One of the most contentious issues in jazz scholarship in the past several decades has been the definition of jazz itself. The contributors to a fine new collection of essays entitled Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries, edited by David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Daniel Goldmark, focus on what has been left out of standard jazz histories, challenging notions of what jazz is, not in order to promote the correctness of one particular view, but to question the assumed boundaries of jazz.

The opening chapter by Eric Porter offers a useful literature review for new jazz studies. (A seminal reference point for this and several other essays in this book is Scott DeVeaux's article “Constructing the Jazz Tradition,” which describes and critiques the modernist narrative of jazz history.Footnote ¹) As an alternative to presenting the history of jazz as a progression of geniuses and styles, Porter promotes the analysis of quotation and stylistic allusion in order to examine how performers and composers comment on other works, as demonstrated in the work of Ingrid Monson.Footnote ² He also encourages further study on musicians who alternately accepted and rejected the label of jazz, such as Charles Mingus, and artists whose work crossed stylistic boundaries, such as Dinah Washington.Footnote ³

Elijah Wald presents a critique of genre labels in chapter 2. As a case study, Wald explores Louis Armstrong's admiration of the music of Guy Lombardo, a musician deemed “unhip” by jazz critics. Wald emphasizes Armstrong's appreciation of music that crosses stylistic boundaries, offering an interesting comparison of Armstrong's famous “West End Blues” cadenza and cornet virtuoso and composer Herbert L. Clarke's cadenza to his own “Caprice Brilliante.” More detailed musical analysis, however, would have strengthened Wald's argument.

In the third chapter, Charles Hiroshi Garrett tackles the subject of humor in jazz. Garrett outlines theories of humor drawing primarily upon works by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer that link humor with incongruity. Garrett presents several examples of “incongruous moments” in jazz, where a soloist quotes a melody that seems out of context, such as Louis Armstrong's quotation of “Pop Goes the Weasel” in an improvised solo (54). This does not provoke a laugh-out-loud kind of response, but rather a feeling of amusement when one recognizes the source of a quotation. Although there isn't much specific musical analysis in this chapter, it provides a useful list of quotations for more in-depth exploration.

Teachers often remind their students to avoid Wikipedia for research projects, yet this is exactly where Ken Prouty starts his chapter on “The Virtual Jazz Community.” Prouty's analysis of the Wikipedia entry on jazz focuses not on the article's substance but on the list of edits and corrections as well as the ensuing debate among editors about the origins of jazz. He also examines the debate over the definition of jazz found on the website All About Jazz (www.allaboutjazz.com). The participants in the debate are unable to come to a consensus, except that Kenny G is “not jazz.” Prouty proposes that it is not the boundaries themselves that define the jazz community but the act of trying to construct them (76).

Christopher Washburne's essay, “Latin Jazz,” critiques the assignment of cultural subgenres in jazz. The author presents the view that all music is intercultural and regrets the unavoidable necessity of genre labeling. Washburne describes Wynton Marsalis's ill-fated attempt to create the Lincoln Center's Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and questions the ability of Marsalis's original band to play Latin jazz styles. It is clear that Marsalis did not get along well with the band's director Arturo O'Farrill and that Washburn views his removal from the position to be unjust. It would have been interesting to read Marsalis's point of view on this decision.

Part 2 (“Practices”) begins with a chapter entitled “Jazz with Strings,” in which John Howland points out that the core of the jazz tradition has overlapped with music that many resist labeling as jazz, perhaps unfairly. He traces the development of jazz with string arrangements from Paul Whiteman's symphonic jazz of the 1920s to Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra's collaboration with the former Dorsey arranger Axel Storhdahl. Although this chapter includes musical examples, it is often unclear exactly what they are meant to demonstrate, and the lists of personnel can seem dizzying at times. Nonetheless, it invites academic focus on a repertoire appreciated by listeners, but often overlooked by critics.

In “Slightly Left of Center,” Daniel Goldmark tells a fascinating tale of the jazz division of Atlantic Records, which under the management of Nesuhi Ertegun, supported artists that “fall outside of the typical representations of jazz during that era” (149). The rest of the chapter focuses on the eclectic projects of Joel Dorn, who produced jazz records for Atlantic between 1964 and 1974 with multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk and bagpiper Rufus Harley, among others. Goldmark's chapter raises the provocative question: why did some instruments come to signify “real jazz” and others “not-jazz”? The author suggests that jazz critics were inclined to dismiss Harley's bagpipes and Roland Kirk's multi-instrumental improvisations as gimmicks.

