Session 13 � Transnationalism 1

Saturday 3 September – 14.30-15.45 (Blue Note)
Chair: Walter van de Leur

Panel Abstract

The consensus jazz historical narrative has always acknowledged migration and relocation as a key thematic but has mostly utilized them as a means of articulating dimensions of U.S. race relations. This panel seeks to resituate terms such as diaspora and displacement such that they speak to a broader array of socioeconomic factors and geographic locales. It assumes that place and identity continue to be important markers of jazz history and practice while insisting upon a richer global perspective and attention to the fluidity of modes and genres.

Andrew Dewar – Hot and Cool from Buenos Aires to Chicago The Argentine �Hot Dogs Band,� Guillermo Gregorio, and Transnational Jazz Aesthetics

�Dance under the stars to the music of 1924� reads the handbill�but it is not 1924, it is 1956�and Buenos Aires, Argentina is not normally considered a bastion of Chicagostyle �hot� jazz. Nonetheless, the little-known Hot Dogs Band, which included composer and reedist Guillermo Gregorio, played their nostalgic take on this music, separated by time and geography, but drawn to a cosmopolitan aesthetic ideal. Engaging with the tropes of the �journeyman musician� and more broadly the �jazz journey,� this paper discusses two kinds of migration � the physical movements of Argentine-American composer, saxophonist and clarinettist Guillermo Gregorio, and aspects of the aesthetic migration of jazz as it relates to mid-1950s Buenos Aires. Gregorio�s story is compelling global journey from Buenos Aires to Vienna, Los Angeles and finally Chicago, often led by his individualized concept of the �cool.� By viewing Gregorio�s physical migrations as a movement toward his aesthetic ideals, we see a captivating manifestation of the transnational circulation of jazz.

John Gennari – Tenor Madness: Joe Lovano�s �Viva Caruso� and Italian Diasporic Cultural Influences in Jazz

�Move over Pavarotti; the greatest Italian tenor around today isn�t Luciano, but Lovano� � so says jazz critic Will Friedwald, in his liner note for saxophonist Joe Lovano�s 2002 recording �Viva Caruso, a largely overlooked recent jazz recording that channels the influence of classic tenor Enrico Caruso. By evoking Caruso�s voice, body, and musical world; suggesting connections between early New Orleans jazz and Mediterranean song forms and rhythms; and drawing attention to a masculine operatic idiom central to jazz since the pioneering work of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Coleman Hawkins, Lovano�s �Viva Caruso� fosters fresh ways of thinking about the vital presence of Italian culture in the jazz tradition. My paper will use this recording to anchor a discussion of jazz�s relationship to Italian cultural forms and practices.

James Hall – Ivo Perelman: Memory and Modern Practice

Contemporary tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman came to the United States from Brazil at age 25 in 1986. His prolific recording career has been marked distinctly by a kind of push and pull relationship with his Brazilian heritage and New York�s great abstract expressionist painting traditions. He has shaped a dynamic artistic practice that holds off folk nationalisms by a dizzying array of interventions that simultaneously mark the power of place and seek to undermine its permanent hold. This embrace of a constantly remembering displacement has also manifest itself as an unusual means of figuring economic viability for the constantly experimenting musician.

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