What to Listen For in Jazz

by Barry Kernfeld

Exhilarating and exciting, subtle and profound―jazz requires knowledge and understanding to be truly appreciated. Barry Kernfeld here provides a thorough, learned, and accessible introduction to jazz, discussing its musical concepts, procedures, and styles and providing the background necessary to fully enjoy this musical art. The book is organized around twenty-one historical jazz recordings―from the New Orleans Rhythm Kings' Tin Roof Blues (1923) to Ornette Coleman's Honeymooners (1987)―that are analyzed in the text and included in a compact disc that accompanies the book.

Barry Kernfeld draws from these musical works to illustrate jazz rhythm, forms, arrangement, composition, improvisation, style, and sound (recording fidelity, tuning systems, instrumentation, and timbre). Included in the book are eighty-five notated music examples keyed to the compact disc and a biographical dictionary of musicians who figure prominently on the disc.

By laying out musical ideas that unify the genre, rather than by splintering it along stylistic lines, this authoritative book offers a new method for enhancing enjoyment and understanding of jazz. It will be a valued resource for students and general listeners who wish to know more about this unique musical form.

Genres: Music, Jazz, Nonfiction, Art

294 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 1995

About the author

Barry Dean Kernfeld, (1950- ) is an American musicologist and jazz saxophonist who has researched and published extensively about the history of jazz and the biographies of its musicians.

Reviews

[Happyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

The marriage of text with CD is what makes this book so useful. There's a good diversity of styles and sounds amongst the 21 tracks, which include everything from early New Orleans Jazz to Free Jazz and Fusion. And he uses the tracks well. For instance, he admits that timbre is difficult to articulate in words so he instead instructs the reader to compare the timbre of tenor saxophonists John Coltraine (expansive and multi-dimensional), Coleman Hawkins (expansive, soft and smooth), Sonny Rollins (focused, hollow and dry), and Lester Young (focused, veiled and silky smooth). To further expand his point, he also breaks down a Duke Ellington track by the shifts in sound of similar instruments throughout the piece.

There is a lot of detailed music theory in this book and I'll admit that I sometimes got lost in all the musical jargon and had no use for the printed musical scores examples (haven't read sheet music in over 20 years and have lost the skill). Yet, as he points out, you really don't need to know all these concepts to enjoy the music but it will help you to become a more knowledgable and appreciative listener. He tells one story where he was asked to offer some samples for a class discussing the difference between noise and music. He offers up John Coltraine's Ascension, a sample of which is included on the CD. He then decided it wasn't a good example because he had become such an experienced listener and was so familiar with Coltraine's style and musical progression that he instantly heard the music - yet the course instructor pulled the piece because he contended it was so obviously noise that it rendered the debate moot.

After reading this book, I feel more knowledgable, feel that I have a better understanding of what to listen for and why I may appreciate certain styles while having little love for others, yet still feel that there is so much more to grasp and that the gaps in my knowledge and appreciation will only be filled through more experience listening to a broader range of jazz.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for music theory - especially for novices and/or early learners on the genre. This is because it comes with a CD of the material he deals with, and so you can get much more of a practical experience. I don't want to say too much, so as not to value the actual experience of this hybridized piece. If you like jazz and think you have things to learn about it, check this out. What's nice is that since the genre itself resists dating, so does this book.