August News from the Jazz Education Network Research Interest Group

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the August edition of the JEN Research Interest Group newsletter. Below please find a variety of news items, announcements, callouts, new publications, and job opportunities. Many of you are starting their Fall semesters now with very different teaching conditions. JEN presented a wide variety of webinars to support the jazz community over the past few months, subscribe to the youtube channel and find help and inspiration.

Thank you to everyone who responded to the call for contributions to the upcoming Roubledge Companion Jazz and Gender. At this time we have a wide variety of 40+ fascinating contributions. It’ll be an essential resource for research and education and to strengthen the jazz community. Tentative release date is March 2022.

Our current EFCF/JEN Research Fellow, Jasna Jovicevic, recently published a fascinating mini documentary on her research on interpreting brainwaves in music - here is the link. The EFCF/JEN Research Fellowship is intended to provide opportunities for a serious educator/student/music historian (such as senior researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students) to conduct a directed research project associated with the archival collections at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Applications for this $5,000 award with additional $1,000 travel budget are open now until September 15. Please consider applying and share with your colleagues and students - more information can be found here.

The second edition of the Journal for Jazz Education in Research and Practice is in the final stages of editing with a projected publication date of December 2020. Please encourage your library to order a subscription - subscriptions and single copies available here. We can always use additional reviewers - contact me if you’re willing to join the editorial board.

The list of jazz publications and related journals is growing - please see the current list and add any publications missing from the list here. We’re hoping this crowdsourced effort will help us compile the most comprehensive resource possible.

Please feel free to share this news compilation and invite colleagues to join the mailing list and/or Facebook page. Remember to check the updated job listings here. If you have new books/ articles/ dissertations published, send me the info to be included in the newsletter. Also send over ideas on how JENRing can help you in your jazz research and networking. Items of interest related to jazz research may also be shared on the Facebook page.

Sincerely,

Monika Herzig

JEN Research Interest Group Committee Chair

Editor, JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice)

The Jazz Education Network was founded to support and sustain the art form that was born out of the legacy of black resistance. Our music calls us to speak out and actively work on behalf of justice and equality. We share in the pain and disgust of watching another black citizen murdered in public view as they pleaded for their life. JEN stands with #blacklivesmatter and all other organizations and individuals who are protesting the unrelenting and corrupt racist system that does not value black Americans in our society.

Charlie Parker blazed through American music like a meteor, burning out in his early 30s. Yet the alto saxophonist ranks high in the pantheon of American genius for his artistry, innovations and impact. A larger-than-life figure, he changed jazz forever.

Born in Kansas City, Kan., on Aug. 29, 1920, Parker evoked more passion, pro and con, than any of his jazz predecessors or contemporaries. Many of the negatives reflected his behavior as a societal outsider. His alcohol and drug dependency, instability, and periodic hospitalizations promoted a stereotype of jazz musicians as misfits and social deviants. But Parker’s prodigious positives are why he matters and why we still remember him.

Read more...

The centennial year of another music icon has arrived. In celebrating the one hundredth birthdays of our musical forbears (as has become quite vogue in recent years), we pay special tribute to the catalogs of recordings, original works, and rich performances each has left as a legacy. We recently celebrated the centennial birthday of American music pioneer Peggy Lee. As intricately detailed in my forthcoming book Peggy Lee: A Century of Song, Lee's prolific legacy included 1100 recorded masters, over 270 original songs, film scores, voiceover work, a Broadway show, radio and television shows, thirteen Grammy nominations, one Grammy win, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and two Hall of Fame awards (for "Fever" and "Is That All There Is?") plus a host of pop hits, many which she co-wrote.

"I Don't Know Enough About You" represented an early collaboration between guitarist Dave Barbour and his young bride Peggy Lee. It was the first of many hit songs the songwriting team eventually penned. The song became a hit in 1946, peaking at number seven on the popular music charts. It is one of several outstanding recordings featured on a new compilation album just released last month to celebrate the artist's centennial, Ultimate Peggy Lee. Follow the link above for a deep dive into this beautiful recording.

In partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Institutes of Health is offering a new funding opportunity titled “Promoting Research on Music and Health,” a “Phased Innovation Award for Music Interventions.” The first due date for applications is Oct. 2, 2020.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to promote innovative research on music and health with an emphasis on developing music interventions aimed at understanding their mechanisms of action and clinical applications for the treatment of many diseases, disorders, and conditions. Given the emphasis on innovation, little or no preliminary data are needed to apply under this FOA. Because of the need for a multidisciplinary approach, collaborations among basic researchers, translational science researchers, music intervention experts, other clinical researchers, music health professionals, and technology development researchers are encouraged. The FOA utilizes a phased R61/R33 funding mechanism to support mechanistic research and to evaluate the clinical relevance of music interventions. The R61 phase will provide funding to either investigate the biological mechanisms or behavioral processes underlying music interventions in relevant animal models, healthy human subjects, and/or clinical populations, or can be used to develop innovative technology or approaches to enhance music intervention research. The second R33 phase will provide support for further mechanistic investigations in human subjects or animal models, intervention development, or pilot clinical studies. The pilot clinical studies may focus on intervention optimization/refinement, feasibility, adherence, and/or identification of appropriate outcome measures to inform future clinical research. Transition from the R61 to the R33 phase of the award will depend on successful completion of pre-specified milestones established in the R61.

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Dear Friends,

As America continues to confront this period of unprecedented change and uncertainty, we want to assure you that one thing will not change: our support for the arts across this great nation.

The National Endowment for the Arts is open for business. Our staff, while working remotely is available to you via phone or email, as usual.
As you may know, Congress appropriated $75 million to the National Endowment for the Arts through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to preserve jobs and help support organizations forced to close operations due to the spread of COVID-19. The National Endowment for the Arts is thankful to the President and members of Congress for recognizing the cultural and economic contributions of the arts and trust in the agency’s capacity to manage such a large amount of additional work in a relatively short period of time on behalf of the American public.

Forty percent of this funding was awarded directly to state and regional arts agencies to distribute through their funding programs. On July 1, the Arts Endowment announced that 855 organizations—located in every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico—will receive a total of $44.5 million in nonmatching funds to support staff salaries, fees for artists or contractual personnel, and facilities costs.

We know that there are more than five million Americans who make their livelihoods in the broader arts and cultural sector across the country and are potentially at risk. We also know that the arts provide comfort, resilience, wisdom, and the means for self-expression and connection, perhaps even more so during challenging times such as these. We have relief resources and opportunities related to COVID-19 available on our website, and we will continue to update these sections with new information as it becomes available.

As you focus on the health and safety of yourself and your loved ones, please know that we are in this together, and that you can continue to rely on our full support.

With gratitude for all that you do,

Mary Anne Carter
Chairman

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In the 1960s, Milford Graves became a groundbreaking drummer in avant-garde jazz, but intertwined with his career had been his constant study of music’s impact on the human heart. Now Mr. Graves, a 78-year-old who lives in Jamaica, Queens, has become his own subject: He has amyloid cardiomyopathy, sometimes called stiff heart syndrome.

Doctors have informed him that the condition, also called cardiac amyloidosis, has no cure. When he received the diagnosis in 2018, he was told he had six months to live. Since then, Mr. Graves said, he has come close to death several times because of fluid filling his lungs. His legs too weakened to walk, he remains in a recliner in his living room with a tube feeding medicine to his heart and another draining fluid from his midsection.

But he has hardly surrendered to the illness. Although he is under the care of a cardiologist, he is also treating himself with the alternative techniques he has spent decades researching. Since the 1970s, Mr. Graves has studied the heartbeat as a source of rhythm and has maintained that recording musicians’ most prevalent heart rhythms and pitches, and then incorporating those sounds into their playing, would help them produce more personal music.

He also believes that heart problems can be helped by recording a patient’s unhealthy heart and musically tweaking it into a healthier rhythm to use as biofeedback. In recent months, Mr. Graves has been listening constantly to his own heart with a stethoscope and monitoring it with an ultrasound device he bought on eBay.

Read more about Mr. Graves’ body of research and self-experimentation.

João Gilberto’s landmark “Chega de Saudade” is widely considered bossa nova’s first album. But about seven years before its 1959 release, a Brazilian musician known as Johnny Alf composed “Rapaz de Bem.” The song incorporated several elements that became hallmarks of the genre: a linear melody, a gentle way of singing, a series of unconventional key changes, a rhythmic dissociation of drums and bass.

