Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49744 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 690 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780226476957
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
�Written with the eye of an ethnographer, the ear of a performer, and the heart of a hometown dweller, George Lewis�s account of the development of the AACM is an engaging story, a romance in which several generations of musicians triumph to create a music that travels around the world, yet is completely unique to their experiences. Reinscribing Chicago as a city of enormous artistic vitality and tough aesthetics, A Power Stronger Than Itself brilliantly redraws the map of jazz and widens the horizon for new and experimental music.��John Szwed, author of Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (John Szwed 20080109)

�George Lewis has outdone himself with this extraordinary volume. His unrelenting intelligence and ear for detail have produced a challenging compendium of late twentieth-century African Americana. This is not only a study of the AACM, it is a hope-drenched encomium to modernist creativity and the oppositional imagination.��Paul Gilroy, author of Postcolonial Melancholia and The Black Atlantic (Paul Gilroy 20080410)

�The AACM is one of our great cultural inventions. This extraordinary book embodies its principles, for George Lewis draws on multiple traditions: scholarship, reportage, testament, analysis, theory and criticism come together with virtuosity and scrupulous discipline. A Power Stronger Than Itself remaps the landscape of American experimental music. Academics, critics and musicians will have to reconfigure such terms as �jazz,� �classical,� �soulful,� �avant-garde,� �black� and �white.� Now the past yields unexpected wonders; the future unexpected possibilities.��Margo Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson (Margo Jefferson 20080413)

"A remarkable book, not just for corralling an enormous amount of information�interviews, critical reviews, music charts, news reports (the bibliography runs 35 pages)�but for making the result a digestible and thoroughly entertaining 500-page read.��Time Out Chicago (Time Out Chicago 20080410)

"With A Power Stronger Than Itself, Lewis exceeds expectations. For rather than merely recount the ascent of the AACM, he elegantly sets it against the backdrop of cultural, racial and social changes that shook the twentieth century. . . . Lewis unreels this tale with dramatic flourish and scholarly authority, in effect telling the story of not only the AACM but also the city where it�s centered, Chicago."�Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune (Howard Reich Chicago Tribune 20080502)

"Lewis�s landmark book. . . goes deeper into the formation and development of the AACM than any previous history, and as a formal acknowledgement of the group�s enormous importance and influence it�s long overdue."�Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader (Peter Margasak Chicago Reader )

"This could very well be the most anticipiated book of the year. . . . The long wait is now over and patrience will be rewarded. George Lewis''s encyclopedic knowledge, thorough research and in-depth interviews have produced an eye-opening work. . . . Overall, it is a pleasant read, scholarly but not overly academic in tone, covering a wide stylistic range--from essay to storytelling to autobiography." (Alain Drouot Jazz Notes )

"[Lewis] sets a new standard for scholarly writing about the people who make Great Black Music, or any other kind.. . . . Reading Lewis''s book about the AACM makes one want to have been a part of it." (Downbeat )

"Simply put, George E. Lewis'' new and long-awaited history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) must be considered among the most important books ever written about creative music. A tour de force of narrative history and analysis driven by a clearly articulated point of view, it draws on a massive body of scholarship and original research that places Great Black Music in its historical, aesthetic, and social contexts. It will certainly shape the scholarly, critical, and public discussion of jazz and creative music for years to come." (Ed Hazell Signal to Noise )

"Rich and dense and gratifyingly readable. . . . [Lewis] makes a scholarly portrait of a complex community into a ripping good and inspiring yarn." (Kevin Whitehead Fresh Air )

�In bringing intellectual breadth and what Lester Bowie calls �good old country ass-kicking� to bear on past and present indignities, Lewis has produced a fitting companion to the music he celebrates.��Nation (Franklin J. Bruno Nation )

�An important book. . . . Mr. Lewis narrates its development with exacting context and incisive analysis, occasionally delving into academic cultural theory. But because the book includes biographical portraits of so many participating musicians, it�s a swift, engrossing read.��New York Times (Nate Chinen New York Times )

"Very dense but very readable, filled with fascinating stories, capsule bios and rewarding side trips. Lewis has a gift for explaining abstruse ideas without dumbing down. As a reader, I''m torn between wanting to savor it slowly and devour it fast. Two hundred pages in, I''ve got weeks worth of stuff to think about." (Kevin Whitehead e-Music )

"An unequaled volume on both its subject and on Black creative collectivity." (Clifford Allen All about Jazz )

"Lewis'' writing is lively, avoiding the trap of sounding too academic and instead creating a story that is compelling in its portrait of musicians dedicated to their art. This is a fine work on an area of jazz that deserves wider recognition and greater understanding." (Alan Chase The Wire )

"This essential book is music history from the inside. . . . Lewis is telling an interesting and important story here and telling it well. Anyone who is interested in modern serious music will learn from and enjoy this outstanding book." (A.B. Spellman Chamber Music )

"An illuminating, articulate panorama of a little-examined yet highly influential organization, one whose ''graduates'' have permeated every element of modern music." (Choice )

"The crystalline study is thoroughly engaging. . . . Even the most dedicated improvised music aficionado will find anecdotes, relationships and hitherto unknown performances and biographies laid out in stunning detail. . . . The book is a graceful intertwining of oral history, hard research and insightful scrutiny of a complicated organism." (Eugenia Bell Frieze )

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Its a good read !
George E Lewis has written a very readable account of this organisation and its history. Its a long story 40+ years, many contributions, Includes biographies of key figures, and social history. a few more musical examples or analysis of actual works could have made it even better. Overall recommended to anyone into AACM or any fan of progressive jazz.

Just impossibly good
Wow.

