Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Music

Supervisor

Ansari, Emily Abrams

Abstract

There are ghosts that haunt the Village Vanguard. Or at least that’s what people say.

This dissertation examines the role of the contemporary jazz club as a site of heritage and meaning making in jazz cultures. I take New York’s revered jazz club, the Village Vanguard, as a case study, as it is the subject of many fanciful tales. These stories describe the club’s history as alive; the spirits of the legendary musicians from a bygone era of jazz who once performed at the Vanguard are said to haunt the present club’s soundwaves. Often described by writers as the club’s “vibe,” the Village Vanguard’s history is said to be living and perceptible to musicians and audiences at the club. Discussions of the club’s vibe in written discourse work to represent the club as a heritage place for jazz. Not merely a monument to a dead tradition, the Village Vanguard’s vibe offers those invested in the jazz tradition a validating place where they can experience a direct encounter with jazz history—a seemingly unmediated, anachronistic moment of contact between past and present.

This dissertation examines the cyclical relationship between history and the social construction of jazz place. I present an analysis of written discourse from 1957—the year the Village Vanguard established itself formally as a jazz club—to the present that reveals how contemporary jazz clubs are represented as spatial realizations of a jazz tradition. As such, these places are infused with power dynamics, including the social, cultural, and aesthetic politics of jazz cultures. This use of history leverages the past to exert control over contemporary jazz place and establishes social structures that are both validating and exclusionary. I combine discourses of (ethno)musicology, popular music studies, and cultural geography to dissect the role of place in current expressions of jazz history and identity. My dissertation, ultimately, reveals how meaning making practices in jazz are spatialized and how the places of jazz participate in processes of jazz politics and identity.

Summary for Lay Audience

There are ghosts that haunt the Village Vanguard. Or at least that’s what people say.

This dissertation examines the role of the contemporary jazz club as a site of heritage and meaning making in jazz cultures. I take New York’s revered jazz club, the Village Vanguard, as a case study, as it is the subject of many fanciful tales. These stories describe the club’s history as alive; the spirits of the legendary musicians from a bygone era of jazz who once performed at the Vanguard are said to haunt the present club’s soundwaves. Often described by writers as the club’s “vibe,” the Village Vanguard’s history is said to be living and perceptible to musicians and audiences at the club. Discussions of the club’s vibe in written discourse work to represent the club as a heritage place for jazz. Not merely a monument to a dead tradition, the Village Vanguard’s vibe offers those invested in the jazz tradition a validating place where they can experience a direct and unmediated encounter with jazz history that blurs the lines between past and present.

This dissertation examines the cyclical relationship between histories and the social construction of jazz place. I present an analysis of written discourse from 1957—the year the Village Vanguard established itself formally as a jazz club—to the present that reveals how contemporary jazz clubs are represented as spatial realizations of a jazz tradition. As such, these places are infused with power dynamics, including the social, cultural, and aesthetic politics of jazz cultures. This use of history leverages the past to exert control over contemporary jazz place and establishes social structures that are both validating and exclusionary. I combine approaches from music history, popular music studies, and cultural geography to dissect the role of place in current expressions of jazz history and identity. My dissertation, ultimately, reveals how meaning making practices in jazz are spatialized and how the places of jazz participate in processes of jazz politics and identity.

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