Report on the 2008 Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory: Jazz Meets Pop

Henry Martin – Introduction

[1] The 2008 Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory: Jazz Meets Pop took place at the Eastman School of Music, June 15 to June 18, 2008, in Rochester, New York. The brainchild of founder and director Wayne Alpern (Mannes College of Music), the Mannes Institute is best described as a high-level think tank for professional music scholars. It provides participants with the opportunity to study selected topics in depth in an intimate collegial setting more like a classroom than a conventional academic conference. In addition to plenary sessions and roundtable discussions, a rotating faculty of internationally renowned music scholars offers intensive workshops, each limited to fifteen Fellows who prepare for them diligently in advance. Lively discussions proceed from reading and listening assignments, enabling participants to learn from each other in a sustained and interactive way. Offered annually, on a different topic each spring, the Mannes Institute has been supported by private benefactors since its creation in 2001. (Further information on the Mannes Institute and its programs can be found at the Mannes Institute home page, http://216.71.55.88/mi/.)

[2] This edition of the Mannes Institute celebrated the emergence of music scholarship in two overlapping genres of vernacular Western music—genres that over the last thirty years or so have undergone significant growth both in number of publications and in diversity of scholarly approaches. The Institute drew its 45 Fellows from universities and music schools across the United States and Canada as well as England, France, and Holland. The geographical and scholarly breadth of the Institute’s Fellows and the resulting theoretical and historical approaches helped instill the workshops with energizing give-and-take, camaraderie, and the genuine pleasure of interacting with other established and emerging scholars dedicated to the music and its investigation.

[3] At the opening plenary session, Institute co-chairs Walter Everett and Henry Martin gave brief introductory talks that focused on the growth of scholarship in Western popular music and jazz. Particularly satisfying was the presence at the Institute of many of the scholars who had made seminal contributions to the fields. Walter and Henry’s enumeration of important publications, dissertations, new scholarly journals, and upcoming events helped frame the growth of scholarship in vernacular Western music and set the tone for the workshops to begin.

[4] The three jazz workshops:

The Rhythms of Jazz, led by Cynthia Folio (Temple University)
Pitch-Based Models of Jazz Analysis, led by Steve Larson (University of Oregon)
Charlie Parker’s Bebop Style, led by Henry Martin (Rutgers University-Newark)

The three pop workshops:

Popular Music, Text, and Gender, led by Lori Burns (University of Ottawa)
Textural Stratification in Rock Music, led by John Covach (University of Rochester)
Rock Music of the 1960s, led by Walter Everett (University of Michigan)

[5] Among the special guests for plenary sessions were Lewis Porter (Rutgers University-Newark), whose entertaining presentation featured rare and important jazz films; Albin Zak (University of Albany), who used one of his own compositions to discuss recording-studio production techniques and their analysis; and Joyce McDonough (University of Rochester) and Harold Danko (Eastman School of Music), who spoke on their research relating spoken language to musical style. Christopher Doll (Rutgers University) read his amusing and enlightening “A Tale of Two Louies: The Jazz and Blues Origins of Rock’s Greatest Riff” after being presented with the 2008 Miles Levin Musical Essay Award by Wayne Alpern.

[6] Fellows attending the Mannes Institute this year also had the opportunity to check out the Rochester International Jazz Festival. The Jazz Festival lent an exciting atmosphere to downtown Rochester and provided a late-night hang for many of the Institute’s fellows.

[7] What follows are reports from each of the workshop leaders.

