Jazz and Everyday Aesthetics

Aesthetic relations and qualities inform our experience of the world in powerful ways, and they exert this influence through their presence in our daily activities, from working with others to our most intimate exchanges with family and friends. While issues of everyday aesthetic value have been widely discussed within popular music studies (Clark et al, 2010; Frith, 1996, 2004; DeNora, 2000; Hesmondalgh, 2013), jazz scholars have largely avoided a direct engagement with this theoretical literature. This network is an attempt to explore through an innovative series of participatory workshops the role of the aesthetic experience of jazz is on people's everyday lives. Meetings will focus on the transmission and reception of jazz in everyday contexts and examine the ways in which individuals and groups evaluate the music's artistic meaning and significance. Instances in which the experience of jazz is either lost or missed will also inform workshop exercises, and focus participants' attention on understanding what is most ordinary about their relationship to music (Cavell, 2005). We believe that the study of the everyday aesthetic value of jazz informs not only our understanding of cultural practices; but it also provides a lens through which people's everyday experiences can be examined more broadly. The overall aim of the network is to develop a better understanding of the cultural value of jazz for its audiences and to connect its value to the both the individual and collective dimensions of aesthetic experience and everyday life (de Certeau, 1998; Danto, 1981; Goffman, 1967; Highmore, 2002, 2011; Heller, 1984; Lefebvre, 2000; Light, & Smith, 2005; Sheringham, 2006; Stewart, 2007).

This will be accomplished primarily through a series of networking events involving academics, particularly those with interests in reception theory in media and cultural studies, history, psychology, philosophy, and musicology, along with musicians, promoters, music journalists, and the wider public. International keynote speakers will be invited to address each event and the attendance of new researchers and research students will be encouraged through bursaries and other forms of financial support. Network events will be held in London, Edinburgh and Cheltenham, and Amsterdam and each will include a public performance by emerging jazz artists that engage with the workshop themes. We will seek to establish an audience focus group at the Cheltenham event. In addition to the events, the network website will provide an interactive space for participants to experiment with aesthetic experiences of jazz and respond to project performances.

The intention of the network is to build relationships which open new paths of inquiry and will lead to further collaborations within and beyond jazz studies, especially between academics working in different disciplines, and between academics and jazz practitioners, jazz promoters and producers, and audiences outside the academic community. We are aiming to create a network which will be equally beneficial to all these groups, particularly to provide opportunities for the public dissemination of academic research. The network will provide a platform through which each of these groups can explore their relationship to jazz and contribute to the group's discussions. The network will encourage research that can be put to practical use, for example working in collaboration with venues, jazz festivals, and promoters, to inform their understanding of the music's significance to their audiences and to institute appropriate changes in policy where the research indicates this appropriate.

The project will offer dialogue between different members of the jazz community, and also include at key points the wider public. Jazz is an ideal vehicle for such discussions as it is a rapidly changing global music form which reflects social and cultural values, and is both part of mass culture - in particular through its link to popular music more generally - but is also at times art music and even countercultural. The public events held in conjunction with project meetings will encourage the involvement of audiences in exploring the aesthetic value of jazz through innovative workshops, discussion and performance. We will establish a focus group at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival to gauge audience responses, and these events will provide an important context in which audiences can articulate their understanding of what jazz is, where it appears in everyday life, and a sense of its 'value'. This will enable the public to make valuable contributions to the network's discussions, information which will then be shared with other relevant members of the jazz community. The project website will act as an extension of these events, providing an innovative interactive space in which participants and the wider public can further explore concepts of aesthetic value in jazz through the use of live and prerecorded audio and visual materials.

The network's events, and the website, will also provide opportunities for jazz musicians to respond to the project themes, as well as offer public workshops that explore the everyday aesthetics of jazz in the context of their own music-making. In particular these performances will be planned, and based on key themes that will enable mutually beneficial discussion and exchange of knowledge between audiences, academics and the musicians. The network will also encourage and broker collaboration between festivals, venues, and promoters through the accessible presentation of research, which can then inform festival commissioning, venue design, and programming decisions. The edited collection bringing together the various arguments and conclusions from each meeting, and accompanying public events, and will be available for both academic and non-academic readers. Reviews will bring the book to the attention of a wider audience. Finally, interested parties will be kept up to date with the project through twitter accounts @jazzResearchBCU and @warwick_jazz