All-Woman Jazz Bands and Gendered BeboppersGayl Jones and Gloria Naylor’s Jazz Fiction
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Universidad de Cádiz
info
ISSN: 1133-309X, 2253-8410
Year of publication: 2015
Issue: 19
Pages: 13-28
Type: Article
More publications in: Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos
Abstract
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
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