The Culture of Jazz Aesthetics

Spring 2011 Class Site

This course combines the analytical resources and historical knowledge of musicians and (ethno-)musicologists with those of linguistic anthropologists interested in jazz as a cultural tradition that reproduces itself through subtle and widespread conventions for communicating aesthetic ideas and values.

The course is organized as a fieldsite in which experts (jazz musicians) come to talk and play music in front of an audience made up mostly of novices (e.g. students with no background in jazz) and a few experts (musicians and students in the jazz program). Everyone can ask questions and experience the culture of jazz as it is narrated, explained, and lived by the professional jazz musicians who come to be heard.

DVD featuring Kenny Burrell and other jazz artists who came to the class as guests in the Fall of 2002 is available for those who join the UCLA Friends of Jazz.