A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in Jazz - Tapa dura

Norman Weinstein has crafted a valuable work that, with its adherence to scholarship and careful analysis stands as the most successful attempt to address the enduring influence of African imagination on American Jazz. Norman Weinstein has written an animated and intelligent examination of what in American jazz reflects African origins and imaginings. He lets the text develop naturally, with sound scholarship and psychological cunning. ... Weinstein cuts through the gristle to reveal the bone of racismand appropriation working in counterpoint to the authentic esthetic and cultural history of the music. This psychological approach with its debt to Jung and Bachelard, gives A Night in Tunisia compelling contextual depth lacking in most jazz scholarship.- Joseph Murphy, Earshot Jazzz * Jazz Now * ...intriguing...points the way for further discussions of jazz from a strategy of textual interpretation... * The IAJRC Journal * ...he may be the Stephen Hawking of jazz criticism....a fascinating book....an extremely valuable overview of the music... * The Beat (UK) * clever and entertaining...not just for students of jazz. * Multicultural Review * ...a book of both keen scholarship and fine tribute...exceptional... * Morning Star * ...may interest serious jazz fans-if only so they can argue with it. * Library Journal * Norman Weinstein has crafted a valuable work that, with its adherence to scholarship and careful analysis stands as the most successful attempt to address the enduring influence of African imagination on American Jazz. Norman Weinstein has written an animated and intelligent examination of what in American jazz reflects African origins and imaginings. He lets the text develop naturally, with sound scholarship and psychological cunning. ... Weinstein cuts through the gristle to reveal the bone of racism and appropriation working in counterpoint to the authentic esthetic and cultural history of the music. This psychological approach with its debt to Jung and Bachelard, gives A Night in Tunisia compelling contextual depth lacking in most jazz scholarship.- Joseph Murphy, Earshot Jazz * Jazz Now *

This is a study of the Afrocentric imagination set to a jazzy beat. The African connection to jazz through recordings has never been fully analyzed until now. In this ground-breaking study, poet and critic Norman Weinstein reveals a long-neglected thread running throughout jazz history. Spotlighting the African-inspired recordings of thirteen major musicians-Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, George Russell, John Carter, Count Ossie, Randy Weston, Max Roach, Pierre Dorge, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef, Sunny Murray, and Ronald Shannon Jackson-he also offers a comprehensive discography cataloging the recordings of hundreds more. A Night in Tunisia illuminates the affection, humor, concern, curiosity, anger, and pride toward Africa that jazz artists have manifested in their recordings.