Category Archives: research

visualising information

We’ve only spent a tiny bit of time on this in class, but I’m interested in visualising information. Being a word person, I’ve always tended to represent information in words. But working on the MLX websites and programs I’ve also had to figure out ways of representing information in other ways. Dancers during an exchange aren’t interested in lots of words (and are often too tired to figure them out), and, frankly, who wants to read a whole bunch of long, boring sentences when there’s exciting action things to be done?
There are a range of accessibility issues at play here as well, and reading problems are quite common in dancers.
So here’re a few sites I’ve found that tackle this issue of ‘visualising information’
This one is taken from Lapham’s Quarterly, which is a really nice online magazine/journal dealing with history, literature, art – all that high brow action. But the tone is cheery and a little wiggedy, and they tweet some really cool stuff.
vi.png
This American Infographic features “infographical companions to the celebrated radio show”. In other words, it is a series of images created in response to episodes of the This American Life radio show.
There is, of course Edwarde Tufte, king of visualising information. Tufte had a walk-on part in my last essay. With a line, I think.
Newsflow visualises news stories in real time, as they are published. This one is FULLY SICK.
Infosthetics is a blog capturing links to really interesting ‘info visualisation’ items.
textarc ‘visualises’ the words of books or text. This is magic.
We Feel Fine, visualising ‘I feel’ or ‘feeling’ text from blogs.
Visual Complexity is… well, lots of visual information stuff.
Edit: Something critiquing the ‘vizualisation cargo cult’.
Someone else getting cranky about dodgy info visualisation.
A tool for doing your own fancy visualisations.
Another Edit: Visual information and The Times through history.

reading and thinking about design in cultural context

I tend to tweet my thoughts as I do my reading for these classes. This ends up cluttering up my twitter feed with random comments. I don’t have time to write full blog entries while I’m reading (and I shouldn’t). As I read and tweet, I’m also taking notes and making comments on readings in a word processing document.
About every five minutes:
I will try to note some of my comments here as I go, instead of cluttering up my twitter feed and annoying people.
I haven’t been to the library once this semester. But I’ve done all the readings and written three assignments. Uni has changed in 17 years.
Challenging the pseudoscience of these design articles is getting tiresome.
I tired of your bullshit, design theory.
your fully justified article is blowing up my eyeballs, design article. Also, your content is desperate flummery.
Gotta remind myself: guiding motivation behind most design isn’t equity or social justice but financial gain. This is important difference.
…………………………………….
Oh man, my brains are blowing up. This article is just so… it’s like they’re trying to reinvent the wheel. It drives me crazy.
I give up.
I’ll probably return to this article later, once I’ve been to the lecture. I’ll definitely return to it if I need it for an assignment. This way I have an idea of what it’s about, and can come back later. There’s no discussion of readings in the tutorial or lecture, so I don’t need to be ‘on’. I’m also finding that the readings have no reference to the material covered in lectures.
I’ve just come across an article about the India Report. This caught my eye because the report was written by the Eames – mega famous American designers – who went to India to have a look at Indian design. I’m not sure if they were invited specifically, but I do think it was a response to the Indian government asking for suggestions about improving design and industry in India. The Eames’ report was sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
The Eames recommended a National Institute of Design be established, and it was. This is just fascinating stuff. I’d be really interested to see how the report (and institute) accommodate:
– regional differences in design
– cultural differences in design within the massive and culturally and ethnically diverse Indian continent
– gender/class/etc in (then) existing design practices, particularly as they relate to rural communities and gendered design and manufacturing processes.
I’d also be be fascinated to see how and if and even whether the Institute and Report worked in a context of cultural imperialism and India-as-British-Colony. I’d be curious about value systems and evaluation of design in this context, as this is something we do in my design subject – we ‘evaluate’ designs. I’m immediately wary of the term ‘evaluate’ – to engage with an item and to assess it according to a set of design values. I smell cultural specificity, but then, the part of me that’s learning about design pragmatics, understands that you do actually have to assess designs. This is especially important if you’re working to create accessible designs, or designs which improve accessibility, particularly for less powerful or marginalised groups and individuals.
I keep stumbling over the relationship between postmodernism and…. that other thing. I think of it in terms of feminism – women are all very different, with different needs and interests, but we also share common needs and interests, and so can work as groups. I always think of these groupings as contextually and temporally dependent, and also as mobile (agile?), changing all the time.
So usability design should:
– recognise the limitations of one designer designing for a group from whom he or she differs. In other words, remember who you are, how your ideas about the world are specific to you and your experiences, and design self-reflexively
– develop useful design personas for developing objects.
I’m not entirely sure about this point as design personas are just new to me. Basically, you develop an imaginary user with very convincing attributes – age, class, etc. The best personas are the product of extensive empirical research and a designer’s long experience. I suspect, though, that it might simply be more useful to work with the intended users directly with a sort of design-centred action research approach. This is complicated, though, by the fact that designers are actually working for clients (retailers, government bodies, etc) who are requesting a design to serve a particular user or customer. So you have to accommodate not only the users’ needs and interests, but also those of the client who’s paying you. Economic factors shape commercial (and government) work, policy issues shape government work, individual notions of the product from your liason affect the design….. and so on.
I’ve just been reading about scientific approaches to design. Or using principles of scientific research (cognitive psychology in particular) in the design process. While I’m interested in one way, I’m also very sceptical in another. Though it seems like a nice approach to user centredness and usability, I think that the power and ideas remain with the designer and client, and so the process still doesn’t actually produce user-centred designs. We are still filtering ideas through the brain of a designer.
This is, of course, quite practical in one sense. A designer understands how manufacturing processes work. They understand how design processes – actually getting things done work. But they do not – despite their best imagining and empirical research – actually know what it is to balance a child on one hip while you use a washing machine. Not once, but hundreds and hundreds of times. And then, of course, we have to talk about gender and class and the luxuries (and perceptions of) time and so on.
I think of this sometimes in terms of colour blindness or perceptions of colour. We each ‘know’ what blue is. And while we can use various tools to ‘show’ us how other people perceive blue, physically, we cannot ever ignore or leave behind our ‘knowledge’ of blue from our own, everyday lived experience. So the way we use blue, though it might in some sense respond to those alternative uses or perceptions of ‘blue’, will, ultimately, be shaped and informed and structured by our understanding of blue and blueness.
….I’m wondering if design-by-colaboration is useful here? Or how to go about involving users in the design process? Or whether design needs to get out of offices and out into other people’s everyday spaces?
As I read and write about this stuff, I keep thinking about how we do audience research in media and cultural studies. How the notion of positivism – that we can somehow objectively ‘collect’ data – is anathema to solid audience studies research. Design research, though, seems absolutely founded on this notion of ‘collecting’ data. When I am absolutely sure that data isn’t found but made.
Well, we’ll see how we go. I’m a bit sorry I only have two semesters of learn during this course. I’d like to learn a whole lot more. But there’s nothing to stop me getting my independent learn on later, after I’m finished. I’m also very interested in seeing how my experiences working in a job shape the way I think about this stuff. And the new ideas I’ll come up with. It’s all very exciting.

