
Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy came from Kansas City to find nationwide fame in the later 1930s. The many records they made between 1929 and 1949 came to exemplify the Kansas City style of jazz, but they were also criticized for their populism and inauthenticity. In The Recordings of Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy, George Burrows considers these records as representing negotiations over racialized styles between black jazz musicians and the racist music industry during a vital period of popularity and change for American jazz. The book explores the way that these reformative negotiations shaped and can be heard in the recorded music. By comparing the band's appropriation of musical styles to the manipulation of masks in black forms of blackface performance--both signifying and subverting racist conceptions of black authenticity--it reveals how the dynamic between black musicians, their audiences and critics impacted upon jazz as a practice and conception.
This book investigates how the recorded output of Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy reflects the complex negotiations between Black jazz musicians and the systemic racism of the American music industry. George Burrows, an expert in jazz history, utilizes a musicological and cultural framework to analyze the band's discography from 1929 to 1949. He argues that the band's stylistic choices were not merely commercial, but served as a form of subversion against prevailing racist expectations of Black authenticity.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars and music historians recognize this work as a significant contribution to the Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz series for its nuanced approach to racial politics in early jazz. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which requires a foundational understanding of both musicology and critical race theory to fully appreciate the author's arguments.
Page Count:
268
Publication Date:
2019-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190947837
ISBN-13:
9780190947835
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