Cynthia Folio – The Rhythms of Jazz

[8] Our workshop examined a number of methodologies for analyzing jazz rhythm and covered a wide range of repertoire, from early jazz to modern jazz, and from intricate instrumental solos to the nuanced vocal interpretations of Billie Holiday. As a result of the contributions from our popular music experts, we discovered interesting parallel rhythmic issues in pop music, most notably in the music of Stevie Wonder, in country music, and in electronic dance music. The preparatory readings for the workshop were articles by David Locke and Cynthia Folio (on polyrhythm); Steve Larson and Keith Waters (on metric displacement); J.A. Prögler and Steve Larson (on swing); and Lori Burns, Cynthia Folio & Robert W. Weisberg, and Hao Huang & Rachel V. Huang (on Billie Holiday).⁽¹⁾

[9] The two topics for Session I were polyrhythm and metric displacement. The article by David Locke on polyrhythm in West African music launched us into a lengthy debate on the degree to which West African music and dance were factors in the origins of jazz and whether the typical polyrhythms from West Africa somehow translated, directly or indirectly, into the types of polyrhythm that occur in jazz improvisation. Next, we discussed polyrhythm in late bop artists, specifically focusing on the concept of polytempo in Ornette Coleman—is this polyrhythm or something entirely different? In the second half of the session, French arranger, composer, and pianist, Laurent Cugny, presented some of his recent work in collecting and categorizing numerous examples of polyrhythm in jazz from the 1920s and 30s.

[10] Session II focused on the fascinating topic of swing. We began with an amusing, confusing, and circular definition of swing from the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz⁽²⁾ —the point being that swing is incredibly difficult to define. The assigned readings for this session approached swing from contrasting perspectives: Prögler used precise measurements to define the asynchronous timings in the rhythm section, or “participatory discrepancies,” while Larson defined swing through metaphor and pitch contour. Since several of the participants in the rhythm workshop were actively engaged in research on swing, most of this session featured presentations by workshop members. Fernando Benadon demonstrated some of his research on the topic of the often-debated swing rhythm—the elusive long-short division of the beat that can vary from even divisions all the way to doubly dotted rhythms. His research shows that the long-short ratio not only varies from one artist to another, but that it also varies radically from beat to beat, depending on such factors as melodic direction and proximity to cadences.⁽³⁾ Tim Hughes demonstrated something akin to the idea of swing in Stevie Wonder’s introduction to “Superstition”: the drum part (performed by Wonder himself) is metronomic at the pulse level, but erratic at the divisions between the pulses, suggesting that this combination creates a kind of rhythmic drive.⁽⁴⁾ In the second part of the session, Matthew Butterfield presented fascinating results from an experiment in which listeners had to determine whether a synthesized walking bass was ahead or behind the synthesized drums, with examples set at varying time distances. When he tried the experiment on the workshop members, we corroborated his findings because we were not consistent in guessing which instrument was ahead, even when the timing discrepancies were well within the defined threshold of hearing. One of Matthew’s conclusions is that it is unlikely that the timing discrepancies drive the groove, as Prögler claims, following Charles Keil’s earlier research; the sense of forward propulsion or “vital drive”⁽⁵⁾ characteristic of swing comes from other factors. After hearing all of the presentations in this particular session, I believe we are coming much closer to a clear definition of swing!

[11] Session III was devoted to Billie Holiday’s unique gift of interpretation, especially in relation to timing. To get us started on the issue of timing, Richard Hermann presented some of his work on contrapuntal structure in jazz; using the tune “I Can’t Get Started” as an example, he showed how the structural notes of the melody are often delayed with respect to the chord changes (and thus the bass line), which has ramifications for jazz pedagogy beyond the simple “chord/scale” and “guide tone” approaches. Next, I led a discussion of my analysis of three recordings of Holiday’s “All of Me” (from 1941, 1946, and 1954). Careful analysis reveals that Holiday was remarkably consistent in whether she placed certain words ahead, on, or (more commonly) behind the beat, despite the fact that the three recordings were from different stages of her career and were also in widely varying tempos and styles. In the second part of this session, Lori led us through a discussion of her article, which connects affective gestures with structural features of Holiday’s performance and also makes interesting connections between aspects of Holiday’s style and those of her self-proclaimed influences, Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong.

[12] This workshop provided a unique opportunity for colleagues in the profession and from around the world to explore a topic in depth and to make meaningful connections. I wish to thank all of the participants for their willingness to carefully read the readings and to share their expertise and their varied perspectives on the fascinating topic of the rhythms of jazz.

