The 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
- 9:15-9:45 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
