New Orleans: Creolization and all that Jazz

by Berndt Ostendorf

Overview

Ralph Ellison once wrote that the rules of performance in American culture are jazz-shaped. This book explores the Afro-creole core culture of New Orleans as the mainspring of this energizing music. Much of the cultural capital of the city is buried in a complex, tripartite racial history, which threatens the binary logic of North American racism with all sorts of sensual transgressions. Its jazz-derived culture combines elements of African, French, Spanish and Anglo-American cultural practices which in their fusion have created a unique propulsive energy: Second line parades, jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indians, Cajun and creole foodways, minstrelsy, dance, ragtime and jazz will be interpreted as the result of a set of historical circumstances unique to this Caribbean metropolis of the senses. Including a preface by Günter Bischof and pictures by Michael P. Smith

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783706557214
Publisher:	StudienVerlag
Publication date:	03/25/2013
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	204
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

The author: Berndt Ostendorf studied History, philosophical Anthropology and English at the universities of Freiburg, Glasgow and Philadelphia. From 1976 to 1980 he was Professor of American Studies at the Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe University Frankfurt and from 1981 to 2005 Professor of North American Cultural History and director of the Amerika Institur at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. Ostendorf also was visiting professor at the University of New Orleans, Harvard University, University of Massachusetts and Venice International University.

Table of Contents

Preface Günter Bischof 9

Introduction 13

1 New Orleans: A Caribbean Metropolis of the Senses 15

2 Jazz Funerals and the Second Line: African American Celebration and Public Space 29

3 "Jambalaya, Crawfish Pie and Filé Gumbo." The Creolizing Cuisines of New Orleans 53

4 Creole Cultures and the Process of Creolization: With special attention to Louisiana 65

5 Et in Acadia ego: The Renaissance of Cajun Culture from 1968 to the Present 87

6 Rhythm, Riots, and Revolution: Political Paranoia, Cultural Fundamentalism and African American Music 97

7 Double Consciousness Revisited: African American Expressive Culture and the Dilemma of Interpretation 111

8 The Musical World of Doctorow's Ragtime 131

9 Subversive Reeducation? Jazz as a liberating force in Europe 149

10 Growing up in the Fifties: Jazz, the Cold War and the Birth of American Studies 167

11 Is American Culture Jazz-Shaped? African American Rules of Performance 181

Bibliography 195

Credits 203