Steve Larson – Pitch-Based Models of Jazz Analysis

[13] Our workshop read about different models of jazz harmony (including those described by Steven Strunk and Henry Martin), discussed those models from a theoretical point of view, compared those models with each other and with our understanding of Schenkerian theory, tested the applicability of those models to the analysis of individual jazz heads and improvisations, and discussed ways in which that analysis might illuminate rhythm, motivic processes, and narrative strategies.

[14] In our first session, we discussed Martin’s “syntactic model” (which describes harmonic progressions in terms of stages away from a tonic that is established, as Martin says, “by arrival” — that is, through formal, hypermetric, and other means)⁽⁶⁾ and Strunk’s “layered approach” (a generative grammar, which uses harmonic-chord operations, linear-chord operations, and substitution sets to produce layers of chord progressions in a hypermetric hierarchy).⁽⁷⁾ We developed a glossary of symbols used by these authors. We explored possible extensions of both models. For example, we considered the possibilities of extending Martin’s model to other “spaces” besides the chromatic one he uses (which also equates root motions by descending perfect fifth and descending half step). It was also helpful, when discussing possible extensions to Strunk’s approach, that the author was a member of the workshop. We used both models to analyze a few tunes upon which jazz musicians improvise, including the blues (with specific reference to the versions of “West End Blues” that appear in the Burkhart Anthology), “I Got Rhythm,” “Autumn Leaves,” “All the Things You Are,” and “Giant Steps.” And we compared the results with our own Schenkerian analyses of the same pieces. Many interesting questions arose, concerning differences between jazz and classical harmony, the intent of analytic systems, the metaphors upon which they rest, how best to describe and understand ambiguity, the nature of harmonic function, the implications of analyzing pieces that are performed in repeated cycles, etc.

[15] In our second session, after finishing up some threads from our first session, we turned to a specific performance of “Blue in Green” by Bill Evans. The performance we considered was the one released on the Bill Evans Trio album Portrait in Jazz (however, we also touched briefly on the famous first recording from the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue, as well as a few other recordings of this fascinating tune).⁽⁸⁾ After analyzing the head in some detail, we began moving through the entire performance, one chorus at a time. In addition to the head, each participant had been assigned two choruses of the performance (in the Portrait performance, the number of choruses is the same as the number of participants in our workshop, so this worked out perfectly) — but in overlapping fashion, so that each chorus was analyzed by two participants and each participant shared their choruses with two other participants. Our analyses raised further issues, such as how to deal with Evans’ rich chord voicings, the rhythmic elegance of his playing, the ways in which converging voice-leading strands provide variations in tension that ebb and flow with the rhythms he plays, the fascinating middleground rhythms (and cross-rhythms) we heard, the role of the original melody in the improvisations, the motivic processes at work, etc.

[16] In our third session, we completed our tour through the Portrait performance of “Blue in Green” and then took up some of the interesting questions that had come up during our first two sessions. We looked at Evans’ famous performance of “Autumn Leaves,” discussing details of melodic fluency, pitch resources, hidden repetition, polymeter, and its remarkable schemes of lengthening and shortening gesture lengths. We ended by discussing some of the meta-theoretical issues that had been raised, noting how nice it would have been to have more time, identifying promising new directions for research, celebrating valuable colleague contacts, and thanking all for a wonderful time.

Henry Martin – Parker’s Bebop Style

[17] The purpose of our workshop was twofold: to examine the development of Charlie Parker’s bebop style and to question critically the usual methods of jazz analysis to see if we might develop models that could broaden our perspective by building on the expertise of the popular-music scholars in attendance. Among our readings were articles and excerpts from such authors as Thomas Owens,⁽⁹⁾ Steve Strunk,⁽¹⁰⁾ Steve Larson,⁽¹¹⁾ Vincenzo Caporaletti,⁽¹²⁾ Kwatei Jones-Quartey,⁽¹³⁾ Wolfram Knauer,⁽¹⁴⁾ Lawrence Koch,⁽¹⁵⁾ Henry Martin,⁽¹⁶⁾ and Carl Woideck.⁽¹⁷⁾ Carl was a member of our workshop and, as author of a book on Parker’s music and life, was able to offer particular expertise on biographical details from a music historian’s perspective.

