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Awards & Prizes The Woody Guthrie Award
Dr. Ingrid Monson has been given the Woody Guthrie Book Award 2008 for "Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa." The award was presented during the 2009 IASPM-US conference in San Diego. Painstakingly researched, "Freedom Sounds" is a concourse into the complex interplay between music, racial tensions and artistic innovation during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, according to the book award committee that was comprised of chair Barbara Fox and members Larry Witzleben and Trudy Mercadal. "Monson examines the recasting of jazz in terms of prejudicial hardships such as reverse racism, playing to segregated audiences in the 1950s and African-American self-determination of the 1950s and 1960s," the committee noted. "In addition, her work includes the ethos of the cold war, reaction to African musical expression and diasporic sensibilities in light of America's infamous reputation for racial prejudice. Monsay clearly documents in charts governmental support for jazz to be used as a 'Utopian dream come true.' "Her thorough research on sensibilities in America and the struggle to right itself in crisis are illuminated in her presentation of such events as the funding of State Department tours in 1956, desegregation of the American Federation of Musicians, economic strategies of empowerment and African nationalism," the committee said. "The result is a compelling work that presents theoretical and cultural criticism in a complex era. Her research, archival listings and ample footnotes provide a wealth of information for future scholars by delineating without oversimplifying this impact on jazz history. "We congratulate Dr. Monson on her exploration of the interplay between music, politics and ethos during this critical time in jazz history." Dr. Monson is the Quincy Jones Professor of African-American Music at Harvard. According to Harvard's website, Professor Monson specializes in jazz, African American music, and music of the African diaspora. She is also the author of "Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction", which won the Sonneck Society's Irving Lowens award for the best book published on American music in 1996. She is also editor of "The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective" (2000). This collection of essays presents musical case studies from various regions of the African diaspora that engage with the broader interdisciplinary discussions about race, gender, politics, nationalism, and music. Contributors include Akin Euba, Veit Erlmann, Eric Charry, Lucy Dur‡n, Jerome Harris, Travis Jackson, Gage Averill, and Julian Gerstin. She has published articles in Ethnomusicology, Critical Inquiry, World of Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, and Women and Music. She is also a trumpet player. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Musicology from New York University, her B.M. from New England Conservatory of Music, and her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Economics. Previous Woody Guthrie Award Winners |
