Category Archives: Misc

Matthew Barney’s ‘Secondary’ at His Long Island City Studio

Leave a reply

Matthew Barney’s Secondary, a five-channel video installation, is now showing at his studio in Long Island City through June 25.

Secondary comes four years after Matthew Barney’s last large-scale exhibition, 2019’s Redoubt. Like its predecessor, Secondary features movement-based narrative in addition to materials- and aural-based elements. It’s also short (for Barney): one hour, though it does benefit from multiple viewings. Here Barney again collaborates with composer Jonathan Bepler. Also, notably, top creative billing is shared with movement director David Thomson, indicating the enhanced importance of dance and movement to Secondary compared to Barney’s earlier pieces.

A synopsis, excerpted from the exhibition’s website, is as follows:

Secondary maps two different narratives onto each other, using movement as the formal through-line. The first describes the complex overlay of violence and spectacle inherent in American football, and more broadly within American culture. Barney’s personal involvement in the sport served as a starting point for the development of this project. The extreme physical and psychological conditions of the game have been abstracted in Barney’s art practice since his earliest work, and now provide a context for this subject that is both retrospective and a new, direct engagement.

The significant risk of the game became clear, and made a lasting impression on Barney as a young player, through an incident that took place in a professional football game on August 12, 1978 where Jack Tatum, a defensive back for the Oakland Raiders, delivered an open field hit on Darryl Stingley, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots. Stingley was left paralyzed. The impact, and Stingley’s resulting catastrophic injury, became mythic in scale through its relentless replay in sports media. It was also a watershed case for the reform of rules protecting the bodies of athletes, which remains a polemic in football today, now gathering critical mass in the media. Secondary’s underlying plotline examines these charged aspects of football—and, specifically, Barney’s memory of that play in 1978—through a movement vocabulary that focuses on each element of the game, from drills to pre-game rituals to the moments of impact. It seeks to explore the complicated overlay of actual violence and its currency as image within the sport and the culture at large.

The parallel narrative in Secondary is a material-based choreography where the substances Barney uses to make sculpture—lead, aluminum, terracotta, and plastic, all in various states of liquidity—are generated, formed, and manipulated by the performers in real time. These materials speak to qualities of strength, elasticity, fragility, and memory, and each, in its own way, embodies a character. The athletes cast in Secondary are played by professional dancers and by Barney, and they range broadly in age, but with an emphasis on older bodies.

Matthew Barney

Secondary was filmed in and around Barney’s warehouse studio, which also serves as the exhibition space. Between producing the work and opening the space for public exhibition, the studio has been cleared of tools, materials, and associated ephemera, leaving an open expanse that more resembles an athletic facility than an atelier. While viewing the film, one sees an earlier version of the same site put to different use. Mr. Barney has demurred in the past when repeatedly presented with the prospect of River of Fundament (and other works) being examples of gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), principally because Barney also associates that term with the artist building the “container” in which the work is presented—his primary example being Richard Wagner’s Bayreuther Festspielhaus, which was built to the composer’s specifications and exclusively stages his works to this day. That said, while Barney didn’t build the warehouse in which Secondary was filmed and presented, he is responsible for manipulating said container to meet his purposes. Per his stated usage of the term, Secondary comes much closer to realizing a gesamtkunstwerk than his earlier pieces. (Whether or not he would agree with that is another matter. Probably not.)

Amid the vast gray setting of steel, concrete, and support columns is a large, strikingly colorful field of artificial turf, in the center of which is the Field Emblem, an idée fixe from throughout Barney’s oeuvre that in the past he has specifically related to football. Hanging above the field is a three-sided jumbotron, similar to that which one would see at a professional sporting event. Additional screens are also placed near each of the field’s corners, much like the screens placed throughout an arena or stadium. Floodlights are mounted to establish the field as the central focal point. To one side is a makeshift press box of sorts and to the other is a row of benches. Viewers are welcome to watch the screens from the field, the benches, or to walk around and change perspective throughout the 60-minute duration (the length of a football game, without breaks or stoppages).

