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The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective.

Article Excerpt
The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. Edited by Ingrid Monson. (Critical and Cultural Musicology, 3.) New York: Routledge, 2003. [vii, 366 p. ISBN 0-8153-2382-4. $50 (hbk.); ISBN 04159-6769-4. $19.95 (pbk.).] Music examples, illustrations, map, bibliography, index.

This volume presents eleven musical case studies from diverse regions of the African diaspora, including the African continent, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, and Europe. The contributors intersect their discussions with the topics of race, gender, politics, and nationalism, and address why music claims such pride of place, using examples of the interwoven construct of the local and global, as they are found in the lives of musicians and their audiences.

In her introduction, Monson reminds the reader, "If the Jewish diaspora was the quintessential example of diaspora before the 1960s, the African diaspora has surely become the paradigmatic case for the closing years of the 20th century" (p. 1). Acknowledging a cue from Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), Monson identifies the centrality of music as emblematic of transnational identities and global intersections which constitute the complexity of the African diaspora. The remainder of the introduction presents an overview of the book's three sectional themes: "Traveling Music and Musicians," "Beyond Tradition or Modernity," and "Contradictory Moment."

Part 1, "Traveling Music and Musicians," consists of four essays that explore the globalization of African diasporic musics, paying particular attention to exchanges between African Americans, Europe, and the Black Atlantic. Travis A. Jackson begins this section with "Jazz Performance as Ritual: The Blues Aesthetic and the African Diaspora." Based on ethnographic research conducted in New York City's vibrant jazz scene, he argues that jazz performance is driven by...