Jazzing the Data - Jazz Discographies in the Digital Age

Organized by the Columbia Center for Jazz Studies J-Disc task force, in partnership with IICSI, IPLAI, and the Schulich School of Music, a group of leading scholars in jazz discographies, MIR and jazz studies will discuss possible futures for jazz discographies.

nullThe history of jazz corresponds almost perfectly with that of mechanical means of recording sound.  The study of jazz is therefore highly indexed to the vast corpus of extant recordings.  This fact foregrounds the importance of full and accurate discographies, which form the most basic research data for those investigating jazz and its legacy.  But what constitutes a discography—what should it contain, and/or omit?  How can it best serve its potential users?  How does it in and of itself shape the nature of jazz research?  Who and what should be included in an inclusive jazz discography?   When is a seemingly “neutral decision” actually anything but?  And, in our digital age, how should the traditional text-based information a discography contains be enriched via relations to the recorded artifact itself, in all its forms, and with its assorted historical, cultural social and political significance?  How can and should MIR developments be used to extract information from such a discography, and what information need it contain in order to best facilitate present, and imaginable future, use by MIR technologies?    

Program

  • 9:00-9:15     Introductions
    • 9:15-9:45     Krin Gabbard: I Thought It Would Be Impossible: Discography Today
    • 9:45-10:15   Lisa Barg and David Brackett: What do Musicologists Want from a Jazz Discography?
  • 10:15-10:30  Coffee Break
    • 10:30-11:00  John Szwed:  The Mystery of Billie Holiday’s Voice
    • 11:00-11:30  Laura Risk: “First Lady of the Violin”: Rediscovering jazz violinist Ginger Smock through a Canadian archive
  • 11:30-13:00  Lunch
    • 13:00-13:30   Gabriel Solis: Jazz Discography, Digital Humanities, and Music Information Retrieval: An Ethnomusicologist's Reflections
    • 13:30-14:00   Tad Shull: Critical Data: The effect of large data sets on jazz criticism
  • 14:00-14:15  Coffee break
    • 14:15-14:45   Cynthia Leive: From Library Catalogue to Discography: the McGill University 10” Jazz Recording Preservation Project
    • 14:45-15:15   Robert O’Meally: TBA
  • 15:15-15:30  Closing comments, discussion