[18] In Session I, we began by exploring Parker’s roots in the 1930s Kansas City jazz scene and his development of a jazz improvisational and compositional style that came to be known as bebop. We listened to his earliest recordings and compared his style to that of his mentor, the saxophonist Buster Smith. We also discussed the significance of popular songs in the swing era, the Kansas City scene, and the stylistic transformation from swing to bebop. I suggested that we keep in mind the concept of improvisational formula, for which I proposed a breakdown into 1) pathway, 2) figure, and 3) lick, with each stage showing an increase of length as well as conscious application on the part of the improviser. In examining Parker’s earliest extant improvisation, a solo performance of “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Body and Soul” (probably recorded in early 1940 when Parker was 19), we noticed various improvisational formulas already becoming a part of his technique. Of these, we found particularly significant “enclosing figures” (a way of targeting notes from above and below, e.g., E–C–D) and a melodic line that projected compound melodies—both important features of Parker’s mature solo style.

[19] In the second half of Session I, we examined a jam session improvisation on “Sweet Georgia Brown” that has been called the “missing link” between swing and bebop. Recorded in early 1943, it features Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, accompanied by bassist Oscar Pettiford. Members of the workshop felt that this piece showed a transition to the long eighth-note lines and increased chromaticism of bebop melodic style. Some interesting differences of opinion arose regarding proper application of Schenkerian-based principles to the analysis of these lines. In particular, my own approach of viewing particular features of bebop lines as informing and shaping middleground and background structures was contrasted with Walter Everett’s view of these idiosyncratic structures as lower-level variants of conventional Schenkerian forms.

[20] In Session II, our focus was on Parker as a bebop player in the mid-to-late 1940s. During this period of his career, Parker had attained maturity in his improvisational style and was leading his own groups. We began with an investigation of “Cherokee” and its contrafact, “Ko Ko.” Parker had been developing an improvisation on “Cherokee” since the early 1940s, so we compared his recorded improvisation on this tune to the masterly version of 1945. We were able to detect in Parker’s work his voice-leading skill, his adroit phrasing against the two-, four-, and eight-bar symmetries of the song forms, his occasional sideslipping (playing a half-step above or below the prevailing harmony), and his development of relevant thematic motives. In addition, I suggested that Parker’s development of this improvisation amounted to a kind of composition, insofar as earlier passages were retained, developed, and arguably improved from version to version.

[21] For the second half of Session II, we began with a presentation by Keith Salley on the motivic structure of “Crazeology,” a Benny Harris composition recorded by Parker in 1947. The tune is unusual in that it largely follows the chord changes of “I Got Rhythm” in B, but with the unexpected insertion of a brief tonicization of G major in the A section. Keith first showed how the original tune was motivically unified, and then he related the melody to features of Parker’s solo. Keith’s model deftly united features of contour theory and Schenkerian analysis.

[22] We finished the second session with an examination of “Bird Gets the Worm,” a contrafact of the Romberg-Hammerstein song, “Lover, Come Back to Me.” Although Parker does not play the melody of the original in “Bird Gets the Worm,” we know that he knew the song because there is a recording of him playing it at a previous jam session. Here, I argued that Parker’s opening melodic statement on “Bird Gets the Worm” is based on duplication of the original song’s underlying voice-leading and motivic structures. “Bird Gets the Worm” is notable not only for its brilliance, but also for its use of A major, a relatively rare key for Parker. In less common keys, Parker avoids his most common formulas, and so his playing seems to take on added freshness.

