African Diaspora

Ingrid Monson is Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music at Harvard University. She won the Sonneck Society's 1998 Irving Lowens Prize for the best book in American music for her 1996 Saying Something,Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. She was also a founding member of the nationally known Klezmer Conservatory Band, and plays trumpet with jazz and salsa bands. Monson previously was Associate Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis, and has taught at the University of Michigan, Harvard (as Visiting Professor), and University of Chicago. She has a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Musicology from NYU, and a B.M. from New England Conservatory. Monson is currently working on two books: one on the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and African Independence on the history of jazz, and one on the musics of the African Diaspora.

"I found The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective to be refreshing and above all, stimulating. This volume offers scholars a reading on various musical genres and the manner by which each mirrors aspects of identity, tradition and modernity, local musical traditions, and the effects of globalization--all important agents in the shaping and making of the African diaspora. After reading the entire volume, I have decided to use it as a primary text for my graduate seminar on African-American music. Furthermore, I certainly foresee its merit as a seminal text in diasporic, cultural criticism, and music scholarship. Hence, I unequivocally recommend The AfricanDiaspora as an important work in the understanding of African diasporic music and culture." -- Cheryl Keyes, UCLA/Ethnomusicology Online No. 7

• Series Editor’s Foreword 1. Introduction PART I TRAVELING MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 2. Jazz Performance as Ritual: The Blues Aesthetic and the African Diaspora 3. Communities of Style: Musical Figures of Black Diasporic Identity 4. Jazz on the Global Stage PART II BEYOND TRADITION OR MODERNITY 5. Women, Music, and the “Mystique” of Hunters in Mali 6. Mamaya: Renewal and Tradition in Maninnka Music of Kankan, Guinea (1935–45) 7. Concepts of Neo-African Music as Manifested in the Yoruba Folk Opera 8. They Just Need Money: Goods and Gods, Power and Truth in a West African Village PART III CONTRADICTORY MOMENTS 9. Militarism in Haitian Music 10. Musical Revivals and Social Movements in Contemporary Martinique: Ideology, Identity, Ambivalence 11. Art Blakey’s African Diaspora