AB Spellman

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AB Spellman (right) presents Gunther Schuller (left) with the NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy (2008)

Alfred Bennett Spellman (born August 12, 1935 in Nixonton near Elizabeth City , North Carolina ) is an American jazz writer , music critic and poet.

Live and act

Spellman is the son of teachers and studied from 1952 at Howard University , where he made a bachelor's degree in political science and history in 1956. While still at university, where he was a member of the university choir, he began to write about music. In 1958 he moved to New York City, where he wrote poetry, attended law courses, worked in bookstores, wrote reviews for Down Beat and Metronome from 1959 and had a radio program Where It's at on WBAI in the early 1960s . He was characterized by his particular open-mindedness towards the avant-garde that was forming at this time. At the same time he wrote poetry. In 1964 his volume of poetry The Beautiful Days was published . In 1966 his book Four Lives in the Bebop-Business was published , in which he portrayed the (colored) jazz musicians Cecil Taylor , Ornette Coleman , Herbie Nichols and Jackie McLean . In 1967 he toured "black" colleges and universities in the US with other black poets. In 1968/1969 he wrote political columns (and poems) for Rhythm Magazine . He has also given lectures at various US universities (such as Emory ). From 1972 to 1975 he was a lecturer in African American studies at Harvard University . He then held a leading position at NEA in Washington, DC , the US state sponsorship of culture, until 2005 . In addition to his activities at the NEA, where he particularly promoted jazz music, he was also an advisor to the African-American Museum of the Smithsonian Institute.

Fonts

  • Four Jazz Lives, University of Michigan Press 2004 (reprint of "Four Lives in the Bebop Business", New York, Pantheon Books, 1966)
  • Art Tatum, Giants of Jazz series, Time-Life 1982
  • Beautiful Days- Poems, New York, Poet's Press 1965 (introduction by Frank O'Hara)
  • Things i must have known. Poetry. Minneapolis, Coffee House Press 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A fellow student was Amiri Baraka , then still under the name LeRoi Jones.
personal data
SURNAME Spellman, AB
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spellman, Alfred Bennett
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Elizabeth City , North Carolina, USA