Ingrid Monson: "Freedom Sounds"

[garthsj]

I thought that many of you might be interested in this new publication:

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0195128257...0890_pe_snp_257

[AllenLowe]

well...

I owuld be cautious with a book like this, and just to offer full dislosure, there is some bad blood between myself and Ingrid - she tends to have a classic academic perspective, long on sociology and short on real musical understanding, with a lot of PC stuff thrown in from the perspective of race. I listened to one of her lectures years ago on music and Civil Rights at some conference, and Dan Morgenstern, who sat beside me, whispered a correction in my ear every time she made a mis-statement.

As for that bad blood, I have long battled against academia on the Jazz Research internet group (run by the esteemed and now absent-from-organissimo Michael Fitzgerald) and she got furious when I made certain criticisms of Sherry Tucker's book Swing Shift (which presents the novel theory that Billie Holiday was ashamed of her blackness) -

[Big Wheel]

Well, Monson did include your book in the readings for her class. That said, I agree that she always seemed to me to be pretty out of touch.

Edited October 17, 2007 by Big Wheel

[AllenLowe]

now I feel guilty - but at least she has good taste in some things -

[Simon Weil]

I've got IM's rhythm section book, which I've dipped into and quite liked when I've done it. To me she seems OK - like I've got a good sense from her. I don't get the sense of her being overwhelmed with ideological theories. I mean she seems to have a coherent style - so that neither fact nor conceptualisation become dominant. Rather one informs the other and you get a proper bit of writing.

So, in that sense, I would have to doubt that she's a pure academic. On the Billie Holiday thing , God knows, but she had a self-destructive (=?self-hating) bug somewhere. I'm not sure I'd bring that up as evidence for or against Monson's ability to write in her own area.

There's a million academics out there who beat you to death with theory. I don't think Monson's one of them.

My idea of her based on reading for (her) style.

Simon Weil