John Rapson

Jazz appears in the early twentieth century, the result of many cultures and traditions colliding together during the industrial revolution in America. Why could this music have only been developed in America and only at the turn of the century? How is improvisation in jazz like other music traditions and how is it different? Why do these musicians sometimes read music and other times make up music "right off the top of their heads?" What parts of their improvisational ideas come from the written music and what part is pure invention? Why do jazz musicians steal "intellectual property" from other musicians and why is that an accepted practice? And what do we mean when we say that jazz is part of an oral tradition when they clearly use written music as well? Using musical examples and drawing upon some unlikely sources, we'll explore the nature of jazz practices and why they showed up at the time and place that they did. The group Polutropos will be Professor Rapson's guests at the lecture.