Some histories attempt to separate overlapping artists and styles to create a smooth narrative; Tamar Barzel does the opposite in her study of the experimental music scene in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s and 1990s. Building on Bernard Gendron's study of performance venues such as Studio RivBea, the Mercer Arts Center, CBGB, and the Kitchen as centers for different stylistic streams, Barzel contrasts uptown “traditionalists” such as the Lincoln Center ensemble with downtown “experimentalists” such as John Zorn and Frank Zappa.Footnote ⁴ The essay provides a different view of a regional music scene and suggests a model for analysis based on the concept that “composers or improvisers are not simply ‘tradition bearers’ but also the architects of a sounded lineage of personal influence” (183).

Loren Kajikawa's essay describes how Asian American jazz musicians drew inspiration from the black nationalist movement of the 1960s. As he explains, “Asian American's engagement with jazz—the politics, culture, and history behind it—enabled them to identify with the black musical experience as a form of resistance and encouraged them to develop their own identities” (196). Many Asian American jazz artists were inspired by the example of black nationalist musicians such as John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, adopting their methods of free improvisation as means of expressing a minority cultural identity. Kajikawa argues that free improvisation provided an alternative to orientalist conceptions of Asian culture, which expected pentatonic melodies and folk song quotations as the most acceptable signifiers of minority identity. Kajikawa likens these expectations to “yellowface” stereotypes portrayed in the Charlie Chan detective film series. The music of John Coltrane served as a model for young artists such as Glen Horiuchi, who released a few albums with Asian Improv Records. Although composer Fred Ho is mentioned several times in this chapter, more discussion of his music would have been valuable, as several musicians in the Los Angeles jazz scene, including contemporary jazz composer Alan Chan, have identified him as a role model.

Part 3 (“Education”) begins with Jessica Bisset-Perea's essay on Pacific Northwest vocal ensembles. Bisset-Perea laments that the history of vocal jazz ensembles has largely been left untold in favor of instrumental music in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or New Orleans even though, she argues “previous instrumental-vocal relations were not as separate as modernist ideology would have one believe” (230). The author draws attention to swing choirs in Oregon and Washington that developed a distinct style of vocal arranging modeled on a big band horn section and spotlights Dave Lambert's Bop Vocal Chorus, which, in collaboration with Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross, helped popularize “vocalese,” or the setting of lyrics to jazz instrumentals. Although the author complains about gender disparity in college music departments as well as in jazz histories, this chapter focuses mainly on the work of male ensemble directors. More emphasis could have been placed on outstanding female musicians such as Sarah Vaughan and Annie Ross.

David Ake's article, “Crossing the Street: Rethinking Jazz Education,” opens with a memorable anecdote from the film Collateral (2004), in which an assassin offers his victim the chance to go free if he can tell him where Miles Davis received his musical education. The victim answers “Juilliard” and is shot dead. The killer explains that Davis dropped out of Juilliard to study with Charlie Parker. Ake uses this example to highlight the tendency to romanticize jazz education that takes place “on the street” and downplay the role of institutional programs. He calls on educators to counter myths about jazz education and encourages scholars to include education programs in future jazz histories.

Jazz/Not Jazz concludes with an essay by Sherrie Tucker, a scholar well known for her work on gender and jazz. After all the lists of oversights in jazz histories, I was wishing for compelling stories to compensate for the deficiencies in the historical record. Yet Tucker criticizes the act of adding missing stories to the standard history of jazz as “historical overdub.” How, then, can those of us who teach music history apply the critical concepts found in this volume? At the end of her essay, Tucker provides suggestions ranging from collaborative articles written by musicologists and performing musicians to encouraging scholarly studies on “not-jazz” artists such as Kenny G.

The central question raised in this book is simple but radical: as the boundaries of jazz are fluid and the definition of the term is constantly changing, why not consider any music called jazz to be a legitimate topic for academic inquiry? At first, this prospect may seem daunting, but ultimately the approach can be liberating. How many of us grew up listening to and admiring music that we considered jazz, but was missing from standard jazz histories due to conventions of authenticity centered on race, gender, or style? How can new jazz scholarship do more than provide lists of people someone else should have mentioned? The authors sometimes focus too much on gaps in coverage and rely on cumbersome “post-everything” jargon in place of giving substantive discussion of specific musical examples. On balance, however, Jazz/Not Jazz promotes an honest assessment of artists and communities once thought to lie beyond the boundaries of jazz. By focusing on how musicians from overlapping scenes borrow from and respond to one another through intertextual reference this collection exposes readers to untold perspectives, encouraging them to reconsider what they think jazz is and what it is not.