All-Woman Jazz Bands and Gendered Beboppers: Gayl Jones and Gloria Naylor’s Jazz Fiction

Traditionally, jazz has been identified with male performers and writers. Thus, the aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, it underlines the significant role of women instrumentalists and bandleaders in the formation of a jazz counterculture, particularly during World War II; on the other,...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Cobo Piñero, Rocío
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2015
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repository:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/53904
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11441/53904
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:All-Woman Jazz Bands
Gender
Bebop
Gayl Jones
Gloria Naylor
Bandas de jazz de mujeres
Género
Description
Summary:Traditionally, jazz has been identified with male performers and writers. Thus, the aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, it underlines the significant role of women instrumentalists and bandleaders in the formation of a jazz counterculture, particularly during World War II; on the other, it connects the cultural meanings and the technical devices of 1940s bebop to Gayl Jones‟s novels Corregidora (1975) and Eva‟s Man (1976), and Gloria Naylor‟s The Women of Brewster Place (1982) and Bailey‟s Cafe (1992). This essay places special emphasis on bebop quoting, a jazz technique that has conventionally represented a site for the performance and signification of masculinity, but also allows female musicians and writers to deconstruct and question identity stereotypes associated with black womanhood.