The film plays across five screens simultaneously: the jumbotron shows the same feed on each of its three sides, and the other four screens vary throughout—sometimes showing different perspectives of the same scene, sometimes showing different scenes entirely, and other times synchronizing either in pairs or across four or all five screens. Hence the film promoting repeated viewings. I was present for multiple screenings and saw several new things each time. Additionally, each screen has its own sound feed, adding another layer that phases in and out of sync.

matthew barney secondary
Viewers watch in the arena / exhibition space

Though abstracted, familiar rituals play out. First we see the various participants prepare: athletes train and warm up; the owner facilitates the site; fans excitedly await the game; referees consult one another; everyone gets in place (the teams and referees take the field; the owner goes to the press box; fans gather around); the national anthem is given focused attention; the game is played; the fans leave; the site resets for the next contest. The assorted preparations constitute a majority of the film, but they gradually build narrative tension, as the viewer knows that the game and injury will eventually occur, but not when or how. Also, it’s not unlike a real athletic regimen: most of the time is spent in preparation and maintenance—training, running drills, practicing maneuvers—and is punctuated by the occasional game (or race or event, etc.), particularly in professional American football which follows a roughly weekly game schedule during its regular season.

Throughout approximately the first half of the film, bodies work solo, in concert with one another, and in dialogue with materials. Various actions, from routine movements such as throwing a ball and assorted calisthenics to repetitive head trauma, are deconstructed by performers David Thomson, Shamar Watt, Raphael Xavier, Wally Cardona, Ted Johnson, and Matthew Barney. Similarly, numerous materials are physically engaged: tubing, garbage bins, polycaprolactone (PCL), clay, a muddy trench. Just as a game showcases, at least in part, much of the preparation that has gone into it, the game in Secondary—including the national anthem as the opening act— is where all of the pieces come together. It features movement (solo and in concert), music (solo and in concert), and materials (in various stages of rigidity). The game is also the first time we see all performers (athletes, officials, fans, etc.) in the same space and interacting to some degree as a group. Tension is heightened by finally bringing the two teams into direct confrontation, as they’ve been presented as training separately up until this point (though all within the studio and sometimes near one another).

One noteworthy fact about the the six performers who portray the athletes is that most of them don’t have backgrounds playing football. (Barney, who played football while at Yale, has woven athleticism generally and football specifIcally through much of his output.) I highlight this because Barney generally prefers practitioners over actors—in this case, one would assume a football player. That said, by selecting movement artists, the performers were able to home in on specific movements and actions divorced from the context of a specific game or sport. A film ostensibly about football, at least in one regard, does not show a literal sequence one would see in an actual game of football, yet it powerfully conveys a message about such all the same. (I’m reminded of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, an opera about a song contest yet lacking a single unbroken aria.) However because the game is so ubiquitous in America, most people have at least a passive familiarity with the sport, its presentation, and its actions. Secondary does include one actor: Thomas Kopache as Raiders owner Al Davis. His expressive gaze haunts the film, particularly during the national anthem.

Because the subject is so familiar, it can be approached indirectly and still be legible to a wider audience. Consequently, Secondary is the most accessible of Barney’s major works, at least in recent years. While not mainstream by any means, the subject matter, length, and overall presentation (playing in a loop in an open gallery) are likely to be more welcoming than scheduled screenings of feature-length (or longer) works about the cosmic hunt or bespoke Egyptian mythology or the like. While it does lack explicit imagery, a foreboding sense of violence—immediate, psychological, cultural—permeates much of the running time.

