Music Book Review: Queering Kansas City Jazz by Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone

Queering Kansas City Jazz: Gender, Performance and a History of a Scene

by Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone (Music 781.65 Cli)

 

This is a recent book published by University of Nebraska Press that addresses untold stories of music history that are not far from Nebraska geographically. The history of Kansas City jazz is a pivotal moment in jazz history that’s a highlight of most jazz history books. KC is arguably the birthplace of bebop, and bebop is the music from which most strains of jazz ever since are most closely related.

 

But the history books published so far haven’t looked at the broader scope of entertainment and culture that was offered in Kansas City at the same time. As author Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone frames it in her introduction: “numerous works have explored the intersection of leisure culture, identity politics, and jazz in New York, Chicago and other jazz scene cities, but neglected to explore the way that non-normative gender performance, combined with working-class women, racial segregation, and space, created Kansas City’s jazz scene.” This fascinating book explores these previously-forgotten dynamics in the story of KC jazz, and in doing so, we find a more diverse and culturally complex scene while correcting the historical record. While you won’t learn a lot more about jazz itself in this book, you’ll discover a broader and more thorough picture of the times and places where bebop was born.

 

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History by Scott Knowles DeVeaux or Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch.]

 

[ University of Nebraska Press’ official Queering Kansas City Jazz web page ] | [ official Dr. Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone staff page at the University of Central Missouri ]

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

 

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