Tag Archives: Composers

Women in Jazz: Sarah Vaughan

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Crawford notes that the representation of women in jazz music was primarily restricted to vocal performance and singing. That being said, the contribution by these female performers was quite significant and one wonders how the nature of jazz could have been enhanced if more contributions existed of female composers or instrumentalists in the genre.

Sarah Vaughan has been hailed as a revolutionary vocal performer whose vast range of both vocal technique and emotional quality created a new standard of jazz performers. Even within the same piece, Sarah Vaughan’s style can change drastically as seen in her recording of “My Favorite Things”

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While the beginning displays an incredible lyrical and smooth quality to it, the last half of her performance contrasts this with a much crisper consonants, harsher vowels, and an improvisatory, drawn out rhythmic quality.

Entirely other music techniques can be seen in her performance of “Nobody Else But Me” which possess much more of the style of the last half of “My Favorite Things.” Long, held-out alto notes create a power and confidence in her voice steering away from the more soft, sensual or sultry sound of other vocal jazz music.

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The question of women’s role in jazz music can raise interesting questions of how the genre of jazz might have been different if more women composers had been represented. It is also interesting to contemplate how the genre may have changed, if at all, if it had possessed more female composers and more male vocal performers.

Sources: https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/903038

Woody Guthrie’s Letters

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Letters from Woodie Guthrie to Alan Lomax on September 25, 1940 reveal many insights into the personal beliefs and character of Woodie Guthrie and help shed light into his music and philosophy behind it. As direct writing from the composer itself, it provides the least biased source available and gives Woodie Guthrie’s exact words, and a helpful context for them. Woodie Guthrie’s conviction of using music as politics can be seen in his writings here. He states that “if you see something thats wrong and needs to be fixed, and you get up and tell it just how you feel, that makes you a showman.”

He writes later that, “you cant entertain nobody unless you can do two things be yourself and forget yourself and imagine you’re helping everybody, cuss the ones that don’t like.”  you, by what you do.”

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His somewhat cynical view of politics comes out in another letter to the same recipient written a couple of months later. He writes that, “I am writing this [letter] on Christmas paper and I think all election speeches ought to be wrapped in gift boxes with a red and green string tied around them, and that a way we would be sure at least of a Christmas package whether there was anything in it or not.”  He desires to fix things and make the world a better place and states that his purpose in voting is to fix things, “and if I dont fix it by a voting one way, I’ll vote another way, and finally, I’ll find out the right way.”

These letters of Woodie Guthrie help shed light on his passion, philosophy, and music. And as primary source material, as well as Guthrie’s own words, they can be relied on quite strongly to gain insight into Guthrie’s understanding of his life and musical career.

sources:

http://www.loc.gov/resource/afc1940004.afc1940004_036/?sp=1&st=text

http://www.loc.gov/item/afcwwgbib000038/