Book Review

Hearing Double offers a thought-provoking argument about the socio-cultural ontology and mediation of jazz.Throughout his monograph, Kane combines a deft knowledge of philosophy, an evident love for jazz standards, and insightful musical analysis to answer one of the central questions about jazz: what is a tune?Jazz's intertextual nature makes this an incredibly difficult question to answer.In classical music, where the ontology of the work is heavily tethered to the composer's intent, the concept of "the work" is relatively fixed and stable.In contrast, "the work" in jazz culture is forever mutable and never fully set. 1 "Culture" is the key word here.Kane's work allows for us to think of how the formal properties of any jazz utterance are inherently tied to its cultural zeitgeist.By framing the ontology of jazz as a cultural expression, Kane is able to map the formal musical properties of jazz onto the various strands of political, musical, and social discourses attached to the genre.Kane portrays the jazz standard as an emergent ontological entity (79).Building on the work of anthropologist Alfred Gell, philosopher Georgina Born, and musicologist Jos Bowen, Kane argues that when a jazz musician chooses to play a particular tune, they decide what aspects of the tune to keep the same and what to change.Consider the various ways that musicians play the standard "All the Things You Are."I know that Grant Green changes from a swing to a Latin feel during the B section in his 1979 recording.When I call this tune, I have a choice: do I change rhythmic feels like Grant Green?Or perhaps I play a version more similar to Charlie Parker or Brad Mehldau?Each new performance of the tune adds a new ontological dimension.Although the original tune was written in 3/4, most jazz musicians play it in 4/4 whereas Mehldau changes meters throughout.Instead of arguing that a musical property such as meter (e.g., 3/4) defines what the tune "is," Kane helps us to consider how such formal properties emerge from a historical backdrop of previous performances.Through embracing the social and networked nature of