INSTRUCTIONS
you must write an essay of 3000 words. This essay forms 100% of the module work and grade. Your essay will be marked according to the following criteria, which are derived from the module’s Learning Outcomes. 1. Understanding of jazz’s musical practices and chronologies 2. Identification and explanation of techniques in jazz creativity 3. Engagement with debates around musical and critical meaning 4. Quality of academic research, thought, argument and written presentation What is Jazz? Further essay guidance The approach Having chosen a question that you think will be interesting, the first thing to do is to read, carefully, the slide PDFs from related sessions (I will provide). The basic problems around each question are all addressed in the related session slides. As you read them, make a list of these issues. You should end up with around 5 bullet points that will give you a framework of questions that you can ask and then answer. Be thinking about the ways you want to approach the question: the music you want to discuss, and the kinds of arguments you want to think about and make. Note all these things down at points in the essay plan where you think you might bring them in. All this will change when you start reading and writing, but it’s a good way to start organising your thoughts. Then, make a reading list from the bibliography and further reading given at the end of each PDF. Make a list of key words for you to search for, and get on Jstor and Rilm. Go to the library shelves (there are lots of books on jazz), and start to read. Go through all the set listening, and make a list of artists, styles, practices to follow up on. Listen to lots of stuff. Your essay does not have to cover the whole historical span that we looked at in the module. You will want to begin by given an outline of the way responses to your topic have changed over time, and to sketch out some birds’-eye view background, but by all means focus much of your essay on a smaller area: an artist or group of artists (though see below), a particular debate or historical event, etc. Things to avoid: too narrow or uncritical a focus, e.g. a straight biography of one musician and their work; uncritical Great Man lionising of the type that litters writing on jazz and that we have tried to critique over the module; straightforward narrative with little critical discussion. You can use musical analysis and standard notation, but if you don’t need to or don’t want to, don’t. Be creative in the way you describe music: use words and specific track timings, other kinds of notation, etc. Your essay must include a good range of scholarly sources. You can of course include all kinds of other sources too, but the backbone of your research (apart from music listening) should be careful reading, summary and discussion of things from academic writing on jazz. The questions All of these questions could (and often do) receive simple, one-sentence answers. But the point of this module has been to show that things we often imagine as stable concepts – like ‘jazz’ – have actually been subject to enormous amounts of debate and reshaping over the last 100 years. That’s why the module is called What is Jazz?: it’s actually a hard question to answer. So, essays responding to these questions need to do these things: Sketch out the range of ideas that musicians, critics, scholars, listeners etc. have articulated on your chosen topic. Critically scrutinise those ideas. Examine all these things by way of musical and textual examples as appropriate. Make a final evaluation of your own: what is most important here? Why did it matter, or why does it matter now? Finally, feel free to take a liberal attitude towards your musical subject matter. Most jazz studies, and most introductory jazz modules, will focus on the canon of greats. We’ve paid a lot of attention to Ellington, Monk, Parker etc. as well. But we have also tried to see how ideas about jazz have shaped music that many would see as outside that tradition. Do you want to discuss Madlib, Erykah Badu, Sade, Jobim, Robert Wyatt, sampling, studio production techniques, film, album covers, etc., etc.? There’s a way to do any of those things.
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