Composer Jonathan Bepler shapes a compelling sonic experience. Like Redoubt, the music and sound here are more complementary and decorative as opposed to a shared centerpiece, as with the operatic River of Fundament. However, a noteworthy change in Secondary is that, I believe, a vast majority of the music and sound has a diegetic source. (It may be occasionally treated after the fact, but “external” sounds are rare.) While there may be seemingly non-diegetic instances—e.g., hearing sounds from one screen while looking at another, or seeing vocalizations begin with one character while the camera cuts to another character—there is little-to-no semblance of an external score. As with the film and the site, the music is contained within the film’s universe itself. Save some percussive elements made corporeally or with found objects, much of the rest of the score is vocal, particularly in the vein of the free vocalizations found in River of Fundament and Redoubt. Several of the recurring vocal techniques mimic those found at a sporting event. Examples include:
– Vocalizations to mimic the sound of a referee’s whistle, occasionally made by the performers portraying referees
– Screaming and rasping reminiscent of a crowd’s cheers, often made by those portraying fans
– Quick staccato utterances of “hut” and other syllables, often done by the referees when consulting one another
– Groans and croaks redolent of an injured player

A pivotal scene dramatizes Barney’s dissection of the national anthem ritual. After the players and referees take the field, the owner ascends to the press box, and the fans gather around, soprano Jacquelyn Deshchidn, a Chiricahua Apache, adorned in gold and wearing wings, takes center stage (on or near the Field Emblem). Instead of singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Deshchidn performs an aggressive and mournful improvisatory piece lasting several minutes. Deceptively, their piece begins on “O,” but the similarities quickly end. Here Deshchidn is accompanied by the chorus of referees portrayed by Isabel Crespo Pardo, Jeffrey Gavett, and Kyoko Kitamura. Notably, this passage includes the only instance (lasting a couple of seconds at most) of consonant harmony throughout the whole film, occurring at approximately the 46-minute mark, and its rarity and unexpectedness yields a great impact. Deschchidn’s anthem also includes the lone clear word uttered in all of Secondary, “bombs,” which is repeated in quick succession at varying intervals and dynamics by both soloist and chorus. Throughout much of their performance, Deshchidn locks eyes with Kopache’s Al Davis as he glares down from the press box.

matthew barney secondary deshchidn
Deschidn during the anthem (Jerry Saltz watches, sans coffee)

It should be noted that this is the third successive major work that situates an Indigenous American character in a central role: Jacquelyn Deshchidn’s national anthem in Secondary, Sandra Lamouche’s hoop dance in Redoubt, and, among others, Chief David Beautiful Bald Eagle as Norman III (i.e., the version of Norman closest to being divine) as well as pow wow ensemble Mystic River in River of Fundament. Though representing different tribes and traditions, it’s no coincidence that Barney has centered the generally shared Indigenous American experience when exploring violence, mythology, nature, and industrialization in American contexts.

Signature Barney elements appear throughout the film. Plastics and metals are engaged in various states: viscous PCL handled by Watt and Cardona; dumbbells molded from clay and plastic; a triptych of sculptures resulting from the impacts between Thomas and Xavier recreating the Stingley-Tatum trauma. There are also references and allusions to earlier work. In one sequence, a pair of athletes engage a large salt block, such as those seen in River of Fundament. The trench itself, as well as Watt’s physical dialogue with the mud and the filth also have obvious parallels to River of Fundament. In addition to further exploring the boundaries of dance and movement highlighted in Redoubt, a sculpture from the same film is seen in the studio during an early sequence of Secondary. Of course, the concept of creating via movement and resistance is at the heart of Barney’s long-running Drawing Restraint series. The Field Emblem has permeated Barney’s work for decades, including being highlighted in Cremaster Cycle and Drawing Restraint 9, among others. And football has been a recurring subject and influence in his work going back to some of his earliest output such as Facility of DECLINE.

The current exhibition includes more than just the film. The site itself is, as Barney notes, a “central character” in Secondary, so one may move around the studio, including onto the field (and sit or lay if preferred). The trench remains and may be viewed up close. The press box, though closed off, still stands. Within it are a storyboard and a sculpture, possibly a water casting. A work on canvas, a take on the field of play featuring the Field Emblem, hangs on one wall of the studio. Bringing the show full circle, an Otto jersey is also displayed.

