Musical echoes : South African women thinking in jazz / Carol Ann Muller & Sathima Bea Benjamin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Muller, Carol Ann.

Contributor:

Benjamin, Sathima Bea.

Series:

Refiguring American music

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Benjamin, Sathima Bea.

Jazz singers--South Africa--Biography.

Jazz singers.

Women jazz musicians--South Africa.

Women jazz musicians.

Jazz--South Africa.

Jazz.

South Africa.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

x, 348 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Musical Echoes tells the life story of the South African jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin. Born in Cape Town in the 1930s, Benjamin came to know American jazz and popular music through the radio, movies, records, and live stage and dance band performances. She was especially moved by the voice of Billie Holiday. In 1962 she and Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) left South Africa together for Europe, where they met and recorded with Duke Ellington. Benjamin and Ibrahim spent their lives on the move between Europe, the United States, and South Africa until 1977, when they left Africa for New York City and declared their support for the African National Congress. In New York, Benjamin established her own record company and recorded her music independently from Ibrahim. Musical Echoes reflects twenty years of archival research and conversation between this extraordinary jazz singer and the South African musicologist Carol Ann Muller. The narrative of Benjamin's life and times is interspersed with Muller's reflections on the vocalist's story and its implications for jazz history. Book jacket.

Contents:

A tribute by Abdullah Ibrahim: "Sathima"

Sathima : my life's journey as a jazz singer

Beginnings

A home within

Call: recollecting a musical past

Response: entanglement in race and music

Cape jazz

Call: popular music, dance bands, and jazz

Response: imagining musical lineage through Duke and Billie

Jazz migrancy

Call: musicians abroad

Response: a new African diaspora

A new york embrace

Call: coming to the city

Response: women thinking in jazz, or the poetics of a musical self

Returning home?

Call: Cape Town love/an archeology of popular song

Response: jazz history as living history

Musical echoes

Call: Sathima's musical echo

Response: reflections on echo

Outcomes : jazz in the world.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822348917

0822348918

9780822349143

0822349140

OCLC:

700406656