Newsletter
Fall
2002 Volume XXXII, No.
1
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Reviews
Country and Gospel Notes |
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ISAM Matters
Ron Cohen’s lead article in this issue serves as a prelude
to a festival ISAM is currently organizing in honor of Alan Lomax, who
passed away on 19 July 2002 at the age of eighty-seven. Folklorists,
ethnomusicologists, social historians, and journalists will gather to assess
Lomax’s esteemed career as a folk music collector, promoter, and scholar.
Emphasis will be on Lomax’s efforts to foster public awareness and
appreciation of American and world folk music, placing him in the broader
discussion of the role of traditional arts in 20th-century American life. The festival, scheduled for 9, 11-12 April
2003, will also include a special panel on folk music as poetry, produced in
conjunction with Citylore’s People’s Poetry Gathering, and a tribute concert
featuring Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the New Lost City
Ramblers. A book-launching party will mark the release of Alan Lomax:
Selected Writings 1934-1997 (Routledge), edited by Ron Cohen. See the
preliminary festival schedule on the adjoining page. ISAM’s colloquium series continued this
fall with a lecture/demonstration on Latin Jazz by Brooklyn College alumnus Arturo
O’Farrill, who was recently named director of the Lincoln Center
Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble. The son of renowned Latin jazz composer Chico
O’Farrill, Arturo led the Lincoln Center ensemble in a premiere performance
at Brooklyn College this past October. Also featured in our series were
ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin (Wesleyan University), who spoke on the
latest transnational trends in klezmer music, and ISAM’s own Jeff Taylor,
who presented his recent research on early jazz pianists Lil Hardin Armstrong
and Lovie Austin. Taylor also delivered a version of the same at the Society
for Music Theory meeting in Columbus, Ohio. ISAM director Ellie Hisama,
currently on leave and working on a volume of popular music essays, presented
a paper on Afro-Asian hip hop to the faculty and students of Columbia
University in early December. A version of her paper is included in this
issue of the Newsletter. Acting director Ray Allen read a paper on Porgy
and Bess as “folk opera” at the fall meeting of the American Folklore
Society. Over winter break, Salim Washington will be touring France
and returning to New York for an engagement at the Jazz Gallery. ISAM , in co-sponsorship with the Mannes
College of Music, organized a symposium entitled Music and New York’s
Gilded Age on 5 October at the New School. Presentations included “Beach
and the Brownings” by Adrienne Fried Block, “Dialogues in Sculpture
and Architecture at the Turn of the Century” by Mark Mennin and Hilary
Lewis, “Opera in New York’s Gilded Age” by John Graziano, and “I
Have a Dream: The Story of James Reese Europe” by Wayne Alpern. An
evening concert included selections by Beach, Griffes, Ives, Mahler, Dvorák,
and Joplin. We thank those readers who have generously
contributed to our Mark Tucker Behind the Beat Fund, and ask those who
have yet to give to consider a donation. With your support we hope to have a
volume of Mark’s jazz columns, drawn from his writing for our Newsletter
(1982-2000), in print by late 2003. —R.A. |