sugar hill history

This is a great multimedia exploration of Sugar Hill. It uses:
– maps
– music
– interviews
– images
And emphasises the role of ‘place’ and ‘community’ (both physical and cultural) in creative and artistic development. This is, of course, my obsession. I am absolutely obsessed with the idea of creative work as necessarily going on in community spaces, as a product of interpersonal interaction as well as individual motivation and inspiration.

running -> exercise -> dancing -> jazz history

There’s a man upstairs in our bathroom banging and hammering and sawing. It’s really loud. Bathing without a shower is difficult, but not that bad. It’ll be nice when we get our shower back, though.
Meanwhile, I’m still on the c25k, and did the first run of week 5 today. It’s a nine week program, so I’m over half way. This is the point, though, where most people tend to give up. I actually feel quite good. It’s not as difficult as I thought, probably because it starts so gradually and then builds progressively. Today’s program involved:
a 5 minute warm up walk
5 minute run
3 minute walk
5 minute run
3 minute walk
5 minute run
5 minute cool down walk
I was surprised that I could do all the running bits without having to stop, and I remember thinking as I finished the first run ‘Woah, I just ran five minutes without stopping. Haven’t been able to do that in years.’ I still breathe really loudly (though not as loudly as I used to) and I certainly couldn’t hold a conversation at the same time (which is the ideal running pace). But I didn’t have to walk during any of the running bits and I felt pretty ok the whole way.
I actually quite like the sessions. Thirty minutes of exercise is a tiny amount, but it’s time well spent – no dilly dallying about – and it leaves me feeling really good. I have pretty bad snots at the moment because our bathroom is being ripped to bits, but that’s not affecting my running the way it used to. I have some new aches in my left foot, under the arch, but that feels like a hamstring issue, and I have very tight calves, so I always need to stretch my hamstrings. So, generally, I feel pretty good. I’m knocking on wood as I type, as I can’t really believe this is going so well.
There are a few things that seem key to the usefulness of this approach to training. Firstly, the audio cues on the ipod are essential. It tells me when to start running, when to start walking, when I’m half way. Secondly, the music is really good. I choose songs that either pump me up, or warm me up (or down) gently. I might end up using spoken podcasts later, as they distract me from the exercise and make the going easier. After this, the steady progress, with a structure to the sessions that changes weekly (and more frequently as you progress) makes the sessions more interesting. And I think the most important part is having clear goals.
One of the things that’s made it difficult to stick to a serious exercise program in the past is the lack of goals. Learning tranky doo is fun, but once you have that under control, it’s difficult to feel motivate. One routine after another is also kind of dull. Working on dance stuff with a partner is nice, but I think that without clear goals you tend to get a bit distracted and demotivated. I guess that’s why competitions are so useful.
So I really like the couch to 5k program. I’m especially happy with the fact that I can run five minutes without stopping. No pain in my feet, and I can actually breathe. It’s very satisfying. To think that I’ll be running half an hour without stopping soon is almost beyond the imagining.
One of the other things I like about it, is feeling my muscles toning up. I feel as though my jubbly bits are kind of being compressed and firmed up into muscle. The muscles I have underneath the jubbly are slowly being revealed. I’m fascinated by my arm muscles, which are entirely the result of cycling. I can’t believe cycling gives you arm muscles. But then cycling in a hilly city is challenging – you work harder. You use your arms to control your bike, and you tend to overwork your arms if you’re too tight in your shoulders and too weak in your core. But I’m also beginning to feel stronger and more stable in my core, which is fab. I’m also finding it easier to activate my lats (so important for dancing) and other individual muscle (and groups) which in turn makes it easier to reduce the energy I spend. Using the right muscles for the job means that I become more efficient in my movement – less flobbering about out of control, less overusing the wrong muscle.
So while I’m muscling up, I’m also finding that other, tighter muscle groups (my lower back, my shoulders) are loosening up. As the rest of my body steps up and starts doing its job, those places can relax and stop doing more than their fair share. It’s all very interesting. I’m especially exploring the way these changes affect my dancing and other activities. I can feel myself becoming more stable. I have more energy and greater stamina.
This is also making me the most annoying student in classes on Tuesday night. Hollywood style lindy hop (as in west coast not east, centred on dancers like Dean Collins rather than the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers) is a foreign country. It’s fascinatingly technical, using the same principles as the lindy I’m used to, but in different ways. It’s complex, and yet when it’s done right, it’s very energy efficient.
