Now a quasi-universal musical form, present in all five continents, jazz developed as a result of a complex process of cultural exchange, making it a true product of cultural globalisation. Typical of the success of the « glocal », as defined by Robertson in 1994, between the « resilience of the local and global consciousness », jazz has generated new communities of amateur and professional musicians around a strong local musical tradition, thanks first to the presence of foreign musicians, and second to the global nature of jazz itself. The aim of this one-day conference will be to explore the local and global dimensions of these jazz communities from the point of the musicians, the audiences and media, in order to understand how jazz, the quintessentially global musical genre, creates not just local and global communities, but also the links between these very communities. 

This One-Day Conference will take place on the 18th May 2020 by the CRPM, Université de Nanterre.

Argument

As part of the research project supported by the Université Paris Lumière entitled « Can the global create communities ? », the CRPM (Centre de Recherche Pluridisciplinaire Multilingue, EA 4418) of the Université Paris-Nanterre is organizing a cycle of conferences and one-day-conferences. The first study day, entitled « Constructing the global: actors, narratives, transnational communities », took place on 6 December 2018. It will be followed by an international conference on the theme of « Migration(s) and new communities: uses, reconfigurations and (re)appropriations of space », scheduled on 28/29 November 2019. The aim of these events is on the one hand to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of how communities form in the context of globalisation, and on the other to analyse specific cases of actual communities in a range of cultural and linguistic spheres.

Jazz lends itself particularly well to this project, inasmuch as it is typical of those « counter-hegemonies » generated by « the globalised world », as Pierre-Legendre puts it in his Ce que l'Occident ne voit pas de l'Occident. Now a quasi-universal musical form, present in all five continents, jazz developed as a result of a complex process of cultural exchange, making it a true product of cultural globalisation. Moreover, this is a globalisation which spread not only from the West (the USA) towards the rest of the world, but also between the different countries that make up the rest of the world, and indeed from the rest of the world back towards Europe and the USA.

In this sense, jazz today is quite clearly a musical genre practised on a range of different levels, be they transnational, postnational, supranational, or even local. Typical of the success of the « glocal », as defined by Robertson in 1994, between the « resilience of the local and global consciousness » (P. Kennedy, 2013), jazz has generated new communities of amateur and professional musicians in the same country, the same city, and indeed sometimes the same area within a city (one thinks for example of Saint-Germain-des-prés in post-war Paris). While taking shape around a strong local musical tradition, such communities have nevertheless managed to retain a transnational dimension, thanks first to the presence of foreign musicians, and second to the global nature of jazz itself.

Even if after the First World War, and even more so after the Second World War, jazz became an instrument of soft power (R. Wagnleitner, 1994), as symbolized for example (rightly or wrongly) by Willis Conover’s « Voice of America » programme (B. Ostendorf, 2014), those jazz communities which emerged in particular in Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Japan but also in India, and throughout the Mediterranean basin are characterized by interactions as multipolar as they are multidimensional.

Whether short-lived or long lasting, these communities of amateur and professional jazz musicians, fed by a diverse range of foreign and local influences, generate new forms of jazz full of new colour, enriched by global exchange.

The aim of this one-day conference will be to explore the local and global dimensions of these jazz communities from the point of the musicians (bands and multicultural projects, setting up abroad…), the audiences (clubs, festivals…) and media (radios, magazines, record labels…), in order to understand how jazz, the quintessentially global musical genre, creates not just local and global communities, but also the links between these very communities.  

Submission guidelines

Presenters will have the opportunity to publish their paper in an edited volume of Proceedings.

Abstract submission dead line: 10 December 2019 (2500 to 3500 characters)

Please send proposals to pascale.cohen-avenel@parisnanterre.fr

Scientific and organizing committee

• Pascale Cohen-Avenel (Université Paris Nanterre) 
• Jean-Robert Raviot (Université Paris Nanterre)
• Lucia Quaquarelli (Université Paris Nanterre)
• Graham Robert (Université Paris Nanterre)
• André Filler (Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis)
• Reinhold Wagnleitner (Universität Salzburg)