Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice

Jazz is perhaps the most cerebral and most unpredictable of musical forms. Miles Davis transforms the simplest tune and structure into wildly imaginative improvisations. Thelonious Monk made dissonance glorious. And as Duke Ellington said, "Dissonance is our way of life in America. We are something apart, yet an integral part." InLanding on the Wrong Note,Ajay Heble provides a groundbreaking analysis of jazz in its cultural context and a lucid exploration of the musical form itself: its dissonant riffs and resistance to traditional interpretations are emblematic of the social struggles surrounding the jazz scene and the people who created it. Drawing on personal anecdote, observation, conversations with jazz artists, and cultural theory, Heble demonstrates that although jazz may be free-form, its rich and varied history makes it an important point of entry into some of the most hotly contested issues of our era -- power, identity, representation, history, ethics, and social change. Asartistic director of a jazz festival and noted critic, he has unique insight into the gap between critical interpretation and the reality of performance. An imaginative and passionate synthesis of form and function,Landing on the Wrong Notegoes beyond mainstream jazz criticism, outlining a new poetics of jazz that emerges not from the ivory tower but from the clubs, performances, and lives of today's jazz musicians.

Ajay Heble is Associate Professor in the School of Literatures and Performances in English at the University of Guelph in Canada.