I’m particularly fascinated by the swingout. This type of swingout uses much the same principles of momentum and dynamic energy, but in a very different way. The thing that makes a swingout so amazing is that the follow moves towards the lead, then turns and changes direction, moving away from him. This simple process is actually really complex, in terms of energy and momentum. It’s too easy to lose all your energy and momentum when you change direction, so the challenge is keeping that energy in your bodies, and yet still changing direction.
This type of swingout involves a more thorough ‘leading’ of the follow, but it also seems to use a less ‘natural’ approach to movement… that statement could perhaps be the product of ignorance, but it seems as though the lead has to be more aware of energy and where the follow is and also where he is. I use a gendered pronoun deliberately. I’m the only female lead in the class, and I’m finding the gender stuff is quite different in this type of scene. An emphasis on vintage dressing seems to reflect a more conservative approach to gender roles. Women follow, men lead. There’s also been less emphasis on improvisation within the swingout.
For me, improvisation (within the swingout and elsewhere) is the follow’s opportunity to ‘speak.’ A decent lead doesn’t ‘allow’ the follow time to speak, but actually incorporates these contributions into their leading. So the two really do function as a team. The more comprehensive leading seems to micromanage the follow’s movement, and it’s been tricky figuring out where and how I should add in my jazz steps (I follow in the second class and usually socially – I rarely lead socially these days, which I am about to change).
The classes this week did look at variations on the swingout, and this was really interesting. It also meant that I had to stop and learn the basic footwork and shape of this type of swingout properly. I’m also wondering whether I should adopt this type of swingout when leading in class. That’s the sensible thing to do, but I worry that it will mean I’ll lose all memory of any other swingout completely. Which is kind of bullshitty, as any swingout I have now is no doubt so riddled with personal habits and problems it’s already kind of broke. Learning a new swingout will make me conscious of all these idiosyncrasies and make it possible to rebuild a stronger swingout.
At any rate, I’m thoroughly enjoying being in classes again. It’s so new, it’s challenging. I’m also out of practice, in terms of knowing how to learn in class, and I’m quite enjoying the way this makes everything more difficult. I am also the type of student who asks questions and really likes to get things right, so I’m annoying everyone. I still find leading makes more sense. I just have no sense of what my body is doing when I’m following. I’m really not aware of my body and muscles and so on when I’m following. I think it’s because when I’m leading I not only have to understand what I’m doing, but also be aware of my follow and what’s happening in their body, so understanding my own body becomes the first part of understanding momentum and how we make it work between us. What I don’t understand is why I can’t figure this out when I’m following.
This stuff makes it really difficult to follow in class. I can look at the moves and understand how they work, and I can also figure out how I’d lead it, but the lead I’m working with mightn’t, so I have to let them figure it out. But because I can’t feel the follow (because that’s me), I don’t really understand what’s going wrong/right in our partnership at that moment. Meanwhile, I find it really difficult to stop concentrating on the lead and to start engaging with following. Part of me wonders if I should just give up on following altogether. But then the rest of me refuses to be beaten.
I still haven’t found a good yoga class. Sigh.
But I have spent some lovely time in the library this week, reading some really good stuff on Frank Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke and Jack Teagarden and listening along to my music as I go. I’ve also been digging into the library’s music collection, listening to some of their neat stuff as I read. It’s all been really really interesting. These guys are interesting because they were white, very popular and also totally top notch. And there these moments where they recorded with African American musicians in the 20s and 30s and I think ‘how the fuck did this happen in segregated America?’ I’ve also come across interesting references to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a band popularly considered a crappy novelty band who claimed they invented jazz. They didn’t. But while they weren’t the most awesome band, they were very influential, and I keep coming across musicians and bands they worked with who were very good. This stuff is also interesting because Bix, Tram and Teagarden worked in Paul Whiteman’s band. I generally think of Whiteman’s stuff as a sort of wet, watered down jazz with strings and sweet arrangements. But this sort of dance music was super popular. And while I don’t like it much at all, the sales of this stuff bolstered the recorded music industry generally, which in turn made it possible for artists I do to have recorded. I don’t think it’s actually that simple a connection, but there’s definitely a complex relationship between class, race, musical aesthetics (sweet or hot?) live performances, venue ownership and management, radio broadcasting and recorded music during this period.
I don’t know that much about this yet, but it’s definitely caught my eye. I hope I’ll have time during the semester to chase these thoughts down. Probably not. Classes start next week, and I’m going to have to do some clever catching up after BBS.
Right, that’s enough of that.

