HR Jazz Lecture Series – Dr. Tammy Kernodle at Hampton History Museum (Hampton)

Free
“I’ve Got a Story to Tell: Black Women, Autobiography, and the Reimagining of Jazz History.”
Location Details: Great Hall

“Autobiography has served as a way for Black women to challenge exclusionary historical stories about the development of Black life and culture in America. Since the 1930s, when the first versions of jazz history appeared, the way that history has been told has been closely linked to a growing collection of works and stories taken from the testimonials of members of jazz groups and communities. These testimonials mostly involved men talking to other men about other men.

During the last three decades of the 20th century, the narrative history of jazz was codified through textbooks, public oral history projects, and the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz (1973). This lecture is not about examining the merits of the historical framing that results from these entities, but more so a discussion of how Black women musicians viewed autobiography as a method to intervene in the promotion of these exclusionary narratives. This lecture will explore how published and unpublished autobiographies of Mary Lou Williams, Hazel Scott, and others outline their proximity to specific jazz communities that have been essentialized as part of the general understanding of genre’s progression, illuminate their direct contributions to the evolution of jazz’s sound, and challenge the notion that jazz’s sonic progression through the advancement of alternative canonical repertories.”