[23] Session III was given over to Parker’s last period: his controversial 1950s recordings with voices and strings that were produced by Norman Granz. Here, we were able to highlight the historical expertise of the popular-music scholars in the workshop, as these recordings showed Parker moving beyond his core bebop audience and embracing trends in the popular music of the era. John Howland gave a presentation on “with strings” recordings that helped set the tone for the Parker-Granz collaborations. In particular, John showed that these recordings of Parker were by no means an aberration, but rather were standard fare in the “middlebrow” tradition that could be traced back to the influence of Paul Whiteman in the 1920s and his attempt to “make a lady of jazz.” Concentrating on Parker’s recording of “Just Friends,” we noted how it reflected various elements of both jazz and popular music, in particular the signifiers (harp arpeggios, string tremolos, etc.) that recalled Hollywood film scores and so contrasted the bebop solo lines Parker brought to the arrangement. We also discussed the extent to which these recordings reflected Parker’s interest in 20th-century concert music (Stravinsky, Hindemith, et al.) and his desire (never fulfilled) to record what we would now consider “third-stream” music.

[24] At the end of the third session, I summed up the experience of the workshop by noting that there are two important facets of Parker’s persona. On the one hand, he was part of the popular music tradition of his era: working in dance bands and big bands, recording with singers, and appearing as a “star” performer, both with his late-1940s working band and as a soloist. On the other hand, he developed a concept of jazz improvisation that embraced subtle aspects of composition and improvisation, was highly virtuosic and sometimes abstract, and exhibited sophisticated motivic and voice-leading connection to original material that might be considered more characteristic of the “art music” side of the popular-fine art divide. The popular-music scholars in the workshop also helped bring out the kinds of cultural and sociological connections that are significant in positioning an important musical figure in the context of his or her era. I would like to thank all my workshop members for their hard work in preparation, eager participation, and insightful contributions.

Lori Burns – Popular Music, Text, and Gender

[25] This workshop focused on the expression of gender and sexuality through popular music. Working with the music of pop/rock artists who explore gender themes in their lyrical and musical strategies, we considered theoretical models for the analysis of musical materials in relation to lyrical perspectives. Through critical readings in popular music studies of text, music, and images, we examined and debated how social and cultural values are expressed through popular music songs and videos. The discussions moved from very detailed examination of a theoretical concept or analytic assertion to larger questions of social values and gendered perspectives.

[26] The first session offered a selection of articles on gender in popular music from a cultural studies perspective (Holly Kruse,⁽¹⁸⁾ Simon Frith,⁽¹⁹⁾ Nicola Dibben,⁽²⁰⁾ and Burns/Mélisse Lafrance⁽²¹⁾); these authors explore the subject positions that an artist can adopt and the ways in which such subjectivity can be exploited in the popular music industry. This selection of articles was complemented by selected writings of Richard Middleton,⁽²²⁾ Eric Clarke,⁽²³⁾ and Allan Moore⁽²⁴⁾ who offer perspectives on the interpretation of musical meanings in relation to those subject positions. We also read Burns’ article on Vocal Authority,⁽²⁵⁾ which offers a model for interpreting the many layers of subjectivity or agency in popular song. In our discussion of these materials, we explored the cultural objectives and analytic perspectives that are developed in the writings: what are the main analytic values that the author brings to his/her interpretive approach; how is the music interpreted in relation to the analytic principles? In this discussion, we found many points of common ground, but also many interesting points of divergence.

[27] The second session moved into the realm of image, music, and text. This section featured three articles on Madonna videos by Nicholas Cook,⁽²⁶⁾ Susan McClary,⁽²⁷⁾ and Carol Vernallis,⁽²⁸⁾ and an article by Stan Hawkins⁽²⁹⁾ on Annie Lennox. We identified the methods these authors rely upon for their interpretations of gendered meaning in music video and we discussed the analytic techniques that can be used to coordinate words, music, and images. Our discussion here was not just about the content of the given example, but rather about the methods for analyzing multi-media. The content did, however, lead to some interesting debates about video meanings and gendered perspectives.

[28] The third and final workshop was set up as an open-ended discussion of two recently produced videos that have much potential for the analysis and interpretation of gendered subjectivity: Pink’s “Stupid Girls” and Rihanna’s “Umbrella.” Both videos are highly referential, and consequently, we were able to enlarge our discussion to the interplay of meanings in these videos as they relate to other works and artists. This material led to a very dynamic discussion of meanings in the domain of images and gender representation. Throughout the discussion, we were aware of the fluidity of meanings as constructed and received. The selected videos made evident the complex interactions between commodification and artistry, conformity and resistance.