digital resources… mostly

This post is really just to track a range of online sources I’ve used today. I’m really interested in the relationship between different tools, and between online and face to face tools. I want to frame this post/discussion by pointing out that swing DJs are interested in music primarily as dancers and as DJs for dancers. So their interest in music and dance and history is almost always tied to the physical experience of dancing. And dancing is ALL about the body, no matter how intertubed you are. Dancers also tend to have quite extensive online networks, networks of friends and acquaintances which crisscross their country and the world. I just know that if Peter wasn’t actually playing music as I type, he’d be chiming in with useful tweeted comments and links.
The body pwns the intertubes any day.

I read this thread on SwingDJs this morning, which directed us to: this story about hot jazz in a full-text issue of Life on Google books.

I replied in the thread on swingdjs, but also in a post on my own blog, here.

Reading the list and thinking about hot jazz as I wrote that post, I was reminded of things I’d read in books (!), one of which is also available in full text on google books here.

I have also found full text versions online, but I can’t remember where. If you start with The Jazz Study Group @ Columbia and Jazz Studies Online you’ll probably eventually find them all.

But while I was reading these things in books, I came across references to a series of photographs and films which are very popular with dances – by Gjon Mili. Mili is best known amongst dancers for his short film Jammin’ the Blues which is available on youtube along with other films he made featuring jazz musicians (I link them here.)

There’re some iconic photos of dancers in Life magazine in their ‘Life goes to…’ series. These are available in Google/Life’s online collection. Gjon Mili also did some very interesting photos as part of a photo shoot for Esquire in a Jam Session series.
I’ve already written about magazines and jazz ad nauseum.
Meanwhile, that original Life article listed ’30 good hot records’. Which made me think about canons. And discographies as canons. There are various online versions of discographies, but the good ones aren’t freely available online. Boo. Hiss.

Canons and discographies made me think about following particular musicians, and all this talk about ‘essential’ lists of jazz musicians and songs made me think about the Great Day In Jazz photo, which has a documentary film attached, and which Rayned used to structure his Yehoodi Radio show, which you could stream online.

After I’d written that post earlier today, I was still thinking about these issues. And I remembered seeing a note attached to an Australian photo from the 20s in an online collection. I eventually found the photo on flickr.com in their flickr commons (with which I am obsessed) by typing ‘bands jazz sydney’ into the search box, getting this list. This is the photo. I was particularly interested in the comment that black American bands were banned in Australia from the date of this photo (1928) until 1955 (when Louis Armstrong visited Australia). I wondered if it was true.

So I asked twitter. This led to a discussion between (mostly) The SwingDJ, DJRussellTurner, a discussion witnessed by all the people who followed one or all of us on Twitter.

TheSwingDJ was sceptical.

