Jazz artist biography research paper

Authors

• Tom Perchard University of Westminster Author

DOI:

Keywords:

biographical writing, race, Gadamer, oral history fieldwork, jazz research and writing

Abstract

The historical biography has come to be viewed with suspicion by those who recognise that the genre’s literary emplotment and narrative demands can waylay the scholarly search for objective historical “truth”.

This article explores these biographical narrative conventions and applications – and proposes new approaches to researching and writing within the biographical format – in the context of historical jazz studies. The piece begins by considering, with reference to several biographies of the saxophonist John Coltrane, both the ways that biographical narratives are constituted from disparate source materials a Writing jazz biography: race, research and narrative ...

HOJAM