Jim Brown reviewed As Serious As Your Life by Val Wilmer (Serpent's Tail Classics)
The Reproductive Labor of Jazz
In some ways, this is a standard Jazz book, offering accounts of specific performers and performances, and digging deep into the stories behind this music. Its focus is on the free jazz movement ("The New Music") of the 1960s and 1970s, and that makes it especially interesting. Coletrane, Milford Graves, Ornette Coleman, and others were seeking out new directions for Jazz, and they were often maligned for it.
But beyond all this, Wilmer's chapters on women are the most interesting part of this book. Not only does she account for women who were playing music, she talks in depth about the women who did the reproductive labor necessary to ensure that these musicians (mostly men) could travel and pursue a profession that was usually not very well paid. Chapter 11, "It takes two people to confirm the truth," is the most interesting in the book. Published in 1977, the …
In some ways, this is a standard Jazz book, offering accounts of specific performers and performances, and digging deep into the stories behind this music. Its focus is on the free jazz movement ("The New Music") of the 1960s and 1970s, and that makes it especially interesting. Coletrane, Milford Graves, Ornette Coleman, and others were seeking out new directions for Jazz, and they were often maligned for it.
But beyond all this, Wilmer's chapters on women are the most interesting part of this book. Not only does she account for women who were playing music, she talks in depth about the women who did the reproductive labor necessary to ensure that these musicians (mostly men) could travel and pursue a profession that was usually not very well paid. Chapter 11, "It takes two people to confirm the truth," is the most interesting in the book. Published in 1977, the book feels like it was somewhat ahead of its time when it came to these questions of gender and labor.