Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct

Description

David Sudnow, trained as an ethnographer, decided to take up the study of jazz piano playing and to write a detailed autobiographic account of the ways his hands would come to learn about the piano keyboard and improvisation. He became a fine pianist and has produced a book that is a landmark in descriptive writing—a rich and authentic expression of how a human being learns an elaborate skill. Heated arguments have long been raging in phenomenological and humanist circles, against objective, scientific studies of human conduct. In this book we finally have an empirical breakthrough: a practitioner's account of the organization of a complex action. Sudnow's achievement touches issues in many disciplines, and speaks as well to artists and others who reflect upon the nature of the body, movement, learning, and creativity. The textured experience unfolded here is difficult in its necessary detail, but still accessible to the patient reader who has had no musical training. Although very much about musical improvisation, the study has the deepest implications for our thinking about behavior and, especially, that form of behavior we call language. Dedication Acknowledgments Epigraph Preface Contents Beginnings Going for the Sounds Going for the Jazz Bibliography