellington,’ by Terry Teachout]

Jazz is a quintessentially American form of musical expression that has often defied attempts to explain it — and to make it popular. Gioia, a jazz pianist who has written several previous books on music history, seeks to demystify jazz and make it accessible to anyone willing to listen. He seeks a middle path between popular writing — “5 Stars!” — and academic explication. In spite of his background as a musician, Gioia does not include a single example of musical notation in this engaging book.

He touches on many elements other writers have examined before: the African roots of jazz, its blend of musical idioms, the distinctive rhythmic flow known as “swing,” the imaginative flights of improvisation and even the psychological effect of jazz on its performers and listeners. When done right, he notes, jazz is a spontaneous form of musical magic that exists in “the realm of the poetic and miraculous.”

Author Ted Gioia (Dave Shafer)

The “first and most important ingredient in jazz,” Gioia writes, is “its ecstatic rhythmic quality.” Everything else — from the exuberant solos of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker to the intimate musings of Billie Holiday and Chet Baker — grows from the rhythmic embrace of the bass and drums. “This may be the single most satisfying sound in all of jazz,” Gioia writes, “the secret source of swing.” 

read more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/listen-up-how-to-listen-to-jazz/2016/05/10/f3e22b16-16df-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html