[29] In this group, we were fortunate to have participants from a wide range of specialization and experience. The subject matter was at times politically charged as we debated, for instance, how the “feminine” is culturally constituted, how artists conform or resist, how power is attributed, and what ideologies guide the production of music; nevertheless, there was a consistent level of respect and appreciation for the different points of view that emerged. There were also some very healthy cross-pollination effects as ideas from the jazz workshops were brought into the room. Participants brought their own individual expertise to the discussions, and the result was a very creative, stimulating, and intellectually rewarding experience for everyone.

John Covach – Textural Stratification

[30] Are there cases in which rock music creates musical layers that resist reduction down to a single harmonic-melodic analysis? That is, we usually think of “classical music” as a coordinated structure, and this allows us to produce harmonic analyses, define chord and non-chord tones, discuss dissonance treatment, and so on. A stratified texture, on the other hand, resists such reduction and challenges the traditional notions of harmonic analysis, chord and non-chord tones, counterpoint, etc. A melody may proceed with only the loosest connection to the underlying chord sequence that accompanies it, while the bass part may also move freely against the melody and harmonies. In such cases, reducing things down to a chord progression and/or structural soprano, bass, and their counterpoint might seem to distort to the music.

[31] In the first session, we used David Temperley’s recent Popular Music article to help introduce some of the fundamental issues regarding stratification.⁽³⁰⁾ Temperley’s use of the “melodic-harmonic divorce” (Allan Moore’s term) was discussed, as well as Temperley’s idea of the loose verse-tight chorus model, which introduces the notion that entire songs need not be coordinated or stratified, and that there can be a kind of poetry that arises from the movement between these two types of structure. We looked especially at Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” since this is one of Temperley’s examples for both the melodic-harmonic divorce and loose verse-tight chorus structure. We also discussed The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” and the Beatles’ “Help!” in some detail.

[32] The second session was devoted mostly to a discussion of Yes’ “Roundabout.” If we can determine that layers in a texture can pull apart enough to be considered stratified, the next stage is determining at what level they are indeed coordinated, if only loosely. While discussion in the first session focused on exploring stratification, the second section zeroed in on how stratified elements are coordinated at a more middleground level. There was very lively discussion on these topics, and members of the workshop also brought in their own examples, which further stimulated and broadened our consideration of the issues involved.

[33] We began the third session by returning to some of the ideas and pieces we had discussed in the previous two, and new examples were also presented by members of the group. We then moved on to a discussion of microrhythms—the idea that attack points we might assume occur strictly on the beat (or simultaneously among instruments in an ensemble), often do not do so, but are separated by very small amounts of time, measured in milliseconds. Such “deviations” can be accidental, but often they are part of what we loosely call “feel” in pop music. A number of examples were explored, including James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour,” and Parliament’s “Tear The Roof Off The Sucker.” We also discussed the ways in which polymeter can be used to create stratification, using The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s “Dance of Maya” and King Crimson’s “Frame By Frame” for discussion.

[34] The group was almost evenly split between rock and jazz scholars, and this proved to be very fortunate. Discussion was lively, focused, and extremely productive. Many of the session participants reported that they found the sessions stimulating and useful, but none benefited as much as the session leader. I am extremely grateful to this group for their marvelous feedback and energetic participation.

Walter Everett – Rock Music of the 1960s

[35] The workshop covered a broad range of repertoire from a number of different perspectives. The three sessions progressed from a fairly structured opening presentation through a final exercise in spontaneous brainstorming in interpretive storytelling. The workshop mixed close readings of recordings that supported diverse and competing analyses alongside the probing of larger questions applicable to repertoires and methodologies both within and outside our particular interests of the day. We explored aspects of rock historiography, analytical technique and modes of attending matters of musical expression, especially in a context of text-music relations.