Trench, press box

I highly recommend Secondary if you have the opportunity. Although it may possibly screen elsewhere in future months or years, seeing the film where it was created—in the space adapted for that purpose—is a singular experience, one I’ll always treasure.

‘Just Answer the Question’ – a Thinking Podcast with Alice Dreger

I’ve been working on a project since the beginning of the year and it’s finally ready to see the light of day, so I’d like to share a bit about it should you be interested. It’s different from the usual ground I’ve covered here and elsewhere over the years.

Just Answer the Question is a thinking podcast created and hosted by Alice Dreger, the esteemed writer, historian, and speaker. (She also happens to be a friend, former neighbor, and now colleague.) I’m the producer*, and I also provide original music for the show. For a little more background on how this came to be, see Alice’s newsletter on the topic.

Just Answer the Question logo

Yes, I know, seemingly everyone has a podcast these days. (Oddly enough, my previous post was about my guesting on another show.) There’s a lot of content out there, maybe even too much, and we hope to create a thoughtful space separate from the news cycle and whatever the controversy du jour may be. From the show’s website:

For each episode of Just Answer the Question, we take one question and use it like a corkscrew to open a bottle of intellectual wine that we then share with three helpers. Some podcasts call their visitors “guests,” but we consider ours “helpers,” because they help us think through our questions by sharing their experiences, research, and insights.

After we’ve recorded conversations with our episode-specific helpers, our creator Alice Dreger and producer Mike Teager then use the recordings as primary sources to compose episodes that take you through a guided tour of the exploration of our central question. Alice contributes short essays and narrative glue, while Mike contributes original musical framing. Our goal is to give you somewhere around an hour of time to think, feel, remember, laugh, listen, and examine the threads that weave through our lives. Our hope is that we help you enjoy this big collaboration as much as we do.

– JATQ website

You can also watch our promo video on our website and Twitter.

The podcast is free and the first three episodes are available now on all main directories with more in the pipeline. New episodes should appear about every ~3 weeks.

We’ve recorded conversations with many compelling, thoughtful folks already—some you may have heard of and others who may be new to you. But regardless of name recognition, the discussions have been consistently rich and engaging.

We also offer additional content via a paid subscription. This is known as the Tangent Tier. For $5 per month, you can access the long-form interviews from which we pull excerpts for the main (free) podcast episodes. We may ultimately only use ~15 minutes or so of a given interview for an episode, but we often talk with our helpers for ~40-60 minutes each, and much is left on the cutting-room floor. For those interested in more of the “two people talking” format, this is that (compared to the more produced format of Just Answer the Question).

If you’re interested in the Tangent Tier, more info is here and you can subscribe here. And since the first three main episodes are now available, the accompanying Tangent Tier installments are too. (Nine of them, to be exact: three for each episode.)

The first three episodes are as follows:
– “What’s have I done?” — An examination of how we take stock of our lives: as a continuous narrative or as a series of episodes. Featuring discussions with bioethicist Dr. Tod Chambers and psychologists Dr. Dan McAdams and Dr. Jonathan Adler.
– “What’s it like to play me?” — A look at role-playing, including as oneself in different contexts. Featuring discussions with radio personality and playwright Peter Sagal, actress Jennifer Riker, and narrator and audio artist Tavia Gilbert.
– “Can a father be a mother?” — Reflections on being a primary caregiver. Featuring discussions with journalist and The Company of Dads founder Paul Sullivan, psychologist Dr. Jonathan Adler, and yours truly.

Do give a listen to the podcast if it sounds like something you’d like to explore.

Relevant links:
Just Answer the Question website
Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Google Podcasts, and more…
Subscribe to the Tangent Tier here

—

*As for my being the producer, I’m reminded of a line from one of my favorite movies, Get Shorty, delivered by a confident Chili Palmer: “I don’t think the producer has to know much.”

