Jazz Improvisation and Creolizing Phenomenology
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Abstract
Jazz improvisation requires a set of phenomenological practices, through which musicians confront their own sonic situatedness. Drawing on writings from Paget Henry, Mike Monahan, and Storm Heter, these phenomenological practices can be characterized as creolizing, and can reveal a sense in which, as Sidney Bechet says, music gives you its own understanding of itself. Specifically, improvising musicians engage their own situatedness by slowing things down, and through repetition. Bass players can listen through other players’ hands, and audiences can hear more of what's happing in jazz by understanding the ways musicians practice.
Contributor Notes
Craig Matarrese is Professor of Philosophy at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he is also Director of the program in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics (PPE). He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches courses in 19th and 20th Century European philosophy, Philosophy of Music, Environmental Ethics, Social & Political Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Law. He has also been teaching electric & upright bass for the Music Department for the past ten years. Matarrese is the author of the book, Starting With Hegel (Continuum, 2010), as well as two recent essays: “Soundscape Ecology and a Sartrean Phenomenology of Listening,” Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre After the Holocene, eds. Ally & Boria (Lexington Books, 2021) and “Hegel, Musical Subjectivity, and Jazz,” in Creolizing Hegel, ed. Michael Monahan (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)