The Showroom | In conversation: Dr. Tammy Kernodle with Elaine Mitchener, Siya Makuzeni & Thandi Ntuli

This discussion includes an introduction by the project's commissioner, Filmmaker Producer Reece Ewing, to IN·FLO·RES·CENCE’s focus on the cross-modality of art and sound and our guest host Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle. Dr. Kernodle, President of the Society for American Music, is one of the US's most esteemed musicologists often featured on the BBC and a seminal writer, such as for Beyond the Chord: A Historical and Musicological Perspective of the Jazz Avant-Garde for The Walker Art Center's Creative Black Museum Living Collection. Considering her scholarship on jazz and gender, this conversation jumps off from the 1959 shift after the big band era, focusing on burgeoning experimentalism and open-mindedness in jazz throughout the 70s/80s and leading into contemporary practices and ideas of sonic femininity today.

The conversation begins by discussing female jazz vocalists that emerged in the late 1920s. They muse on the symbolic imprisonment of the microphone, a device that created a vocal aesthetic of subtle and sonic femininity, in contrast to the more guttural and belting of blues vocals. The speakers then delve into the shift in the late 20th century of black women pushing against and resisting the policing of their bodies and voices. This resistance culture – a rejection of sonic femininity – is tied to the emergence of the jazz avant-garde and the Civil Rights struggle, with a newfound call to action to centralise and amplify radical female voices. These voices also pointed to the expansive ways in which black women participated in and conceptualised art, expanding music and visual expression through ideas of sound poetry and physical movement – asking: what does freedom sound like?

TAMMY L. KERNODLE

Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle is a musician and scholar that teaches and researches in the areas of African American music and gender and music. She has worked closely with a number of educational programs including National Museum of African American History and Culture, NPR, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the BBC. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, and anthologies. Kernodle is the author of biography Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams, served as Associate Editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of African American Music and the Editorial team for the revision of the Grove Dictionary of American Music. She is currently Professor of Musicology at Miami University in Oxford, OH and the President of the Society for American Music.

Each IN·FLO·RES·CENCE composer engages with Dr. Kernodle's research by addressing ideas including: how did they find themselves in their early careers ever needing to represent the ideal female jazz singer; where their power and agency as musicians stems from; the moment they all discovered their voice technically and symbolically; how a musical rhetoric of social change influences all of their practice; and sheroes like Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, Jeanne Lee, who all represent consciousness and activism through music.

After focusing on each composer's individual practice, Dr. Kernodle references the mission of her current research: to challenge the narratives situating music as being art for arts sake progressed by master male musicians, and deliberately centring the paradigmatic experiences of black female musicians. She frames Elaine Mitchener, Siya Makuzeni, and Thandi Ntuli - whilst all distinct practitioners - as part of a genealogy of women who constantly redefine what art, sound, resistance, and freedom is.

In performance contexts when reflecting on her black female music heroes, Dr Tammy L. Kernodle says: 'These black women musicians used music as a means of documenting and promoting the struggle for equality and social justice in America. Be ready to experience the story of various historical contexts from slavery, to the Civil Rights Movements, to the proliferation of the Black Power movement in the 1970s.'

New book: Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (2020)

A Q+A: Where Dr. Kernodle answers questions about her inspirations, discoveries, and reader takeaways

Introduction: Living Collections Catalogue: Creative Black Music at the Walker: Selections from the Archives, 'Beyond the Chord, the Club, and the Critics: A Historical and Musicological Perspective of the Jazz Avant-Garde'

Photo: Guido Mencari
Photo: Jessica Moncrief
Photo: Vicki Sikhakhane

ELAINER MITCHENER

Born and raised in East London of Jamaican heritage Elaine Mitchener is a contemporary vocalist, movement artist and composer, whose work encompasses improvisation, contemporary/experimental music theatre and dance. She has performed and collaborated with numerous leading artists including Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother), Mark Padmore, George E. Lewis, The Otolith Group, Sonia Boyce, Tansy Davies, Hamid Drake, Van Huynh Company, Apartment House, David Toop, London Sinfonietta, Christian Marclay, Ensemble Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik, William Parker. She is founder of collective electroacoustic trio The Rolling Calf with saxophonist Jason Yarde and bassist Neil Charles. Her sound works are held in a curated collection by George E Lewis at Darmstadt Festival.

Photo: Jana Chiellino.
SIYA MAKUZENI

Siya Makuzeni is a professional South African trombone player, vocalist, lyricist and songwriter known for her extensive musical range, vocal dexterity, experimental creativity, and passion for symbiotic cross-genre influences. She is Johnnie Walker brand ambassador 2019, Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz 2016 recIpient, and band leader of rock band IppYFuzE and Siya Makuzeni Sextet, who fuse traditional jazz instrumentation with modern electronic elements and harmonized vocal effects.

Makuzeni picked up the trombone in 1997 while attending Stirling High School in East London and studied BMus/BMusJazz at Rhodes University & the Pretoria Technikon Music School. She has since toured, performed around the globe, and collaborates in special projects such as contributing as co-composer and lyric interpreter for the soundtrack of Forse Dio e Malato (Maybe God is Ill) and performing with William Kentridge and Phillip Miller in Dancing with Dada - featuring Dada Masilo (2011). When not performing live Makuzeni is a music producer, session musician, arranger, songwriter, and voice-over artist.

Photo: Olafemi Chauke
THANDI NTULI

South African multi-award winning jazz pianist and vocalist, Thandi Ntuli, hails from a lineage of rich musical heritage. Since the release of her debut album The Offering (2014) and her sophomore release Exiled (2018), she’s made an imprint on the global jazz community as one of the leading voices of modern South African jazz. Her many collaborations include work with Steve Dyer, Neo Muyanga, Thandiswa Mazwai, Shabaka & The Ancestors, Marcus Wyatt, DjKenzhero, LA-based Hip-Hop duo Harriett, and most recently, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra.

Her live project, Thandi Ntuli ‘Live at Jazzwerkstatt’ released in March 2020 displays her capabilities as not only a composer and performer, but also an arranger with the remarkable facility to weave the imagery of her stories with each note. Notable accolades include a Metro FM Award nomination (2015), Mbokodo Award (2015), Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz (2018), and a South African Music Award (SAMA) nomination (2019).

Photo: Vicki Sikhakhane
REECE EWING

Reece Ewing initially imagined IN·FLO·RES·CENCE as an art initiative whereby jazz could be shared and discovered in a context focusing on gathering, communion, critical discussion, provocation, and joy. He is a Filmmaker and Emmy nominated and award-winning Producer working in Visual Effects and Post Production across television, film and advertising. Ewing’s work as a filmmaker is a response to large-scale production that can require upwards of hundreds to people to produce. In contrast, his filmmaking is a studio practice focused on working in isolation and one-on-one collaborations.

Ewing has been greatly informed by his music studies. His continued practice of listening to jazz consists of challenging himself to expand what he is listening to and how he listens. His decision-making, problem-solving and activism are all defined by how he thinks musically.