In all seriousness, when Alice first asked me about collaborating on this, I was (and am) beyond flattered, and I admitted that I knew very little (i.e., nothing) about producing generally and podcast production specifically. That said, in addition to being friends, we knew that we liked working together when I used to report for East Lansing Info. So we used that and our shared penchant for organization as a starting point, and here we are. The learning curve has been and remains steep but rewarding.

Talking Parenting on ‘The Company of Dads’ Podcast

Leave a reply

A bit of a different post here. In addition to the wide net of artistic-related concerns this (neglected) blog is concerned with, I have occasionally delved into personal matters such as priorities, family, and work. However, considering there are ~250 posts on this site, “personal” writing is in the extreme minority.

In October of 2021, my good friend Alice Dreger virtually introduced me to the then-outgoing New York Times columnist Paul Sullivan. He had just published his final “Wealth Matters” column, one that outed his other job: that of being the primary caregiver to his three daughters. Or, as he calls it, being a Lead Dad. He announced that he was leaving the NYT to focus on building a community of other Lead Dads in order to both raise awareness of and normalize the role. His column deeply resonated with me, and Paul and I lightly kept in touch as I followed his launching The Company of Dads.

(I should note that Alice, in addition to being my friend and former neighbor, was also the primary caregiver to her son, a role that we’ve continually bonded over through the years, which is why she thought to introduce me to Paul.)

In February he asked to interview me for his podcast, and we got along swimmingly. The episode (#11) is out today. I was very surprised to be asked, considering the guests he’s already featured, but I’m happy to discuss my parenting experience, especially with those in a similar role. We continue to stay in touch, and I’m grateful that we’ve been able to connect.

I don’t know how much of our original talk will be included—we spoke for a while and covered a lot of ground. There’s was a little music talk, but the focus was really on the role of primary parent and Lead Dad*. We discussed parenting and how that’s juggled with family generally, work, music, volunteering, and more. And, I don’t know if this made the cut, but we did touch on our shared childhood love of professional wrestling as well as my renewed interest in it over the last couple years. (Speaking of which, the 30th anniversary of my first live event was just a couple weeks ago, and I’m going to my first live event in decades next week.)

If you’re at all interested in the discussion or the topic generally, give it a listen. I really value what Paul is doing with the Company of Dads, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

The episode is available via Apple Podcasts, YouTube (where you can sneak my River of Fundament poster in the mirror, and you can also see me hunched over because of awkward mic and camera positioning), and wherever else you may get your podcasts.

I’ve been repping the Company of Dads both from my home office as well as at gigs:

Working on a forthcoming project, with a hint of Redoubt poster in the background.
Staying hydrated in a pit.

—

*Admittedly, I do have a little hesitancy around the term because I’ve always just seen myself as “the parent” instead of “the dad,” likely because I was raised by a single mom who essentially fulfilled both roles. But that’s just me and my own experience, and it’s another tale for another time..

Tuning Out

What a time to be alive. I’m absolutely exhausted.

The reasons are myriad and obvious, and I know I’m not the only one. The endless parade of news headlines reads like something from a slightly absurdist movie. Nearly everyone on social media is engaged in an endless, all-consuming culture war on all fronts. (Of course, that’s not to say that it’s not for righteous reasons. But, at the end of the day, if all you’ve done is pushed out some snarky comments and tweets, what do you have to show for it? What have you done?) Many lives are turned upside down for a multitude of reasons.

I’ve tried quite hard over the last decade or so to keep this blog music-focused rather than an all-encompassing personal diary. That said, I’m veering off that some here. Mostly because it’s on my mind. Also, in my “day job” I work remotely from a home office and have done so for a number of years. Between that and being the primary caregiver for our son, I’ve been living a version of “pandemic life” for years before it was the new normal. (Of course, at-home kindergarten wasn’t in the plan years or months ago, which has been the biggest complication for me personally, but here we are.) So, below are a couple cents’ worth of notions if things are all turned around and you’re drowning in the mania.