[36] The basic approach was to begin with a consideration of compositional processes and to end by exercising listening strategies. We took care to balance attention to the roles of both the conventional and the idiosyncratic in both of these domains. For our opening task, the availability of 25 audio documents forming three sketchbooks devoted to the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” spanning from John Lennon’s first solo vocal/guitar ideas through a final mix, allowed us to trace the gradual evolution of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, formal, timbral, electronic, and stylistic decision-making that took shape along with the changing lyrics. We probed the contributions of all four Beatles, producer George Martin, session musicians, and engineers in the creation of this astonishing text. We concluded our final session by choosing a piece for which none had prepared—the Beatles’ “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” was suggested—and, in a collaborative polyphony of voices, we shared insights that could guide a listener’s rich interpretation.

[37] Along the way, we devoted nearly two hours to the parsing of the Supremes’ “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone,” an experimental product of Motown’s most successful composer-producers, Holland-Dozier-Holland. This song allowed us to consider useful approaches to hearing complex and potentially ambiguous harmonic and voice-leading relationships that together make a powerful (and groovy) tonal and dramatic statement. Considerations of Frank Zappa’s aesthetic attitudes undergirded our examination of the large-scale structure and some of the detailed surface in the Mothers of Invention’s “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.” We were also able to make reference to a number of other tracks we had studied through transcriptions and analytical readings: the Beatles’ “A Day In the Life,” “Something,” and “She’s Leaving Home,” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Drifting.”

[38] The diversity of backgrounds and views present in this wonderful group of scholars, some focused in pop research and others intent on jazz, made for a mutually supportive pluralistic experience in sharing, risk-taking, and mind-stretching that could never happen in any other domain.

Henry Martin
Department of Visual and Performing Arts
Rutgers University-Newark
martinh@andromeda.rutgers.edu

Cynthia Folio
Esther Boyer College of Music
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
cfolio@temple.edu

Steve Larson
School of Music and Dance
University of Oregon
steve@uoregon.edu

Lori Burns
Department of Music
The University of Ottawa
50 University Private
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5
laburns@uottawa.ca

John Covach
Department of Music
University of Rochester
Eastman School of Music
john.covach@rochester.edu

Walter Everett
Department of Theory
The University of Michigan
School of Music, Theatre & Dance
1100 Baits Dr.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2085
wte714@sbcglobal.net

