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of institutions. I found some of the most interesting discussions to be about local records like Ted Gomulka's "A City Called Hamtramck" (79-82) and the Detroit Count's "Hastings Street Opera" (95-97), which helped to define Detroit's neighborhoods by the people who lived and worked in them just after World War II. In one particularly arresting section, Slobin investigates the content of his Aunt Ann's camp songs from a Jewish summer camp in the late 1930s. I was struck when learning that a song that I had learned at a Christian camp in southern Ohio during the 1970s as "Old McPhadden" was also sung in a Jewish version called "Yacob and Hans," which Slobin describes as a "hoary vaudeville German schtick about twins" (21).There are few people who could write a book like this. Slobin has both memories of his time in Detroit and the scholarly perspective to step back and understand his role in the city's musical life. Music is the nominally binding element, but the real thread holding the book together is Slobin's own Jewish perspective. There are surely more people who understand Detroit's African American histories than its Jewish ones. As Slobin shows, the role of Jewish people-as musicians, teachers, journalists, mentors-is central to the story of music in the city. To get this history from a critically-minded insider perspective is invaluable. Slobin tells us about his teachers, schools, private lessons, and ensembles-many of which were rooted in Detroit's Jewish community, and all of which he frames through a Jewish perspective. He shows how his family's preference for classical forms, which so thoroughly filtered his early musical experiences, were firmly rooted in a more general "use" of classical music as a marker of Germanic tradition (mostly concert and listening experiences). Examples like this pervade the book.If the book's glimpses of the city are any indication, Slobin's relationship to Detroit was like those of millions of others. He was born there and reveled in its quickly changing musical landscape during the 1950s and 1960s before leaving, only to return decades later to find an even more complicated urban texture obsessed with renewal. Elsewhere Detroit has taken on a near mythic quality, exemplified by things like Shinola murals in Soho evoking the city's mechanistic profile (208). Thus, the metaphor of Detroit's inseparable relationship with the post-World War II automobile industry is, in fact, infused throughout the contents of the book in a deeper way than even Slobin might realize. We do not see the city from the 1980s to the present day, with its influx of Russian Jews, rise of techno, shrinking population and political scandals, and constant "revitalization." Instead, Slobin's story is about a different time that, in part, explains why we cared about Detroit in the first place.
of institutions. I found some of the most interesting discussions to be about local records like Ted Gomulka's "A City Called Hamtramck" (79-82) and the Detroit Count's "Hastings Street Opera" (95-97), which helped to define Detroit's neighborhoods by the people who lived and worked in them just after World War II. In one particularly arresting section, Slobin investigates the content of his Aunt Ann's camp songs from a Jewish summer camp in the late 1930s. I was struck when learning that a song that I had learned at a Christian camp in southern Ohio during the 1970s as "Old McPhadden" was also sung in a Jewish version called "Yacob and Hans," which Slobin describes as a "hoary vaudeville German schtick about twins" (21).There are few people who could write a book like this. Slobin has both memories of his time in Detroit and the scholarly perspective to step back and understand his role in the city's musical life. Music is the nominally binding element, but the real thread holding the book together is Slobin's own Jewish perspective. There are surely more people who understand Detroit's African American histories than its Jewish ones. As Slobin shows, the role of Jewish people-as musicians, teachers, journalists, mentors-is central to the story of music in the city. To get this history from a critically-minded insider perspective is invaluable. Slobin tells us about his teachers, schools, private lessons, and ensembles-many of which were rooted in Detroit's Jewish community, and all of which he frames through a Jewish perspective. He shows how his family's preference for classical forms, which so thoroughly filtered his early musical experiences, were firmly rooted in a more general "use" of classical music as a marker of Germanic tradition (mostly concert and listening experiences). Examples like this pervade the book.If the book's glimpses of the city are any indication, Slobin's relationship to Detroit was like those of millions of others. He was born there and reveled in its quickly changing musical landscape during the 1950s and 1960s before leaving, only to return decades later to find an even more complicated urban texture obsessed with renewal. Elsewhere Detroit has taken on a near mythic quality, exemplified by things like Shinola murals in Soho evoking the city's mechanistic profile (208). Thus, the metaphor of Detroit's inseparable relationship with the post-World War II automobile industry is, in fact, infused throughout the contents of the book in a deeper way than even Slobin might realize. We do not see the city from the 1980s to the present day, with its influx of Russian Jews, rise of techno, shrinking population and political scandals, and constant "revitalization." Instead, Slobin's story is about a different time that, in part, explains why we cared about Detroit in the first place.
Analyses of Cecil Taylor’s music are understandably scarce. Very few of his scores exist, and transcriptions are even harder to come by. The music itself is often blindingly fast, unremittingly dissonant, and rhythmically elusive, further discouraging attempts at comprehension. This article aims to fill this analytical void, demonstrating that Taylor’s music is not nearly as intimidating as it at first would seem. Using my own transcriptions of Taylor’s music as a guide, I argue that Taylor’s music is best understood not as abstract relationships between pitches (“sound structures”), but rather as the formal organization of physical movements (“naked fire gestures”). Such a hypothesis comports with Taylor’s own explanation of his music—“I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes”—and thus demands that questions of physiology and physicality be considered under the umbrella of music theory. Furthermore, this movement-first analytical approach complicates traditional understandings of the autonomous musical “work”: while Taylor’s music could be understood as distinct, individual performances, it is also worthwhile to consider his overarching musical practice as an analytical object in and of itself. Finally, I trace the sounds and gestures of Taylor’s music back to their roots in blues and jazz, reinforcing Taylor’s own understanding of his music as a continuation of Black music traditions.
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