DJRussellTurner tweeted clarified the Rex Stewart thing.

DJRussellTurner suggested a distinction between ‘band’ and ‘musicians’, and then linked to an an article by Alec Morgan in the journal Scan which used the original photo and added

But, not all musical imports were welcomed by Sydney’s moral guardians. Sonny Clay’s renowned Jazz band, The Colored Idea, arrived here from the USA in 1928 to play the burgeoning nightclubs. After a couple of white women were found in a hotel room with the Afro-American musicians, the band was escorted back to the ship and told never to grace our shores again. While the occasional black musician was allowed in after careful scrutiny for a limited period, Afro-American bands were not permitted back until the mid 1950’s when Louis Armstrong and his band pushed the colour-bar down.

I suddenly decided I needed to know more, and I certainly needed to verify this idea that ‘black bands were banned in Australia’ during this period. The important question here is why? Why did I want to be sure? Partly because this would indicate interesting things about:

  • race and racism in Australia (White Australia Policy)
  • jazz and jazz culture in Australia (jam sessions, playing with and listening to other musicians is central to the exchange and cultural transmission of creative, ideological and discursive forms. A lack of African American musicians in Australia would go some way to supporting my continuing suspicions about the whiteness of Australian jazz. And, consequently, white jazz dance.
  • the music and entertainment industry in Australia.

I had a bit of a squizz in various online sources, but eventually decided I needed to look at some more newspapers from the day. These sorts of (albeit somewhat unreliable) primary sources can be helpful.

So I started simple, and followed this link from the flickr page. Not a whole lot of help right now, but it would be worth following up the original photographer.

Then I remembered someone on twitter mentioning an online tool which allowed you to search online Australian primary sources. I couldn’t remember who it was who put me onto it (I still can’t), so I just followed a bunch of links from likely sources.

Until I saw a name I recognised: Trove. And started searching for “Sonny Clay”.

I found this newspaper article on Trove which outlined accusations about the musicians’ union from the ‘banned band”s representatives.

Meanwhile, TheSwingDJ confirmed our suspicions but also noted that Rex Stewart wasn’t black, according to the musicians’ union (I wish I had his reference for this, actually).

He also tweeted other interesting tidbits including one about ‘good reputations’ and ‘paying’ to be allowed to play.

And then there were various comments on twitter from peeps ‘listening in’ to our 3-way chat, including comments about the photos as resources for fashion, Trove’s value for private research projects and so on. I asked for help RE Trove’s browser-compatability as I wanted to edit the scanned text of the article, but couldn’t log in. Various tweeps offered tips and feedback.

Then I revisited DJRussellTurner’s link to the Scan article and the original flickr photo page and discovered that the author of the Scan article had a blog where she discussed this photo and issue. Her thinking about this issue led to her discussion of flappers and gender here and here.

I then checked our her blog’s ‘about’ page and discovered she’s at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at UQ where I did my BA and MA and where I still have friends working.

In one of those blog posts she notes in a caption for (a repro of that original photo from flickr):

(Members of Sonny Clay’s Coloured Idea (including the singer Ivie Anderson) on deck as they pull into Sydney, 1928)

And this made me think: Ivie Anderson! Best known (in my world) as a singer with Duke Ellington’s band. So I did a crappy search of my music (using the wrong date) to see if she recorded with Ellington during this period. I also scanned the photo carefully to see if I recognised her. I was, pretty much, guessing. But I was using photos of Anderson I found online to try and compare them with the women in those two original photos.

TheSwingDJ beat me to it with this link to a source many Swing DJs use quite often. That entry for Anderson includes:

Born in California, young Ivie received vocal training at her local St. Mary’s Convent and later spent two years studying with Sara Ritt in Washington, DC. Returning home she found work with Curtis Mosby, Paul Howard, Sonny Clay, and briefly with Anson Weeks at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in Los Angeles. She also found work in vaudeville, touring the country as a dancer and vocalist in the Fanchon and Marco revue, starring Mamie Smith, and with the Shuffle Along revue. She was featured vocalist at the Culver City Cotton Club before leaving to tour Australia in 1928 with Sonny Clay. Returning after five months down under she organized her own show and toured the U.S. In 1930 she found work with Earl Hines.It was while appearing with Hines that Ellington first heard her sing. He hired her in February 1931, and she quickly became a fixture of the orchestra’s sound.

(I’ve bolded the important bits.)