Footnotes

1. David Locke, “Principles of Offbeat Timing and Cross-Rhythm in Southern Ewe Dance Drumming,” Ethnomusicology 26/2 (1982): 217–275; Cynthia Folio, “An Analysis of Polyrhythm in Selected Improvised Jazz Solos,” in Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz Since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies, ed. Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard Hermann (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1995), 103–134; Steve Larson, “Rhythmic Displacement in the Music of Bill Evans,” in Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music: Festschrift in Honor of Carl Schachter, ed. Poundie Burstein and David Gagné (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2006), 103–122; Keith Waters, “Blurring the Barline: Metric Displacement in the Piano Solos of Herbie Hancock,” Annual Review of Jazz Studies 8 (1996): 19–37; J.A. Prögler, “Searching for Swing: Participatory Discrepancies in the Jazz Rhythm Section,” Ethnomusicology 39/1 (1995): 21–54; Steve Larson, “Swing and Motive in Three Performances by Oscar Peterson,” Journal of Music Theory 43/2 (1999): 283–314; Lori Burns, “Feeling the Style: Vocal Gesture and Musical Expression in Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong,” Music Theory Online 11/3 (2005); Cynthia Folio and Robert W. Weisberg, “Billie Holiday’s Art of Paraphrase: A Study in Consistency,” New Musicology (Poznan, Poland: Poznan Press, 2006), 247–275; Hao Huang and Rachel V. Huang, “Billie Holiday and Tempo Rubato: Understanding Rhythmic Expressivity,” Annual Review of Jazz Studies 7 (1994–5): 181–199.
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2. J. Bradford Robinson, “Swing,” in New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, ed. Barry Kernfeld (London: Macmillan Press Limited, 1988).
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3. Fernando Benadon, “Slicing the Beat: Jazz Eighth-Notes as Expressive Microrhythm,” Ethnomusicology 50/1 (2006): 73–98.
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4. More details of Tim’s analysis are available as a pdf file online: Tim Hughes, “Groove and Flow: Six Analytical Essays on the Music of Stevie Wonder,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2003): 151–58. Available at
 http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Music/NewsGenInfo/AcademicStaff/Hughes/GrooveAndFlow.pdf.
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5. André Hodeir, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, trans. David Noakes (New York: Grove, 1956), 207–209.
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6. Henry Martin, “Jazz Harmony, A Syntactic Background,” Annual Review of Jazz Studies 4 (1988), 9–30; we also read parts of his book Charlie Parker and Thematic Improvisation (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996).
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7. Steven Strunk, “The Harmony of Early Bop: A Layered Approach,” Journal of Jazz Studies 6 (1979), 4–53; we also read his “Bebop Melodic Lines: Tonal Characteristics.” Annual Review of Jazz Studies 3 (1985), 97–120.
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8. Bill Evans Trio, Portrait in Jazz (1959, Riverside), three takes; Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959, Columbia); Tierney Sutton, Blue in Green (2000, Telarc).
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9. Thomas Owens, “Charlie Parker: Techniques of Improvisation” (2 vols.) (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1974) and Bebop: The Music and Its Players (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
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10. Steven Strunk, “Bebop Melodic Lines: Tonal Characteristics,” Annual Review of Jazz Studies 3 (1985): 97–120.
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11. Steve Larson, “The Art of Charlie Parker's Rhetoric,” Annual Review of Jazz Studies 8 (1996): 141–66.
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12. Vincenzo Caporaletti, “Evoluzione di un volo: il ‘Famous Alto Break’ nelle 24 incisioni parkeriane di ‘Night in Tunisia,’” Musica Oggi 24 (2005–06): 44–64.
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13. Kwatei Jones-Quartey, “‘Parker’s Mood’ Revisited,” Annual Review of Jazz Studies 10 (1999): 221–35.
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14. Wolfram Knauer, “Parker’s Mood: Genesis of a Blues Improvisation,” Musica Oggi 24 (2005–06): 65–92.
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15. Lawrence Koch, Yardbird Suite: A Compendium of the Music and Life of Charlie Parker, 2nd revised ed. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999).
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16. Henry Martin, Charlie Parker and Thematic Improvisation (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996).
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17. Carl Woideck, Charlie Parker: His Music and Life (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
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18. Holly Kruse, “Gender” in Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ed. Bruce Horner and Thomas Swiss (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 1999): 85–95.
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19. Simon Frith, Performing Rites. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996): 183–202.
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20. Nicola Dibben, “Representations of Femininity in Popular Music” Popular Music 18 (1999): 331–355.
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21. Lori Burns and Mélisse Lafrance, Disruptive Divas: Feminism, Identity, and Popular Music (New York: Routledge Press, 2002): 46–61.
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22. Richard Middleton, “Pop, Rock, and Interpretation” in The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, ed. Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 213–225.
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23. Eric Clarke, Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005): 91–125.
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24. Allan Moore, “The Persona-Environment Relation in Recorded Song,” Music Theory Online 11/4 (2005).
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25. Lori Burns, “Vocal Authority and Listener Engagement: Musical and Narrative Expressive Strategies in Female Pop/Rock Artists, 1993–95” Chapter in Sounding Out Rock, ed. John Covach and Mark Spicer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Forthcoming).
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26. Nicholas Cook, Analysing Musical Multimedia (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1998): 147–173.
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27. Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991): Chapter 7.
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28. Carol Vernallis, Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004): 209–235.
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29. Stan Hawkins, Settling the Pop Score: Pop Texts and Identity Politics. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002): 104–127.
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30. David Temperley, “The Melodic-Harmonic ‘Divorce’ in Rock,” Popular Music, 26/2 (2007): 323–342.
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