With everything going on, it’s hard for me to focus or care enough about a music topic to attempt to write at length. I’ve attempted to start dozens of posts for this site, only to abandon or trash them. I’ve even found it difficult to properly publicize and plug my most recent album with Matt Borghi. (Read about it here!) Gigs have dried up, of course, as they have for everyone else. Dozens were canceled for me this summer, though we managed to keep a small handful in the end, and I doubt there’ll be another until the spring. It’s just been a lot of time practicing punctuated by a little recording here and there for a nascent endeavor. I dove deep into the classical literature for a few months during the strictest parts of quarantine, which was refreshing, and I’ve also explored a number of new-for-me jazz standards. But ultimately it’s not worth discussing too deeply at present.

[One exception on music topics is my most recent contrarian hot take. I’ve long been a firm believer in separating the art from the artist (or, if possible, the person from the artist), so the constant arguments over whom to cancel don’t interest me much. That said, if I were to partake, given the relatively arbitrary nature of where people decide “the line” may be, my vote would be to cancel J.S. Bach on account of seemingly being a bad parent. Let’s face it: between his work obligations, his extra-curricular musical pursuits, and voluminous progenitorial endeavors, I have a hard time believing he could’ve been an engaged, attentive parent at the individual level. And yet: great contrapuntal technique nonetheless!]

Ultimately, it helps to just tune out, unplug, and focus on the micro. Though everyone has their own method, the following combination works for me (and admittedly I’m not as good at them as I’d like to be), in no particular order:

  • Limiting my social media consumption and engagement.
  • Reading my (paid for!) newspaper articles straight from the source instead of dealing with scores of comments.
  • Keeping at the horn, learning and exploring new material.
  • Exercising in the fresh air.
  • Saying no.
  • Getting involved in my local community.
  • Connecting.

“Limiting my social media consumption and engagement.”
This helps. Greatly. If you can—and you certainly are able to!—keep these things off your phone or tablet, or at least strictly limit when they’re allowed to be on there. There are seemingly no areas of the internet that aren’t infected with some level of infighting or riling up. Even my supposedly music- or arts-only feeds are littered with bile-spewing all around. Ultimately you’re just doom-scrolling, raising your blood pressure, and likely regretful when you see how much time has passed.

“Reading my (paid for!) newspaper articles straight from the source instead of dealing with scores of comments.”
If nothing else, start with your local paper. That national horse races and scandals-of-the-hour are sexy, but they often have little to do tangibly with what’s going in your backyard. If you can get multiple news sources outside of social media, then you’re ahead of the game.
— A related note: don’t make socio-political leanings the end-all of humanity. I have deep convictions on a broad array of topics, but as the years pass I tend to not really care to casually discuss them with most people. I’m perfectly fine engaging on far less visceral topics. As an example, in the cover band I belong to, I’m the odd one out politically, but we still get along nicely and play a tight rendition of Chicago’s “Make Me Smile.”
— Another related note: I’ve made a point to read more books over this year and last. Again, it takes time—sometimes only 20 minutes per day—but it’s a nice distraction that helps me unwind.

“Keeping at the horn, learning and exploring new material.”
For me, it’s music-making. Whatever your interest is (professional or amateur or hobby or otherwise), focus on it and shut everything else out as consistently as you can, even if for short windows of time. It doesn’t have to be Productive, but if it’s far removed from the constant daily noise, that’s best.

“Exercising in the fresh air.”
Go for a walk. Get outside. (The gyms are likely closed or at reduced capacity anyway.) Whatever it is you’re partial to or tolerate. For me, I’ve always been a walker, but I’ve been running quite faithfully the last ~16 months. It took a couple months for me to make it an iron-clad routine, but now it’s a reliable part of my week. Listen to something if that helps. (I’m in that minority of folks who don’t listen to anything while doing so. Partially due to aural health, and also because I prefer the quiet and to be lost in my thoughts.)

“Saying no.”
This is the biggie. I’ve always been a “yes person” by default—always wanting to participate and not miss out, or feeling like I don’t want to disappoint. Now, though, between family and work and my own well-being, I only have so much time. “No” is still challenging to say sometimes, but I’m quicker with it than I used to be. It’s helped far more than it’s hurt, even when I’ve turned down something I wanted to do.