Alf, a pianist, composer and singer, dared to blend classical, popular, foreign and local music references into his own creative process. The source of his inspiration lies in the music of Chopin, Debussy, Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton, and the Brazilian notables Custódio Mesquita and Francisco Alves. His music attracted the most avant-garde ears to the piano bars of the Copacabana neighborhood in Rio, where he regularly performed in the early ’50s.

Joe Segal, the Chicago impresario who promoted jazz for more than seven decades, died Monday at 94.

Mr. Segal, whose love affair with jazz saw him bring the greats and up-and-comers alike to dozens of Chicago venues before settling into his latest club, the Jazz Showcase’s current home at Dearborn Station in the South Loop, had been in failing health.

He died listening to his idol, saxophone legend Charlie “Bird” Parker, according to his son Wayne Segal, who operates the club and was with him at St. Joseph Hospital.

“He died knowing he was loved,” he said. “As soon as he passed, that big storm came through. I said, ‘There you go.’ It goes with his personality.”

New Orleans saxophone great Donald Harrison, among those who regularly played Mr. Segal’s nightspots, called him “an irreplaceable advocate for the music we call jazz.” Harrison said Tuesday that Mr. Segal “held the line and made sure that jazz had a presence in the world and helped legends maintain a place to play in Chicago. And he made sure musicians who were coming up had a place to play.”

Though Mr. Segal’s youthful attempts to learn the trombone and piano failed, he once told the Chicago Sun-Times, “I don’t know one note from another, but I know when it’s not right.” He booked hundreds of the greats in jazz. And he did so at multiple locations, having to hunt for new venues for reasons that included expired leases, redevelopment and landlords who didn’t think jazz was a moneymaker. There were stints at the Beehive, the Birdhouse, the French Poodle, the Gate of Horn, the Happy Medium, the Blackstone Hotel and the Plugged Nickel before his multiple Jazz Showcase locations.

“Jazz,” he used to say, “is my livelihood and my love.”

Read more for an account on the life of one of jazz’s most important organizers.

Knocking, Tapping and Rapping are terms to describe sounds as well as cultural practices that have important functions in a wide area ranging from everyday life to arts, religion, language and philosophy, communication and language. It became virulent recently in the political discussion about the «no-knock warrant» in the US.

But there seems to be more to the subject than that: from the use of knocking to test material to the literary topic of door-knocking, to the extensive use of knocking sounds in sound art and contemporary music. The sound of knocking, tapping and rapping inhabits and intervenes in multiple contexts.

For a two-day round table mini-symposium on the auditory phenomena of knocking, tapping and rapping ARS – CUPRAS is looking for contributions from different academic fields and professions, including, but not limited to: Humanities and culture studies (in particular literature studies, musicology, art history, philosophy, anthropology)

The Round Table is planned for November 28 & 29, 2020 at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz and at the Music School Mainz of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. (Due to the uncertain situation in autumn an online conference or a mixed version is also possible.) If you are unable to attend, we are also happy to receive texts and written comments. A publication of the results is planned.

Please send a proposal of a presentation (10 - 15 min) and/or text contributions to: ars@uni-mainz.de.

Deadline is September 30, 2020.

Background

RIPM is the non-profit publisher of a new searchable full-text database, RIPM Jazz Periodicals, (www.ripmjazz.org) which contains 105 jazz journals. Functioning under the auspices of the International Musicological Society and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, RIPM was created in 1980 to preserve and to provide access to historically important music periodicals in order to facilitate and to encourage the study of music history. Jazz is RIPM’s latest initiative.

For your consideration

RIPM is considering the possibility of creating an annual Award for the best published article on jazz. If we do, an announcement of the Award might look something like this.

RIPM Jazz Periodicals Publication Award

The $1,000 award is offered annually by the RIPM Consortium Ltd.,
the non-profit publisher of RIPM Jazz Periodicals (www.ripmjazz.org)

The award is for the best article on any aspect of jazz history published during the preceding calendar year. The majority of the primary source material for the article must be periodical literature, including magazines, journals, yearbooks, newspapers, and newsletters. When possible, RIPM Jazz Periodicals must be one of the sources consulted and cited.

