The cultural validity of jazz has been evaluated very differently by various critical camps. Some voices try to essentialise jazz by either claiming it as a specifically African American tradition dominated by black, and mostly male musicians, or, alternatively, by explicitly limiting its cultural functionality to the black diaspora. Other voices, in contrast, insist on the hybrid genealogy and dialogic openness of jazz as a form of art that inherently defies boundaries of gender and race. Jackie Kay's novel Trumpet fully subscribes to the latter opinion. Revolving around the jazz musician Joss Moody, Trumpet not only takes up jazz as a core theme but also refers to jazz-aesthetic principles and performative arrangements in its narrative design. Most importantly, however, Trumpet uses jazz as a metaphor of being, as a model of identity formation that privileges a performative approach to the social and biological constraints of gender and race.
Tupaia's Map is one of the most famous and enigmatic artefacts to emerge from the early encounters between Europeans and Pacific Islanders. It was drawn by Tupaia, an arioi priest, chiefly advisor and master navigator from Ra'iatea in the Leeward Society Islands in collaboration with various members of the crew of James Cook's Endeavour, in two distinct moments of mapmaking and three draft stages between August 1769 and February 1770. To this day, the identity of many islands on the chart, and the logic of their arrangement have posed a riddle to researchers. Drawing in part on archival material hitherto overlooked, in this long essay we propose a new understanding of the chart's cartographic logic, offer a detailed reconstruction of its genesis, and thus for the first time present a comprehensive reading of Tupaia's Map. The chart not only underscores the extent and mastery of Polynesian navigation, it is also a remarkable feat of translation between two very different wayfinding systems and their respective representational models.
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