“ The resulting amalgam - an exotic mixture of European, Caribbean, African, and American elements - made Louisiana into perhaps the most seething ethnic melting pot that the nineteenth century world co… Ted Gioia
“ [T]he piano was to Harlem what brass bands had been to New Orleans. The instrument represented conflicting possibilities -- a pathway for assimilating traditional highbrow culture, a calling card of l… Ted Gioia
“ When stealing from other players, an older musician wisely advised me, choose a different instrument from your own, and people won’t notice the theft. Ted Gioia
“ In every sphere of social interaction, that hermeneutic leap—that ability to put yourself in the mind frame of the other—is a virtue and a blessing. Ted Gioia
“ By the way, this tells you why Auto-Tuned vocals on many contemporary records sound so shallow and lifeless. It’s almost as if everything we learned from African American music during the twentieth ce… Ted Gioia
“ Like the New Orleans tradition that preceded it, and the Swing Era offerings that followed it, Chicago jazz was not just the music of a time and place, but also a timeless style of performance - and f… Ted Gioia
“ The work of art always requires us to adapt to it—and in this manner can be distinguished from escapism or shallow entertainment, which instead aims to adapt to the audience, to give the public exactl… Ted Gioia