The best article would be determined on the five review criteria:
The article provides an important critical and/or analytical insight that contributes something new to the field of jazz history;
The justification for the subject treated is clearly explained with reference to the current state of pertinent literature;
The writing style is coherent and to the point;
Its conclusion is clear and convincing;
The article if possible, should be of interest to a wide range of readers.

The award winner will be selected by a RJP Awards Committee composed of members of the jazz research community by a method to be determined. RIPM collaborators will not participate in the selection process.

Our question is this: will colleagues in the field think this is a worthwhile undertaking?

Would you kindly let us know your thoughts on this subject, in an email sent to: jazz@ripm.org. Your reply may be simply a couple of words in the header to your email, or more elaborately spelled out. Thanks in advance for your help.

We have started preparations for the next Darmstadt Jazzforum conference to take place from September 30th to October 2nd, 2021. Continuing discussions prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement we want to talk about the idea of “Europe” which had a lasting influence on aesthetics and ethics, the presentation and the reception of jazz. We ask how a possibly Eurocentric perspective has changed and continues to shape our perception of what jazz stands for, how it connects both to the music’s African American origins and to our own individual cultural environment. Our discussions may start with the name “jazz”, we may look at historical examples of Eurocentric tendencies, and we may take into account the current discourse about the relevance of jazz in non-African American communities. We will talk about racism in jazz, reflect on how exclusion and different forms of othering are present in today’s jazz scene, and look at alternate readings of how the example of African American culture has changed and enriched the understanding of music all over the world. We won’t limit the discussion to jazz but also look at similar debates about Eurocentrism or African-Americanism in contemporary composed music or pop culture.

The Darmstadt Jazzforum is an international conference aimed at a more general than just the scholarly community. We hope for papers that spur on discussions beyond the limits of jazz research, expecting an audience of musicians, journalists, dedicated jazz fans as much as students and scholars from different fields. Papers should be no longer than 25-30 minutes to give ample time for discussion. We are also grateful for panel suggestions and will (within limits) be able to help with travel expenses.

Populism has been researched from a great array of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences over the last decades. In musicology and popular music studies, however, the concept has been relatively neglected so far. This is all the more surprising since populism and music have been intricately connected at least since the nineteenth-century populist movement in the U.S. (Patch 2016; Kazin 2017), and popular music studies have a long tradition of research into music and politics (Street 2017; Garratt 2019), subcultures and counter-cultural movements that challenge the hegemonic ‘power bloc’ (Clarke et. al. 1975; Hebdige 1979; Eyerman and Jamison 1995). This special issue, therefore, seeks to explore the nexus between popular music and populism.

Research on populism is complicated by the concept’s ambivalence. Populism has been defined as a democratic movement (Goodwyn 1976), an emancipatory resource (Laclau 2005), a political strategy (Weyland 2017), an economic policy (Dornbusch and Edwards 1992), a communication style (Block and Negrine 2017), or an ideology (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). Due to its wide scope, populism has been subdivided into various classifications, including inclusionary, exclusionary, right-wing, left-wing, nineteenth-century, contemporary, US, South-American, and European varieties. However, although populist movements assume highly diverse shapes across the world, they share a common ideological core based on a dichotomous understanding of a basic conflict between the two antagonistic camps of the essentially ‘good’ people and an inherently corrupt elite. As Michael Kazin (2017) has noted, populism’s power lies precisely in its adaptability.

As a result of the term’s polyvalence, a large number of musicians and musical cultures have been labelled populist. In the U.S., examples range from ideologically diverse phenomena such as 1880s farmers’ songs, Woody Guthrie, and Aaron Copland’s ‘Billy the Kid’ to Kid Rock’s ‘Born Free’ and the Trump-glorifying genre ‘Fashwave’. Elsewhere, examples of musicians who have been described as populist include celebrity singers such as Morrissey (UK), Fabrizio de André (Italy), Andreas Gabalier and Hannah (Austria); iconic rappers like Krúbi (Hungary), Piotr Liroy-Marzec (Poland) and Ricardo Alves (Brazil); as well as neo-folk and rock bands such as Böhse Onkelz (Germany), Les Brigandes (France) and frei.wild (Italy). A critical understanding of populism would help us to disentangle these diverse musical practices while revealing heretofore overlooked similarities.