At this point, we’re still thinking about and looking up sources. Meanwhile, colleagues from the CCC at UQ have chimed in about the author of that blog, discussions about archiving this sort of research are happening, I’m listening to 1930s Ellington featuring Ivie Anderson and I’m just about to look up youtube for some clips of Anderson to see if I can check her out more thoroughly.
But first, I think I’ll go dancing.
(srsly)

lists and canons in jazz

An interesting discussion has cropped up on SwingDJs called “30 Good Hot Records” from LIFE. This is what I’m about to post in response.
I love lists of iconic or ‘good’ songs/books/films/texts. I love them because though they are presented as definitive, they are always[ more effective as a provocation than a definitive answer to questions about what counts and is important enough to be listed. Discograhies work, pretty much, as definitive ‘lists’ or ‘canons‘.
I’ve come across a few different uses of ‘hot’ in articles and books from the 1930s, particularly in reference to discographies. Kenney’s discussion of jazz in Chicago outlines the differences between ‘jazz’ or ‘hot’ bands and music and ‘dance’ bands. These differences are not only musical, but also inflected by race, class, the recording industry, live venue management and ownership, gender… and so on. I’ve also come across quite a few discussions in an academic (rather than populist or ‘music critic’) sources about the expression ‘hot jazz’. The most useful sources point out that any attempt to finally define ‘hot’ or ‘jazz’ is not only difficult, but also problematic.
Krin Gabbard discusses the cultural effects of constructing canons – in which discographies play a key role – and points out that lists of ‘hot’ or ‘important’ or ‘real’ jazz records aren’t neutral or objective lists of songs – they are highly subjective and negotiated by the author’s own ideas about music and place in society generally.
Kenney (who’s written some absolutely fascinating stuff about jazz music in Chicago in the 20s) discusses Brian Rust’s discographies, making the point that Rust distinguishes between ‘hot’ and other types of jazz recordings. Friedwald talks a bit about Rust (and other discographers) in his jazz.com articles. Kenney’s research into the recording and live music industry in Chicago suggests that who got to record or play what types of music was actually dictated in large part by record companies’ ideas about race and class and markets rather than musicians’ personal inclination. That last point suggests that you could make some interesting observations about the correlation between race, class, recorded songs, ‘popularity’ and ‘jazz’ in Chicago jazz during this period. I don’t know enough about it, though, so all I’ll say is that you could, but you’d better have some badass sources to support your arguments. And you’d also better be prepared to accept the idea that though America had a national music industry, different state legislations and music cultures resulted in quite different local practices: it’d be tricky to generalise Chicago’s story across other cities and states. Not to mention countries.
Life and other magazines’ comments on and participation in music promotion in the 30s is also pretty interesting – these guys had ideological barrows to push, just as did Rust and other discographers. One of the effects of publishing this type of list (which was no doubt as hotly contested then as it is now – except by a wider audience :D) is that it does stimulate discussion and debate. And, hopefully, record and ticket sales. One thing I’d be interested in knowing is who owned LifeGreat Day In Jazz photo, I think about the fact that it was a photo for Esquire magazine, and that Esquire also produced a series of live concerts, recordings… and of course, photo spreads in magazines. While GDIJ works a fabulous representation of jazz it also serves as a canon, and as such is also subjective, ideologically framed and interpreted (eg asking why are there so few women in this photo leads us to questions about gender and jazz?) Canons are fascinating things, and can be the jumping off place for all sorts of great discussions and debates. I think this is why I was so excited by Reynaud’s session on Yehoodi Radio where he used the GDIJ photo as an organising structure for the music he chose. In that case, the photo became a listening guide for a radio program. I’d just rather not use them as definitive, fixed lists; I like them more as provocations, or a place from which to begin discussing (and arguing about) a topic.
If I saw a list like the one in Life today, I’d be extra-suspicious. Songs on So You Think You Can Dance, for example, are owned by the company which produces that tv show. There’s been quite a lot written about the Ken Burns’ Jazz series and its role in cross-promoting sales of records from catalogues owned by the same media corporation. The Ken Burns example is an especially interesting one: that series does not present an ‘objective’ list of important artists and songs. It is a jumping off place for a very successful marketing project surrounding back catalogues and contemporary musicians like Marsalis. George Lipsitz has written quite a bit about histories of jazz (including Burns’), and he makes this point:

…the film is a spectator’s story aimed at generating a canon to be consumed. Viewers are not encouraged to make jazz music, to support contemporary jazz artists, or even to advocate jazz education. But they are urged to buy the nine-part home video version of Jazz produced and distributed by Time Warner AOL, the nearly twenty albums of recorded music on Columbia/Sony promoting the show’s artists and ‘greatest hits,’ and the book published by Knopf as a companion to the broadcast of the television program underwritten by General Motors. Thus a film purporting to honor modernist innovation actually promotes nostalgic satisfaction. The film celebrates the centrality of African Americans to the national experience but voices no demands for either rights or recognition on behalf of contemporary African American people. The film venerates the struggles of alienated artists to rise above the formulaic patterns of commercial culture, but comes into existence and enjoys wide exposure only because it works so well to augment the commercial reach and scope of a fully integrated marketing campaign linking ‘educational’ public television to media conglomerates. (17)

