Jazz Journeys

Book excerpt: Jazz is a music of journeys, migration, and global mobility – from the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade to global travels for escape, exchange, or putting down roots. Having migrated via changing modes of transportation and media communication, the sounds, musicians, and theories of jazz have led to today's diasporic jazz world of global and local encounters. This book features articles that deal with jazz in various geographic areas such as Japan or Israel, orchestras travelling to Egypt or invited to the USA, and so-called expatriate jazz musicians taking up residence in Europe. By sharing their research about jazz on TV, on records, and at festivals, the authors from different disciplines demonstrate how jazz studies today engage with movement in the music's past to question and shape its future. This collection of writings has its origins in the VI Rhythm Changes Conference "Jazz Journeys," which took place in Graz (Austria) and where the International Society for Jazz Research celebrated its 50th anniversary.