In addition to investigating the populism of music and musical actors, another way to approach the interconnection between popular music and populism is to explore how populist politicians have employed music. Some of the political forerunners of the recent rise of populism in Europe, such as Silvio Berlusconi (Italy) and Jörg Haider (Austria), performed as singers of popular songs. Likewise, the front-runner of the far-right populist Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, plays in a pop band that performs light-hearted tunes with nationalist content, and his party organizes an annual summer festival. In Germany, the far-right populist Alternative for Germany plays German-language R&B tracks by celebrity singers such as Xavier Naidoo to support their marches against what they call the ‘islamisation of the Occident’.

Conversely, popular music has by no means been employed exclusively by the populist far-right. The Chavéz government, for instance, tapped into Alí Primea’s musical legacy for its political purposes in Venezuela in the 1990s (Marsh 2016), and the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey used popular music in the populist strategy to authenticate the demonstrations as an anti-establishment movement of ‘the people’ (Way 2016). In Italy, the founder of the initially left-leaning Five Star Movement, Beppe Grillo, organized ‘Five Star Woodstock’ events years before his party formed a coalition with the far-right Lega.

This special issue, therefore, seeks to bring together different understandings of populism and foster a dialogue regarding the roles of popular music in the development of populist movements from a transnational perspective. We invite submissions for this special issue of Popular Music that investigate the interconnection of populism and popular music in different historical and geographical contexts.

How exactly does popular music interact with and negotiate populist ideologies? How do musical sounds, lyrics, performances, and visuals articulate populist politics? And how can investigations of popular music contribute to developing a better understanding of populism as a cultural phenomenon?

We are looking for a range of international and interdisciplinary contributions from different perspectives, including popular music studies, ethnomusicology, and cultural sociology. Questions to be raised and explored in this issue may include:

The epistemology of musical populism
The interaction of popular music with different varieties of populism
The role of popular music in the dissemination of populism
The appropriation of popular music by populist parties and political actors
Musicians and performers as voice of ‘the people’
Performing varieties of the ‘good’ people and the ‘corrupt elite#
The role of antagonisms and enmity in populism and popular music
Similarities and differences between populist strategies and music marketing practices (e.g. breaking taboos, scandalizing)
Populism and celebrity music culture
Music and identity in populist movements regarding intersections of gender, class, race, nation, and sexuality
The conceptual gendering and racialization of (musical) populism, including notions of (toxic) masculinity and whiteness
Populist aesthetics and performance practices
Fan cultures and populism / populist fan cultures

Please send abstracts (500 words max, including references), bios (150 words max), and queries to special issue editors:

Prof. Dr. Mario Dunkel (Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany, mario.dunkel@uol.de)
Dr. Melanie Schiller (University of Groningen, The Netherlands, m.m.schiller@rug.nl).

Abstracts must include a main argument, an indicative title, a critical engagement with relevant literature, an indication of significance, and references.

Deadline for abstracts and short bios: 15 November 2020

Commissioning of articles: January 2021

Submission of full articles (1st submission): 30 June 2021

Publication of the issue scheduled for autumn 2022 (41:4).

Perhaps you have a comic strip that you wrote on issues of representation in the music industry, or a piece of short fiction that considers popular music heritage, work that has not yet found a home. Or maybe your experiences as a musician, a music fan or researcher have provided you with rich characters, begging to be explored through a dialogue or a short story. We invite you to flex your imagination as a tool for analysis and criticism, to find a fictional form for your insights and arguments, and to imagine potential popular music futures (utopian or dystopian) as a means to critique the present.

Inspired by the work of our Guest Editor, Dr Ash Watson and the Fiction Desk of The Sociological Review, the next issue of Riffs will bring together work that uses fiction to critically explore issues within popular music and to communicate this to a wide audience.

Dr Ash Watson is based at the Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney. She leads the public sociology project So Fi Zine, and is Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review. Her debut novel Into the Sea was published by Brill in 2020.

Riffs publishes contributions from writers from academic and non-academic backgrounds. We encourage submissions which include written, visual, and musical elements, interrogate traditional and experimental forms of communication of ideas and arguments, and collaborations between writers, poets, musicians, composers and visual artists. For examples of pieces based on previous prompts, have a look through our current and past issues, available to download from our website – www.riffsjournal.org.

