Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation.

"I would like to discuss what I call _traces of embodiment_ in African American music, and suggest what we might learn from them: how musical bodies tell us stories. I propose that the story that an improvisor tells does not unfold merely in the overall form of a “coherent” solo, nor simply in antiphonal structures, but also in the microscopic musical details, as well as in the inherent structure of the performance itself. The story dwells not just in one solo at a time, but also in a single note, and equally in an entire lifetime of improvisations. In short, the story is revealed not as a simple linear narrative, but as a fractured, exploded one. It is what we take to be the shifting, multiple, continually reconstructed subjectivities of the improvisors, encoded in a diverse variety of sonic symbols, occurring at different levels and subject to different stylistic controls."