Seeing Jazz: Artists and Writers on Jazz Book

SEEING JAZZ THROUGH THE EYES OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS WHO CAN


Gorging yourself on the pages of Seeing Jazz is like sitting at a banquet table in the brilliant company of such celebrated creative souls as artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Sam Gilliam, authors Jayne Cortez and John Edgar Wideman, and musicians Clark Terry and Milt Hinton. The thrill of going from one page to the next never ends because these are guests who apparently never tired of fulfilling their destiny to do what they do so extremely well.

As Robert O'Meally notes in the book's introduction, "Jazz is part of a super-charged cultural continuum in which painters, sculptors, photographers, poets, novelists, and essayists have worked (and played) to capture with their pens and brushes, their wood and paper, and with light the irresistible note and trick and dance of the music." That particularly astute observation is backed up in Seeing Jazz by more than one hundred works of visual art and more than sixty literary pieces. Edited by Elizabeth Goldson, this spectacular anthology was compiled by Marquette Folley-Cooper, Deborah Macanic, and Janice McNeil. As versatile as the music itself, the range of visual works include photographs of such jazz greats as Billie Holiday and Wynton Marsalis, a wax sculpture of Duke Ellington's head, and a lithograph by Miguel Covarrubias depicting Harlem Renaissance dancers grooving the Lindy Hop.

The literary treats are no less tantalizing than the visual and serve as perfect accompaniments. These include poetry by Rita Dove, the great Abbey Lincoln, Michael Harper, Bob Kaufman, and Ntozake Shange; excerpts from novels by Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, and Jean-Paul Sartre; and tasty samples from works by James Baldwin, Romare Bearden, Stanley Crouch, and Miles Davis.

Seeing Jazz was published in 1997 by Chronicle Books in association with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and, therefore, is not a new book. Given, however, the recent resurgence of interest in jazz music and culture, it has become one of the better volumes around to help expand one's understanding and appreciation of this world-celebrated music.

by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance