“Grins and Grimaces: Jazz Performance and the Face-Work of Drummers ”: Dana Gooley, Music Studies Colloquium

Performing Arts - Music | November 16 | 4:40-6 p.m. | 128 Morrison Hall

Featured Speaker: Dana Gooley, Associate Professor of Music, Brown University

Sponsor: Department of Music

In jazz performance, drummers and percussionists have long been a principal site of spectator focalization, second only to singers and instrumental soloists. In early jazz the percussionist, facing the audience and lacking any obstruction to the face, acted as a sort of comedian sporting an antic grin. During the swing era this grin was preserved by nearly every drummer although the elaborate percussion sets disappeared. At the same time Gene Krupa, drummer for Benny Goodman, introduced a variant of the drummer’s grin: a tortured grimace that, combined with copious perspiration, signified intensity, labor, even obsession. Krupa’s dionysian manner became wildly popular (he was brought forward to the front of the stage) and was widely emulated by drummers in both jazz and rock. In this article I consider how the grimace and grin tropes framed meanings for "jazz" and "rhythm," while at the same time destabilizing those meanings through the dynamism of performance. I further discuss how these tropes embodied negotiations of black and white identities. Exchanges and condensations of racial markers are especially clear in a comparison between Krupa and Count Basie’s drummer Jo Jones, a vigorous grinner. In fleshing out these problems I draw on Erving Goffman’s notion of “face work,” which he uses to describe the maintenance of a consistent persona or impression of engagement over the course of a controlled social encounter. I further consider how televisual and cinematic media transformed "drum-face" into a performance convention taken up in non-jazz genres.

Bio: Dana Gooley’s research centers on European music and musical culture in the 19th century, with an emphasis on performers and the public sphere. A specialist of Franz Liszt, he has published The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge, 2004) and co-edited two essay collections: Franz Liszt and His World (Princeton, 2006) and Franz Liszt: Musicien Européen (Editions Vrin, 2012). Other articles on music criticism, virtuosity, musical mediation, improvisation and jazz have appeared in the journals 19th Century Music, Musical Quarterly, Journal of Musicology, Musiktheorie and Performance Research. In other recent work he has explored various intersections between historical musicology and performance studies. He is writing a book on the aesthetics and practice of keyboard improvisation in the 19th century.

Tickets not required

Refreshments: Reception follows colloquium

Event Contact: 510-642-2678