Lipsitz is interesting because he says thinks like Why not think about jazz as a history of dance? Why not look into the lives of musicians who gave up fame and fortune in massively famous bands to work in their local communities?
Friedwald, Will. “On Discography” www.jazz.com, May 27, 2009 http://www.jazz.com/jazz-blog/2009/5/27/on-discography
Gabbard, Krin. “The Jazz Canon and its consequences” Jazz Among the Discourses. Duke U Press, Durham and London 1995. 1-28.
Kenney, William Howland. “Historical Context and the Definition of Jazz: Putting More of the History in ‘Jazz History'”. Jazz Among the Discourses. Duke U Press, Durham and London 1995. 100-116
Lipsitz, George. “Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz,” Uptown Conversation: the new Jazz studies, ed. Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmin Griffin. Columbia U Press, NY: 2004: 9-26.
References for my posts on Esquire.

thinking about victoria spivey and discographies as historical resources

sp.jpg I’ve recently come across some Victoria Spivey songs quite by accident. I have quite a few by her, but mostly bits and pieces from various compilations. I haven’t put any effort into collecting her, in part because my resources are limited and in the other part because my attention was caught by Bessie Smith. I also tend to prioritise ‘songs for lindy hopping’ in my purchasing.
I came across some Spivey songs in a Henry Red Allen JSP (I think) set from emusic. It’s also on one of the Complete Jazz Series, and I think the latter versions are slightly better quality. On both it was just labelled ‘Henry Red Allen and his orch’ I think. I found the additional details in the discography at the library. Listed under Victoria Spivey, she did quite a few sessions in New York 1928 with Clarence Williams etc, and then in 1929 she did some stuff in New York again with some really big guns. Below are the discographic details for the sessions that caught my interest:
Victoria Spivey
[S10354] Victoria Spivey (vcl) acc by Louis Armstrong (tp) Fred Robinson (tb) Jimmy Strong (ts) Gene Anderson (p) Mancy Cara (bj) Zutty Singleton (d)
New York, July 10 1929
40252-C Funny feathers
Okeh 8713, Swag (Aus) 1267, 1310, Col C3L-33, Odeon (F)7MOE-2250, Par (E)PMC7144, CBS (F)65421, (Jap)SL-1209/10/11
402526-A How do you do it that way?
Okeh 8713, Swag (Aus) 1267, S1310, Odeon (F)7MOE-2250, Par (E)PMC7144, CBS (F)65421, Spivey LP2001, Jass 5, Biograph BLP C5, Book of the Month Club 21-6547
[there are details about where these songs were published]
[S10355] Victoria Spivey (vcl) acc by Henry “Red Allen” (tp) J.C. Higginbotham (tb) Charlie Holmes (sop) Teddy Hill (ts-1) Luis Russell (p) Wil Johnson (g) Pops Foster (b,tu-2)
New York, October 1, 1929
56732-1 Bloodhound blues (1)
[with recording details I can’t be arsed typing out]
56733-2 Dirty T.B. Blues (1)
56734-1 Moaning the blues (1)
56735-1 Telephoning the blues
[there are details about where these songs were published]
When you go to the Henry Red Allen entry, you find him in New York in the same months (July and October of 1929) recording with mostly the same musicians. Luis Russell is the one that catches my eye, mostly because he’s (one of) the connections between Allen and Armstrong, leading a band which starred both of them at some points in the 30s.
Here are the details of recordings from the Henry Red Allen entry:
[A1573] Henry Red Allen (tp,vcl) J.C. Higginbotham (tb) Albert Nicholas (cl) Charlie Holmes (sop, cl, as) Teddy Hill (ts, cl) Luis Russell (p, celeste) Wil Johnson (g, bj, vcl) Pops Foster (b) Paul Barbarin (d, vib), Victoria Spivey (vcl) and the Four Wanderers (vcl quartet) added: Herman Hughes, Charlie Clinscales, (tenor), Maceo Johnson (bariton) Olivier Childs (bass)
New York, September 24, 1929
55852-1 Make a country bird fly wild (tfw vcl)
[with recording details I can’t be arsed typing out]
55852-2 Make a country bird fly wild (tfw vcl)
55853-1 Funny feathers blues (vs vcl)
55853-2 Funny feathers blues (vs vcl)
55854-1 How do they do it that way (vs vcl)
55855-1 Pleasin’ Paul
55855-2 Pleasin’ Paul
[there are details about where these songs were published]
I think the sessions under Spivey’s own name were the best for blues dancing, though really it’s a matter of taste.
FYI, if you’re trying to find all the recordings by a particular musician, you use the Musician’s Index (if you’re using the books rather than the online or CD Rom version of the discography) to find all the page and recording session details for each song featuring that musician. When you’re looking at someone like Louis Armstrong, that can get tedious very quickly. In his case, there’re whole books devoted just to his discographies. But people like Henry Red Allen (and Eddie Condon) tend to ramble across dozens and dozens of bands and hundreds of individual songs. You tend to get a feel for a particular musician, and you realise that they played in a whole range of bands in a particular city at any particular time. This gets really interesting, particularly when they’re using pseudonyms to escape restrictive recording contracts with particular labels.