Deadline for a title and 300-word synopsis of the proposed work – 4th October 2020. Please also include your name, a short bio and contact email.

Up to ten contributions will be published online and in limited edition print in July 2021.

Full submissions (of 1,000-4,000 words / visual (to not exceed 8 A4 pages) / audio content / or an audio/video file suitable for hosting on WordPress) will be invited by the 9th of October. Full submissions will be required by 14th February and blind peer reviewed before publication. All visual and audio content must have a Creative Commons License, be owned by the contributor or permission given by the copyright owner.

Please send your synopsis and bio to: info@riffsjournal.org

Please note: Riffs shall be entitled to first use of the contribution in all the journal’s different forms, but the author remains the copyright owner and can re-publish their contribution without seeking the journal’s permission. Riffs reserve the right to decline to publish contributions if they are submitted after the agreed deadline and without the assigned editor being informed (and agreeing to) a new submission date.

Lee stood out among her peers as an exquisite singer possessing a cool vocal style, a songwriter frequently collaborating with leading composers of American jazz and film music, and a globally-loved entertainer with star quality. Tish Oney sheds new light upon this Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner’s impressive musical talents while guiding the reader through the best of Lee’s fifty-plus albums, radio and TV performances, creative contributions to the film industry, and over half a century of finely-polished live performances.

Oney focuses on the evolution of Peggy Lee’s recorded music, vocal development, artistic achievements, and contributions to American music while interviews with Lee’s family, friends, and music colleagues reveal new insights and memories of this musical icon. Peggy Lee enables readers to discover a brilliant artist’s inimitable legacy in the history of American popular music.

The National Endowment for the Arts and Education Commission of the States released a groundbreaking suite of resources as part of the State Data infrastructure Project for Arts Education—an initiative to help stakeholders in the arts extract, analyze and report on data about arts education. The following statement from Arts Endowment Chairman Mary Anne Carter and Education Commission of the States President Jeremy Anderson underscores the critical need for these resources as the nation addresses historic challenges. The statement is adapted from the opening pages of the project’s centerpiece—the Arts Education Data Toolkit, which offers detailed guidance on how to manage an arts education data initiative from start to finish.

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In June 2019, the National Endowment for the Arts convened with Theatre Communications Group and Theatre for Young Audiences/USA for “Envisioning the Future of Theater for Young Audiences.” This was the first time the three organizations have collaborated to confront the challenges and opportunities faced by theaters producing work for young audiences. The National Endowment for the Arts understands the importance of arts engagement at a young age. Therefore, we are providing the findings from this historic convening in order to summarize the state of theater for young audiences, share the latest research in the field, and discuss proposed next steps. Theaters for young audiences are preparing the next generation of Americans to inherit an increasingly complex world and are doing so by making some of the most exciting theater in the country today. I encourage you to share this report with the producers, critics, funders, and elected officials in your community, and to explore what you or your organization can do to help support this important work.

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Adventures of a Jazz Age Lawyer is the lively story of legal giant Nathan Burkan, whose career encapsulated the coming of age of the institutions, archetypes, and attitudes that define American popular culture. With a client list that included Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson, Frank Costello, Victor Herbert, Mae West, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, Arnold Rothstein, and Samuel Goldwyn, Burkan was “New York’s Spotlight Lawyer” for more than three decades. He was one of the principal authors of the epochal Copyright Act of 1909 and the guiding spirit behind the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (Ascap), which provided the first practical means for songwriters to collect royalties for public performances of their works, revolutionizing the music business and the sound of popular music. While the entertainment world adapted to the disruptive technologies of recorded sound, motion pictures, and broadcasting, Burkan’s groundbreaking work laid the legal foundation for the Great American Songbook and the Golden Age of Hollywood, and it continues to influence popular culture today.

Gary A. Rosen tells stories of dramatic and uproarious courtroom confrontations, scandalous escapades of the rich and famous, and momentous clashes of powerful political, economic, and cultural forces. Out of these conflicts, the United States emerged as the world’s leading exporter of creative energy. Adventures of a Jazz Age Lawyer is an engaging look at the life of Nathan Burkan, a captivating history of entertainment and intellectual property law in the early twentieth century, and a rich source of new discoveries for anyone interested in the spirit of the Jazz Age.

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