“Getting involved in my local community.”
This is a big one, particularly in the age of online activism. Sharing articles with your peers (like-minded or not) is fine, but, again, what are you actually doing? I’ve long had a strong interest in municipal politics, so I guess it’s easy for me to recommend this. But, even if you’re not that interested, the village/town/city, county, and state actions and decisions are the ones that most often affect you directly, whether you’re aware of it or not. A lot can happen at your local school board or town board or city council meeting, especially when almost no one from the public attends or cares. Volunteering time or money or both is great if you can too. If you don’t care at all about this sort of thing, then all right. But if you find yourself endlessly awaiting the next !BREAKING NEWS! alert on your device, check out what’s happening at town hall.

“Connecting.”
Stay connected to those whom you’re close with, including yourself. The former by making time, and the latter via some of the above.

Time to log off.

[NOTE: The original post was lost in a site error. This is a reconstruction/re-posting.]

Mark Stryker’s ‘Jazz From Detroit’

Leave a reply


I unintentionally kicked off 2020 with a bang, at least in one respect. I read Mark Stryker’s excellent Jazz from Detroit last month, and it was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in some time, sticking with me weeks after I finished it.

I had been looking forward to the book’s release for some time, though it took me longer than expected to get around to it. (Upon seeing him at a wonderful Prism Quartet recital in Ypsilanti in November 2018, I introduced myself to let him know I was looking forward to the book’s eventual release.) I’ve followed Stryker’s work for years and his Twitter timeline is a wonderful repository of historical and musical morsels. I’ve seen him around at various shows in southeast Michigan over the years (the trademark hat and mustache make him easy to identify).

Whether people are aware of it or not—and many are likely not—Detroit has played an integral role in the development of jazz. For those with even a modest jazz collection (…for those who even have a non-streaming collection anymore, that is…), look through the liner notes and you’re bound to see at least one name who is from or spent time in the Motor City. I mean, where would jazz as an art form be without the John Coltrane Quartet (with Detroiter Elvin Jones on drums) and Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet (with Detroiter Ron Carter on bass)? (Hell, Ron Carter alone is credited on over 2,000 albums.) That said, until Jazz from Detroit‘s release in July 2019, no one had tried to cover that history in a single volume.

A richly detailed and comprehensive look at both the musical heritage of the city and the lineages in which Detroit has played an integral part, Jazz from Detroit has much to offer to both the musician and layman. Coming in at nearly 300 pages—not including the informative appendices and voluminous index—it’s a taut text that covers a century of not just musical developments, but economic, industrial, demographic, political, and sociological ones too. Stryker reaches beyond purely musical considerations, digging deeply to examine the factors that helped make Detroit such a cultural powerhouse. Bassist and pedagogue Rodney Whitaker said it best, telling Stryker, “That’s what we do in Detroit. We make cars, and we make jazz musicians.” (p. 294)

Stryker spent decades doing his homework, much of that time as a critic for the Detroit Free Press. In addition to his digesting existing scholarship, many of the interviews with the musicians and sidemen discussed throughout the book, including several who are now deceased, were conducted by Stryker personally. His authority comes from being someone who is both a fan of the music and history as well as someone who is himself a part of it. (His anecdote about his first phone call with bassist Ralphe Armstrong had me laughing out loud.) Additionally, his genuine love of the city and its heritage come through with every passage. He’s not a dispassionate scholar who swoops in from parts unknown to examine a phenomenon, only to leave once he’s collected his data. Rather, he’s a champion of the city and its legacy, pulling it out from under the shadows of New York City and Los Angeles, and, to a lesser extent, New Orleans, Kansas City, and Chicago. As the author writes:

“Many Midwestern and Rust Belt cities with large African American populations also experienced golden ages of jazz in the middle of the 20th century—Kansas City, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Cleveland among them—but their musical impact eventually faded. Meanwhile, Detroit continued punching above its weight class.”

