CFH 350 - Hot, Cool, and Free: Jazz as Music and Metaphor in the United States

Institution:

Washington University in St Louis

Subject:

Description:

This course explores jazz as a musical practice and more broadly as a cultural and political metaphor for modernity in the 20th Century. We examine jazz allusions found in literature and the fine arts as well as such conceptual uses as a metonym, as, for example when it came represent American democratic ideals during the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s. Was jazz an ideology, an ideal, an artistic philosophy, a style, a symbol of rebellion, or a fantasy? Was jazz misread and misunderstood by the various people and factions that deployed it as a metaphor? The course examines key 20th-Century cultural developments in U.S. history where jazz (as music and as cultural symbol) both shaped and was shaped by American, and specifically African American, experience. Required assignments include secondary readings about jazz history, an active engagement with primary material-from a range of sources-dating from the early days of jazz in the 1910s to the present, and weekly listening to recorded examples.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.wustl.edu

Phone Number:

(314) 935-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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