Just looking up ‘Henry Red Allen’, for example, won’t get you all his recordings. But it will get you the recordings which are credited to him, or recorded by bands with his name attached (eg Henry Red Allen and his Orchestra). This sort of attribution gets interesting when you look at artists like Spivey, who had some of the biggest names in jazz listed as her accompanists.
You can see how I get interested in the relationship between blues and ‘jazz’ or ‘swing’ when I’m doing this digging in the discographies. Surely accompanying these singers (and they were accompanying, particularly when it came to people like Bessie Smith) influenced their music in significant ways. And these big names in jazz influenced other musicians – particularly when we’re talking about people like Louis Armstrong or Allen.
vspiveys.gif Spivey is interesting because she was not only a seriously famous singer in the 20s, she also managed to survive the declining popularity of blues at the end of the 20s. She did interesting things like play in the Hellzapoppin’ stage review (not the film, lindy hoppers, the stage review from which material for the film was drawn) and found her own record company, Spivey Records in the 60s. It was with this label that she recorded Bob Dylan as an accompanist.
I’m fascinated by the idea that you can chart the relationships between musicians in a particular city by using the discographies. All you have to go on is the city, date, song title and musicians. Which is a surprisingly useful amount of information. My attention is caught by the names which turn up all over the place, in all sorts of bands. Zutty Singleton. Paul Barbarin. Buster Bailey. Peanuts Hucko. People I didn’t know before I started looking through the discographies. Now I find that following these guys through the Chronological Classics or Complete Jazz Series gives me an overview of a particular city or style during a certain time frame. So if I follow Zutty Singleton through a particular year on CD, I’ll hear a range of bands. And I can speculate about the professional relationships between bands and the way creative ideas spread between bands.
Of course, all this information is really only dealing with recorded performances. Though this does include a massive amount of recorded broadcasts and live performances (particularly in the 1930s), we’re really only looking at formal recording sessions in the 20s. I always wonder what went on around these sessions. Who did they meet at the restaurant where they had dinner afterwards? Did they go for drinks with the band who’d been in there before? Who sat in on the following sessions to make up numbers or simply out of musical interest? Did these things even happen?
And of course I can’t help but think about the race stuff going on. I notice things like particular bands having personnel with names of particular cultural backgrounds. German or European names in Benny Goodman’s bands. Italian names in New Orleans bands. Anglicised names in Chicago. Certain names are more common in African American bands than in Anglo-American bands.
There are hardly any mixed-race recordings, so when they do pop up, my interest is immediately caught. And of course, when you get into the French recordings of artists like Bill Coleman, Coleman Hawkins, the remnants of Glenn Miller’s band in 1945, you see familiar American names teaming up with French artists. Glenn Miller’s former bandmates (Peanuts Hucko, Mel Powell, Joe Schulman, Ray McKinley) are joined by Django Reinhardt.
All this is super-interesting. And that’s just the information you can gain from reading through the discographies. When you listen along with the discographies, tracing particular sessions and particular combinations of musicians, you can hear musical developments and experimentations expanding and changing an individual musician’s style. Arrangers become much more important. Listening across bands (following a particular musician rather than a band), you hear similarities within a single year. And when you add to that the fact that many bands recorded the same songs in the same year, you hear each of these little moments in creative time explored within the framework of a single composition, arranged in countless ways, exploded by solos and improvisations.
When you think of the music that wasn’t recorded, of all the live performances on stages and in back rooms and kitchens, you realise that music was not only everywhere, but that these were communities of musicians, complicated networks forged by the act of making music. And money.
And, finally, in all of this, if I do come across a female name anywhere other than in the vocals, I’m flabbergasted. This is a world of men. Or so you’d assume, if you relied only on the discographies. There were plenty of women in these pictures, just not dug into the grooves on the record. There were women playing and writing and recording music, women running offices, making dinners, washing clothes. It’s just that you can’t hear them on the records, unless you listen very closely.
Refs:
Lord Jazz Discography
This is an interesting piece about Henry Red Allen.
Red Hot Jazz.