Dear Readers,

 

I am pleased to announce the publication of the second of two Journal of Jazz Studies special issues focused on jazz and gender. (https://jjs.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/jjs/issue/view/25)

 

As the submissions for this special volume came in and I read them as guest editor, my priorities were clear cut: beyond ensuring that the proposal was in some way related to both jazz and gender, they needed to 1) be clear (or have the potential to be so); 2) be credible; 3) either present new information or a new perspective; and 4) be able to start or contribute to ongoing conversations in this field. For this issue we share three articles and four case studies that I hope you will find meet these goals. Each contribution is intellectually brave, deeply personal, and contributes something we need in this field—something I believe will be of use to our students and ourselves.

 

Two of the articles heavily feature interviews, in which participants describe their gendered experiences within the jazz field: First, Jenna Przybysz surveys a number of women, non-binary, and gender-queer individuals, asking whether and how they identify with a variety of jazz and gender slogans that emerged between 2017-2019. Then, Theresa Chen interviews a number of Asian and Asian American women jazz musicians to better understand their intersectional experiences in jazz performance and educational contexts. The last article offers a media studies analysis of Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach’s 1964 performance of We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite on Belgian television. Marcus Grant focuses especially on the juxtaposition of Lincoln’s sartorial and musical choices with the camera’s extreme close-up shots.

 

To create more space in this issue, we selected a few additional submissions and asked the authors to conceive of their pieces as case studies accessible to undergraduate students. The case study authors succeeded at the additional challenges we presented them with, with topics ranging from the first examination of Marian McPartland’s archives (Lael Dratfield) to June Tyson’s work with the Sun Ra Arkestra (Meghan Gilhespy) to an investigation of Filipina jazz musicians in the mid-twentieth century (Krina Cayabyab) to an exploration of recent feminist interventions in jazz (A.J. Kluth).

 

In Just Vibrations, Will Cheng writes that, “Paranoid work desires authority.” As many of us have so painfully and clearly observed over the past eleven months, authority can offer feelings of safety and reassurance to those that fit the unspoken norms of citizenship, but it is always at the cost of freedom and agency, particularly for those who do not fit those norms. Especially now, humanities fields writ large must continue to work against authoritarian logics that would limit methods of knowledge, communication, and creativity. Doing so creates space for new tools and approaches and builds community and solidarity, both of which will safeguard our current historical work, and will sustain more dynamic histories going forward.

 

-Kelsey Klotz, guest editor