(p. x)

This book deals with jazz specifically. Myriad other books, articles, and films have been devoted to Detroit’s Motown and rock offerings. Though there is some musical cross-pollinating where Motown is concerned, Stryker, to his credit and the book’s benefit, stays in the jazz lane.

The book is divided into six parts. “Setting the Stage” (~1900-1950) lays the initial groundwork for much of what follows, particularly regarding the automobile industry and its role in shaping Detroit’s public education system and black working and middle classes, as well as discussion of some early musical figures in and around the city. “The Golden Age, 1940-1960” gets into the real meat and potatoes, with over a dozen chapters, each covering a notable musical figure (e.g., Barry Harris, Yusef Lateef, Tommy Flanagan, Ron Carter, Curtis Fuller, Sheila Jordan, and more). “The Jones Brothers” discusses that remarkable triumvirate Hank, Thad, and Elvin. “Taking Control” explores some of the more communal and entrepreneurial musical developments in Detroit, including the Detroit Artists Workshop, the Strata Corporation, the Creative Arts Collective, and more. “Marcus Belgrave and His Children” dives into the music and legacy of Marcus Belgrave, one of the city’s patron saints of jazz who mentored many of Detroit’s more well-known contemporary exponents (e.g., Kenny Garrett, Rodney Whitaker, Geri Allen, Regina Carter, James Carter, and more). Lastly, “Tradition and Transition” takes stock of the health of both the city and its music of the last couple decades through early ~2019. Each chapter includes recording recommendations for the relevant artist or group.

As someone who grew up in Michigan, it was great to see how some of the more “local” or regional names fit into the larger musical and cultural tapestry. For example, laying all my cards on the table, I knew Marcus Belgrave was a longstanding musical and pedagogical institution in Detroit, having seen him at various masterclasses and concerts in college and elsewhere (annually leading and sitting in with myriad groups at Detroit Jazz Festival, sitting in with Wynton when he visited Detroit, etc.), but save for the occasional mention in a liner note when I’m getting a new (for me) album, it wasn’t always clear to me just how he fit into the larger puzzle beyond the Midwest. (Admittedly, perhaps it was my own ignorance.) I now have a much clearer understanding, thanks to Stryker’s work.

Stylistically, much of the book is weighted toward The Tradition, but that’s to be expected. After all, many of the figures discussed are known for styles steeped in the blues, swing, and bop (be- and post-). Even the more avant-garde folks who appear throughout, including bassist Jaribu Shahid, drummer Tani Tabbal, and pianist Craig Taborn, had a foot in more mainstream styles at one time or another. My only real quibbles with the book are extremely minor and subjective. For one, I was surprised to see Massive Attack labeled a rap group. (That said, as a fan, I was as surprised as anyone to see the group mentioned at all, and, admittedly, trip hop isn’t too widely known of a label.) Additionally, and it’s just because the album is a desert island disc for me, I would have included Chasin’ the Gypsy as a recommended James Carter album instead of either Heaven on Earth or Present Tense. But that’s me.

Selfishly, as a point of saxophonistic privilege, I must highlight one of my favorite passages. I was pleasantly surprised to learn of Joe Henderson’s training and that he studied with Larry Teal. More than that, though, I was floored to read of the following convergence of greatness. Talk about a pantheon of jazz and classical saxophone: “[Larry Teal’s] Tuesday morning lineup of students in 1956-57 was Yusef Lateef at 9:30, Henderson at 10:00, and Donald Sinta at 10:30.” (p. 132) A real murderers’ row!

If you’re at all into jazz, history, or Detroit culture, I highly recommend Jazz from Detroit. Mark Stryker knocked this one out of the park. I only hope there’s a sequel of sorts in the future.

Recommended Reading:
Perhaps to whet your appetite if you’re still wondering whether or not you should read Jazz from Detroit, I highly recommend these excellent interviews of Stryker conducted by Ethan Iverson for Do The M@th: here and here.