Lewis has done a ton and a half of research. He writes like a dream (with the very occasional exception of some congealed jargon from the humanities). And his analysis is hugely intelligent: you can actually see how some of the most important musical innovations of the twentieth century emerged from a social network. (Yes, sure, the network was chock full of really talented musicians. But it doesn't look as though any one of them could have pulled off these musical breakthoughs alone.) And you see how race and racism have structured the production and reception of music -- not with handwaving slogans, but with the patient analysis of richly detailed history.

So many books about "jazz" -- and I guarantee that if you read this, you'll have to think hard about what counts as "jazz," what as "art music" or "serious music" or "new music" or just plain "music," and why -- are breathless and kinda dumb. This one is emphatically the opposite. It's a fat book, and still it's a delight to read. I put it down wanting more.

George Lewis is of course himself an AACM member and an astonishingly talented trombonist. He does a lovely job inserting himself into the text when he belongs there, with neither ritual self-deprecation nor arrogant boasting.

If you're curious about Lewis's music, I'd start with his work with Anthony Braxton (track down Dortmund '76, a quartet with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul: boy it would be nice to see a reunion of those guys, *not* to do retreads on their amazing work from the '70s, but to explore where they are now musically), John Lindberg's Give and Take, the Black Saint dates under his own name, and, also under his own name, Voyager, with Roscoe Mitchell and a computer Lewis programmed to interact with the musicians.

The guy is a superb author and a superb musician. Wow.

This is an awakening we're trying to bring about.
George Lewis has given us a monumental gift. His history of the AACM is a combination of scholarly work that runs to over 500 pages and 70 plus pages of notes with the best kind of historical narrative. Lewis has written a group biography with the framework of an institutional history. He situates the origin of the AACM within the biographical stories of how the founders and members tried to address issues of resources, education and performance opportunities. He is relating all this within a history of Chicago's black community, a history of creative improv, a history of the struggle to control the definition of what the artists were doing and a history of how the AACM addressed issues of gender, class and race within its own structure and within society at large. He writes as a participant, as a listener, a friend, a biographer, a historian, a sociologist. As a theoretician who is, again, trying to control the definition of what he, his friends and his community were doing. That last sentence is a point that is worth reflecting upon. Lewis' story, I believe is centered around his large theme of the struggle of the black experimental artist to control the definition of what they are doing- what tradition(s) their work came from, what it means and how it is to be presented. He largely explores this theme in a three-sided conversation between the musician's own reflections on their artistic practise, the history of the critical reception of music produced by AACM artists and a metareflection on that history of criticism wherein Lewis unleashes a considerable body of lit and critical theory. Sometimes this results in small brilliant essays like the section entitled, "Beyond a Binary: The AACM and the Crisis in Criticism" (pp353-369).

I also want to emphasize the humanity of the book. Lewis' history is reliant on interviews that he did with 65 members of the AACM. Some of them he interviewed multiple times (Muhal Richard Abrams spoke to Lewis on seven different occassions). These interviews are the basis for much of the historical narrative of the book. Lewis gives us brief biographies of dozens of artists- we learn about artists like Abrams, Lester Bowie, Anthony Braxton, Jodie Christian, Gene Dinwiddie, Chico Freeman, Julius Hemphill, Steve McCall, Roscoe Mitchell, Amina Claudine Myers, Henry Threadgill ad infinitum. I grew up with this music. For some reason, when I was about 16, I started buying the early AACM stuff as it became available in Portland. Probably because it was on Delmark which also put out a ton of great Chicago blues which I was, am, will always be crazy about. So for me, all these interviews are insightful, funny, painful and revelatory.

Their individual stories speak to what I see as two other major themes in this book. It is obvious from reading Lewis that certain individuals were essential to his story. One example is Walter Dyett who taught music at Phillips and then DuSable High. He was the teacher of a vast number of musicians of the caliber of Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, Richard Davis, Gene Ammons, John Gilmore and many others( just go to Lewis' index and follow the citations). This history of Chicago music, heck, of American music changed because of Dyett's teaching. As for the AACM, without the central presence of Muhal Richard Abrams in the early parts of the book, it is impossible to imagine how the rest of the history would have unfolded. He comes across as a remarkable and inspiring teacher- demanding so much from those who worked with him. And much of what he demanded is that no one accept anyone else's limitations on who they were. As an example, when Abrams set up his Experimental Band, from the get-go Abrams wanted the members to bring their own compositions to be played. That composer would then lead the band in the practise of the composition. Abrams was trying to get people to explore all of their musical, personal and spiritual possibilities. Occassionally, throughout Lewis' book there are comparisons made between Sun Ra's Arkestra and the AACM. The difference always comes down to the fact that what Abrams and the other founding members created was a collective.

Which leads me to Lewis' other great theme- the story of how an institutional framework served to mold and support a diverse, opinionated, and occassionally competitive group of artists in all of their various projects. The AACM was always underfunded and was sometimes rift by internal controversy. Lewis has a detailed section on how they decided to only have black members which actually led to the expulsion of their one white member. He also talks about the struggles that the women members had to be accepted as equal artistic contributors. In spite of, or maybe because of these struggles, the organization survived and continued to further the education and projects of its members.

I could easily go on with things I liked or learned from this book but I have gone on too long as it is. Other reviewers will emphasize the learnings that I did not write about. Get the book, get thru the long (and interesting) first chapter of methodological reflections. Get out your AACM CDs and LPs and listen to the music as Lewis discusses it. I was finishing up my copy last night while listening to Braxton's For Alto. Those early days in Lewis' history were interesting. The journey for the members of the AACM from the 60s to the 21rst century is an inspiring one. My thanks to George Lewis for the education.