A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in Jazz [Paperback]

This is a study of the Afrocentric imagination set to a jazzy beat. The African connection to jazz through recordings has never been fully analyzed until now. In this ground-breaking study, poet and critic Norman Weinstein reveals a long-neglected thread running throughout jazz history. Spotlighting the African-inspired recordings of thirteen major musicians-Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, George Russell, John Carter, Count Ossie, Randy Weston, Max Roach, Pierre Dorge, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef, Sunny Murray, and Ronald Shannon Jackson-he also offers a comprehensive discography cataloging the recordings of hundreds more.A Night in Tunisiailluminates the affection, humor, concern, curiosity, anger, and pride toward Africa that jazz artists have manifested in their recordings.Norman Weinsteinis a widely published poet and critic whose books includeGertrude Stein and the Literature of the Modern Consciousness(Ungar) andNigredo: Selected Poems 1970-1980(Station Hill). His jazz criticism has been published inThe Village Voice, Jazziz, andDownbeat. He has won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for excellence in music criticism.

Norman Weinstein has crafted a valuable work that, with its adherence to scholarship and careful analysis stands as the most successful attempt to address the enduring influence of African imagination on American Jazz. Norman Weinstein has written an animated and intelligent examination of what in American jazz reflects African origins and imaginings. He lets the text develop naturally, with sound scholarship and psychological cunning. ... Weinstein cuts through the gristle to reveal the bone of racismand appropriation working in counterpoint to the authentic esthetic and cultural history of the music. This psychological approach with its debt to Jung and Bachelard, gives A Night in Tunisia compelling contextual depth lacking in most jazz scholarship.- Joseph Murphy, Earshot Jazzzls7