Saturday October 19, 2024 @ 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm
This is gonna be a good one…Jazz! Theory! LIVE MUSIC!!
Housmans will be hosting the wonderful scholar and musician Benjamin Barson for the official UK launch of his seminal new book, Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons.
A new understanding of the birth of jazz through a fine-grained social history of early African American musicians. Brassroots Democracy recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a “music history from below,” following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes. Perhaps most importantly, Barson locates the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas—Haiti—as a nexus for cultural and political change in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In dialogue with the work of recent historians who have inverted traditional histories of Latin American and Caribbean independence by centering the influence of Haitian activists abroad, this work traces the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation.
Brassroots Democracy demonstrates how Black musicians infused participatory music practice with innovative forms of grassroots democracy. Late nineteenth-century Black brass bands and activists rehearsed these participatory models through collective performance that embodied the democratic ethos of Black Reconstruction. Termed “Brassroots Democracy,” this fusion of political and musical spheres revolutionized both. Brassroots Democracy illuminates the Black Atlantic struggles that informed music-as-world-making from the Haitian Revolution through Reconstruction to the jazz revolution. The work theorizes the roots of the New Orleans brass band tradition in the social relations grown in maroon ecologies across the Americas. Their fruits contributed to the socio-sonic commons of the music we call jazz today.
Benjamin will be in conversation with seasoned music broadcaster and writer John Stevenson and WILL ALSO be putting his theories into practice and performing live music for us. Advanced booking strongly recommended. This is going to be part book talk part concert, as always, please feel free to BYOB.
“Musician, composer, scholar Benjamin Barson places the origins of the music dubbed ‘jazz’ in its rightful place: the Black Radical Tradition. Deftly braiding the political and cultural histories of revolutionary Haiti, Black Reconstruction, the laboring and creative lives of workers and peasants of the Black Atlantic, African and Indigenous memory in song, story, and dance, Black feminist blues, and resistance to racial capitalism, he weaves a powerful story of how Black revolt and brass bands transformed the port city of New Orleans into a portal to musical revolution. From now on, Brassroots Democracy should be our starting point—both for understanding the past and imagining an emancipatory future.” – Robin D.G. Kelley
OUR SPEAKERS
Benjamin Barson is a historian, baritone saxophonist, and political activist. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His work has been published in Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party (2020), Routledge Handbook on Jazz and Gender (2021) and Routledge Guide to Ecosocialism (2021).
John Stevenson is a seasoned communications professional, encompassing freelance broadcasting and writing for diverse publications including The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, Caribbean Beat and UK Jazz News. An alumnus of the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill) and King’s College London, John has an abiding interest in arts and culture from around the world, especially the music of Africa and the African diaspora. He currently co-produces and co-hosts the monthly music radio programme, Nighthawks at the Virtual Diner, on www.thethursdaynightshow.com
As always, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com, and a free ticket will be made available.
If you choose ‘book + event entry’ or ‘special bundle’, your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier, or arrange for delivery, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com.
Doors Open at 7pm, Event Starts 7:30