Free Action: Jazz as a Catalyst in West German Arts and Culture [Hardcover]

Introduction? 1. Atmospheric Conditions Permitting: Germanys Second, More Enduring Jazz Age? 2. In Phase: Jazz, the Spoken Word and Recited?Lyrik?(Poetry)? 3. Drums, Trumpets and Memory: Jazz as an Ambiguous Stimulant for the Post-War West German Novel? 4. Black Performers, Jewish Ghosts, and the Illustrated Travel Journal: The German Jazz Photography Album of the 1950s and 1960s? 5. Hearing and Seeing Jazz in Film and TV? 6. Visualising Jazz in Graphic Design: Music Captured by the Retina? 7. From Freedom in Paint to the Jazz Action: Jazz and Fine Arts? 8. Conclusion

Advancing the New Jazz Studies by focusing on questions of intermediality and cultural catalysis, this book demonstrates the role jazz played in the re-making of West German culture in the post-war era.

Advancing the New Jazz Studies by focusing on questions of intermediality and cultural catalysis, this book demonstrates the role jazz played in the re-making of West German culture in the post-war era.

The shadow of National Socialism, a history of German polarisation by jazz, and the influences of occupation and division, meant that jazz catalysed influential young creative artists. These included writers such as Nobel Laureate G?nter Grass, Young German Cinema filmmakers like Hansj?rgen Pohland, and abstract visual artists like KRH Sonderborg. Jazz provided an impulse to take into extra-musical artforms, and an impetus to reflect on what art and culture were. Through considering poetry, the novel, photography, film and television, graphic design and the fine arts, this volume reveals how German creatives were influenced not only by American jazz culture, but also by cultural innovations from elsewhere, and by German traditions they considered less compromised by the Nazi era. The book also explores the limits of this catalysis, examining for example how African-Americans received the Germalӝ