'Dat Var Negressen Walaida Snow'

This essay is about the jazz musician and black variety stage artist Valaida Snow and the years she spent caught in Nazi occcupied Denmark. Despite rumors that she was held in a concentration camp, this essay argues that she may in fact have been shielded from the occupiers by the Danes. This essay argues that a masculinist bias in popular cultural/jazz studies obscures the histories of black women expressive artists and limits theoretical possibilities in the study of performance. It argues that the study of black women performers demands the development of more supple analytical models that attend to the heterogeneity of black expressive forms.     

“They might read a fly speck”: musical literacy as a discursive resource in Louis Armstrong's autobiographies

Jazz has been described as a music in which the “oral” element plays a crucial role, in opposition to Western “classical” music, seen as a chiefly “written” tradition. Although such an image is frequently advocated by critics and musicians themselves, it is also true that it can generate ambivalence and negative outputs, such as the persistent myth of “primitivism” and “naivety,” often associated with jazz music. Building on Social Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aims at analyzing how the representations of “orality” and “literacy,” that emerge in some autobiographical narratives by Louis Armstrong, are generated, and how they can work as semiotic and discursive resources. It argues that the different depictions of musicians, and the attitude displayed toward musical literacy, are sensitive to the historical, societal, and political context in which texts have been produced and published, as well as to the narrator's willingness and ability to resist or subvert dominant discourses. Moreover, the characterization of a musician (or a category of musicians) as able or unable to access musical literacy can also serve local purposes, such as expressing the narrator's stance toward narrative characters.     

How society creates musical styles: jazz and ritual insults

Many of the ways in which music can be used to create meaning for its consumers have been the subject of existing social semiotic literature. However, less is known about how social and cultural environments impact the development of musical sounds. This study uses Tagg’s sign typology as a framework for identifying meaningful signs such as form, responsoriality, and melodic complexity in three jazz bebop recordings by Charlie Parker. It is argued that the values of individuality, communication, and competition expressed by bebop music may be reflections of a sociolinguistic phenomenon known as ritual insults, thus demonstrating one way in which culture affects the creation of musical styles.     

德莱赛与菲茨杰拉德作品中的女主人翁形象对比

同为美国20世纪初最具代表性的文学巨匠,德莱塞和菲茨杰拉德处于同一时代背景之下,在创作的年代上有交集也有先后之序。然而由于各自不同的生活经历,个性心理以及所受不同哲学思想的影响,他们的写作技巧和文体风格迥异。因此,其笔下的女主人翁形象也大相径庭。德莱塞描摹的几乎全为被享乐欲望腐蚀的下层阶级女子,而菲茨杰拉德塑造的都是拜金虚荣的都市女郎。本文通过分析两位作家关注的不同社会阶层女性的人格丧失和道德沦丧的深层原由,展示了那个时代美国社会的浮华与喧嚣以及深藏其后的衰败。     

A Collective Vision of Artistry: The MacDowell Colony and the Organizational Design of Creativity

This article is a scholarly overview and analysis of Hurricane Katrina's social and cultural devastation of the unique, indigenous culture of New Orleans. This study has been prepared as a scholarly and academic endeavor. However, it is also the basis for consideration of measures that could be taken to facilitate the reconstitution of the living environment of New Orleans in a way that is respectful of its folk culture. The physical devastation caused by the hurricane severely compromised the precious cultural communities of the French colonial Gulf Coast. The impact was most devastating to New Orleans because of its distinctive folk culture, which includes vivid cultural rituals such as the Mardi Gras Indians, jazz, the jazz funeral tradition, second line parades, and local cuisine. This culture is potentially fragile because it is a living culture—not based on collections preserved within the walls of a museum, but rather in the lives of its people. It is indisputably worthy of respect and revitalization. This project, realized through intensive research, will surely benefit the academic community and, most important, the people of New Orleans, to whom this document is dedicated. The project has been interesting, but it is an even greater honor to have the opportunity to advocate the necessity of reconstituting the folk culture of New Orleans through positive action to sustain the city's unique way of life. This will not be easy, but it is crucial for any "new New Orleans."