In Blutopia Graham Lock studies the music and thought of three pioneering twentieth-century musicians: Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Providing an alternative to previous analyses of their work, Lock shows how these distinctive artists were each influenced by a common musical and spiritual heritage and participated in self-conscious efforts to create a utopian vision of the future. A century after Ellington’s birth, Lock reassesses his use of music as a form of black history and compares the different approaches of Ra, a band leader who focused on the future and cosmology, and Braxton, a contemporary composer whose work creates its own elaborate mythology. Arguing that the majority of writing on black music and musicians has—even if inadvertently—incorporated racial stereotypes, he explains how each artist reacted to criticism and sought to break free of categorical confines. Drawing on social history, musicology, biography, cultural theory, and, most of all, statements by the musicians themselves, Lock writes of their influential work. Blutopia will be a welcome contribution to the literature on twentieth-century African American music and creativity. It will interest students of jazz, American music, African American studies, American culture, and cultural studies. More than simply an overview of three remarkable musicians' lives, this stellar example of distinctive scholarship (together with Lock's previous works, Forces in Motion and Chasing the Vibration) provides an invaluable commentary on American society. Lock relies on African American cultural practices and mythologies to support his underlying themes, which include the purpose behind each musician's works, how they dealt with misconceptions and misunderstandings (particularly regarding jazz criticism and attempts to gain respect for the music), and the democratic nature of jazz, with an emphasis on its black roots and methods of disowning previous racial stereotyping of the music. In recent years, jazz artists such as Sun Ra and Braxton, who were once marginalized by market forces and critics alike, have become topics of exceptional scholarship, and authors simultaneously strive to correct past writing about jazz artists, including such eminences as Ellington. These promising developments saturate Lock's latest work. Recommended for music libraries and public and academic libraries supporting music collections. -William Kenz, Moorhead State Univ. Lib., MN Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. “Graham Lock’s Blutopia will stand as a pivotal text in the development of a serious consideration of African American creative music. Lock offers a range of fresh, new materials, and is at the same time approaching the problematic of the black musical intellectual tradition from an extremely exciting and original perspective.”— John Corbett, author of Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein “Graham Lock’s rightly-named book expertly and impeccably attends to the mission African-American music has been on. Its address of a utopic assertion shaded by blue, dystopic truth in the work of Sun Ra, Ellington, and Braxton knowingly shows how distinctly out music ‘in the tradition’ has long been. Entering the discourse advanced by such assertion with exemplary grace and discernment, ever the right tone and touch, it succeeds beautifully in recognizing and furthering the music’s blutopic studies.”—Nathaniel Mackey, University of California, Santa Cruz “Lock is upping the ante on the scholarship of music. He gently leads the reader into largely unknown territory with impressive lucidity and evenhandedness.”—John Szwed, author of Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra “ Blutopia is a lucidly written, expansively annotated exposition of ‘an African American visionary future stained with memories.’ ” -- Julian Cowley ― The Wire “ Blutopia is a wonderful book. Lock lays out each man’s life and ideas in a readable and informative fashion. In addition, his thorough research and reasonable analysis shed new light on previously unexamined aspects of these artists’ careers. in fact, his chapter on Sun Ra is perhaps the best summation of his philosophy that exists. Additionally, his techniques for uncovering the idea-worlds lurking in the interviews and other effluvia generated by an artist living a public life, point the way for future researchers into the world of jazz studies.” -- John Howard ― American Studies International “[Lock’s] book offers a very fertile line of thought, and he must be right that it could be applied to other African American music from Scott Joplin to Cecil Taylor. There’s copious annotation but while the scholarship is formidable, the presentation is clear and readable. Blutopia is an important and novel addition to the jazz literature.” -- Andy Hamilton ― Jazz Review “[Lock] is a lucid writer, intelligent and incisive, and Blutopia displays the sterling qual