Title: Being Home: Jazz Authority and the Politics
Abstract: Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott sets forth an astonishing, searingly honest view of one segment of music history that is indeed unsung. Tapscott (1934-1999) was a pianist, composer, bandleader, and social activist who spent most of his life in the Mrican American communities of Los Angeles. In 1998, sociologist Steven Isoardi collaborated with several generations of Los Angeles jazz musicians to compile a vital oral history of that city's rich, undervalued role in Mrican American music and culture (Bryant et al. 1998). Among Isoardi's interview subjects was Tapscott, who also served as a co-editor of the compilation. Several hours of conversation with Tapscott were distilled into a handful of pages for his entry in that volume. Subsequent to Tapscott's death, Isoardi arranged these transcribed recollections into a coherent, compelling autobiography. The resultant memoir reminds us with stunning candor that too much has happened under the radar of the jazz industry. The narrative begins by relating the powerful sense of belonging and purpose that Tapscott experienced as a child in segregated, Depressionera Houston. Tapscott connects this sense to formal and informal cultural institutions such as the church, the familial cohesiveness of his neighborhood, and most of all, the omnipresence of music. You've got to have the music all the time; it was part of the fabric of the community (10). As a child, he learned elements of music from his mother and moved with his family to southern California in 1943, shortly after beginning the trombone. Exposed as a teenager to L.A.'s busy Central Avenue jazz scene, Tapscott found himself learning from Melba Liston, Gerald Wilson, Buddy Collette, Wardell Gray, and many other mentor figures. He counted Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Frank Morgan, and Eric Dolphy among his young peers. While in high school, he had extensive private music lessons and began performing around town. Later, he had a brief stint at Los Angeles City College: That was a big thing for black folks in the 1940s and 1950s. It didn't matter what college, just as long as you went
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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