How to Listen to Jazz

by Ted Gioia

Overview

A "radiantly accomplished" (Wall Street Journal) music scholar presents an accessible introduction to the art of listening to jazz

In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively introduction to one of America's premier art forms. He tells us what to listen for in a performance and includes a guide to today's leading jazz musicians. From Louis Armstrong's innovative sounds to the jazz-rock fusion of Miles Davis, Gioia covers the music's history and reveals the building blocks of improvisation. A true love letter to jazz by a foremost expert, How to Listen to Jazz is a must-read for anyone who's ever wanted to understand and better appreciate America's greatest contribution to music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465093496
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ted Gioia is a music historian and the author of twelve books, including Music. His three previous books on the social history of music—Work Songs, Healing Songs, and Love Songs—have each been honored with the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Gioia's wide-ranging activities as a critic, scholar, performer, and educator have established him as a leading global guide to music past, present, and future.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 The Mystery of Rhythm 1

2 Getting Inside the Music 17

3 The Structure of Jazz 51

4 The Origins of Jazz 73

5 The Evolution of Jazz Styles 91

6 A Closer Look at Some Jazz Innovators 153

7 Listening to Jazz Today 205

Appendix: The Elite 150 223

Acknowledgements 231

Notes 233

Index 237

Editorial Reviews

03/14/2016
Pianist and historian Gioia (The History of Jazz) seeks to enlighten those most unfortunate of souls: music lovers whose attempts to understand jazz have been routinely thwarted by what he believes to be the vague, unhelpful criteria used by reviewers. Theorizing that meticulous listening sessions can remove much of the mystery from this nebulous art form, the author walks fans through a crash course in jazz appreciation that’s suitable for newcomers and intermediate listeners alike. Some sections of Gioia’s historical overview read like textbook synopses, and his references to media such as YouTube can sound preemptively out of date, but his prose is nevertheless inviting and often playful, sprinkled with personal anecdotes and barely contained snark regarding the state of modern pop rock. Most valuable is the extensive catalogue of recommendations, not just of the genre’s top performers but of 150 contemporary jazz musicians—a list that new fans can use to kickstart their journey, and experienced ones can reference to keep up with the form’s continuing evolution. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"How to Listen to Jazz is an effort to teach casual listeners how 'careful listening can demystify virtually all of the intricacies and marvels of jazz.'"—New York Times

"How to Listen to Jazz fills an important and obvious gap by offering a sensible and jargon-free introduction to what Gioia calls 'the most joyous sound invented during the entire course of twentieth-century music.' The book deserves a place alongside such classic works of jazz criticism as Martin Williams's The Jazz Tradition, Will Friedwald's Jazz Singing, the books of Gary Giddins and Gioia's own The History of Jazz."—Washington Post

"[How to Listen to Jazz is a] satisfying new book.... One of the best features of the book is a set of 'music maps,' as Mr. Gioia calls them, that serve as a guide to individual recordings."—Wall Street Journal

“Mr. Gioia could not have done a better job. Through him, jazz might even find new devotees.”—Economist

"How to Listen to Jazz is a packed and useful introduction to the medium with suggestions and aids for the listener who wants to gain entrance to a rich and complicated body of work."—Weekly Standard

“Amid the cacophony of the past year, one paean to improvised order emerged from the pen of music critic Ted Gioia. That book, How to Listen to Jazz, deserves your undivided engagement.”
 —Brock Dahl, Washington Free Beacon

"How to Listen to Jazz is a thorough, impassioned guide to a sound that tends either to inspire deep, almost religious devotion or cause eyes to go crossed...[Gioia] elucidates the music in a way that increases the listener's sense of awe and wonder, rather than supplants it."—Columbia Daily Tribune

"Gioia's engaging yet authoritative style makes How to Listen to Jazz not just a valuable primer but a delight to read."—City Journal

A perfect way...to begin an understanding of a music that is, in truth, very, very easy to love."—Buffalo News

“[Gioia] walks fans through a crash course in jazz appreciation that’s suitable for newcomers and intermediate listeners alike…His prose is…inviting and often playful… Most valuable is the extensive catalogue of recommendations, not just of the genre’s top performers but of 150 contemporary jazz musicians—a list that new fans can use to kickstart their journey, and experienced ones can reference to keep up with the form’s continuing evolution.”—Publishers Weekly

"How to Listen to Jazz is a fresh, clearly written and infinitely usable book that should put the jazz novice on track."—Library Journal

"A pretense-free primer on learning to appreciate jazz.... Curious neophytes can start here."—Mojo

"As jazz enters its second century, becoming more multi-faceted apace, guidance for the novice—listener or musician—is more useful than ever, and Ted Gioia offers it expertly, in blessedly readable prose."—Dan Morgenstern, Director emeritus, Institute of Jazz Studies and author of Living with Jazz

"This book does what so many have tried to and failed: it teaches without preaching and empowers the reader to search for their own understanding and preferences. It's a welcome and needed addition to everyone's bookshelf."—Wayne Winborne, Executive Director, Institute of Jazz Studies

From the Publisher

04/15/2016
Pianist, author (The History of Jazz; The Jazz Standards), music columnist (The Daily Beast), and educator (formerly music, Stanford Univ.) Gioia has written a concise guide to jazz appreciation. Unlike some books of this type, the focus of this work is on relatively easy-to-discern distinctions between the jazz styles and leading performers. The author provides minimal biographical information on the musicians, preferring to concentrate on the music than on the personal details of his subjects' lives. The result is a fresh, clearly written, and infinitely usable book that should put the jazz novice on track. Readers with a more thorough knowledge of the genre might be a bit disappointed. VERDICT Written primarily to introduce newcomers to the genre and its primary artists, this volume should prove to do just what Gioia set out to accomplish.—James E. Perone, Univ. of Mount Union, Alliance, OH

Library Journal

The author’s career as a pianist and music critic positions him well to explain how to critically listen to a complex musical form like jazz. Narrator Peter Ganim’s ear for sentence structure makes him an able interpreter of the author’s ideas. Some listeners will notice that his phrasing palette is a bit limited or repetitive, or that his vocal pitch sounds like it’s being forced into a lower-than-normal range. But these complaints will become nonissues for most listeners because it’s the author’s extraordinary grasp of musical composition and performance that dominates the listening experience. His discussions of how jazz players think about musical structure and what performance aspects separate the pros from the rest of us are exceptionally lucid and enlightening. T.W. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

The author’s career as a pianist and music critic positions him well to explain how to critically listen to a complex musical form like jazz. Narrator Peter Ganim’s ear for sentence structure makes him an able interpreter of the author’s ideas. Some listeners will notice that his phrasing palette is a bit limited or repetitive, or that his vocal pitch sounds like it’s being forced into a lower-than-normal range. But these complaints will become nonissues for most listeners because it’s the author’s extraordinary grasp of musical composition and performance that dominates the listening experience. His discussions of how jazz players think about musical structure and what performance aspects separate the pros from the rest of us are exceptionally lucid and enlightening. T.W. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2018 - AudioFile