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Musical Genre as a Creation of Racial Capitalism

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Acclaimed musician and composer Vijay Iyer on how the constraints of musical genre emerged from racial capitalism: the history of "jazz" itself narrated by delinking music from its Black radical and avant-garde traditions.

We go through these cycles of the mainstream press declaring jazz dead, then rediscovering it. There's a savior! That narrative's really problematic. It excludes and erases countless Black musicians who have been at the vanguard for decades.

RECOMMENDED: Uneasy (ECM, 2021): Vijay Iyer with Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh.

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Interview
Jazz
Criticism
Music
Music Criticism
Race & Genre
Black Radical Traditions
Amiri Baraka
Roscoe Mitchell
Racial Capitalism
Avant-Garde Origins
Village Vanguard
Post-George Floyd Moment
Historicity
Black Speculative Musicalities
Insurgence in Jazz
Genre Fluidity
Critical Improvisation Studies
The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition
Fred Moten
Charles Mingus

VIJAY IYER is a composer-pianist who has been described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway.” He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts, and was voted Downbeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times in the last decade. He has released twenty-four albums of his music, most recently UnEasy (ECM Records, 2021), a trio session with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh; The Transitory Poems (ECM, 2019), a live duo recording with pianist Craig Taborn; Far From Over (ECM, 2017) with the award-winning Vijay Iyer Sextet; and A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM, 2016) a suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. He recently served as composer-in-residence at London’s Wigmore Hall, music director of the Ojai Music Festival, and artist-in-residence at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He teaches at Harvard University in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.

Interview
Jazz
8th
Nov
2020

On That Note:

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