Faulkner's new book explores sociology of jazz repertoire

For anyone who’s ever wondered how jazz musicians who don’t know each other get together on stage and perform, sociologists Robert R. Faulkner and Howard S. Becker examine the intricacies of the process in their forthcoming book “Do You Know? … The Jazz Repertoire in Action.”

The book, scheduled for release in September by the University of Chicago Press, is based on research supported by a $115,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

As musicians, both men know their subject. Faulkner, a member of the Sociology faculty since the early 1970s, still performs on the trumpet, while Becker, who has taught at Northwestern, the University of Washington and the University of California, Santa Barbara, is a skilled pianist who played professionally for many years.

The authors draw upon their own experiences as performers. Becker recounts playing with the Bobby Laine Trio at the 504 Club in Chicago around 1951, while Faulkner describes a gig at the Egremont Inn in 2007. They also summarize Bruce MacLeod’s study of club dates in the New York area in the 1970s and ’80s.

As Faulkner and Becker found, musicians don’t know every song, but often trade suggestions back and forth until they find a tune they all know or are comfortable playing. The authors contend that repertoire is a process that offers insight into collective action in other fields and activities.

As they note in the book, “The mundane activities that together create and maintain repertoire constitute enactment,” which they say links individual and shared knowledge to specific situations whose demands are influenced by audiences, employers, physical surroundings and the assortment of musicians.

Enactment processes, say Becker and Faulkner, also occur in the areas of crime and policing, medicine, religion and sports. “As examples, consider the way sentencing guidelines constrain the ordering and prioritizing of judicial decisions in the criminal justice system; the way government regulations affect the diagnostic and treatment decisions of physicians; and the way general managers of professional baseball teams decide which players to hire, which to let go.”

When repertoire is considered as a process through which something is continuously made and remade as people acquire, exchange, learn and teach the relevant elements, say the authors, it provides a tool for understanding forms of collective action.

To observe the jazz repertoire in action, Faulkner and Donn Trenner will perform at the farewell reception for Janet Rifkin, dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences, on May 15 at 4 p.m. at the Fine Arts Center atrium.

Faulkner is the author of “Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film Industry” and Becker is the author of numerous books, including “Tricks of the Trade” and “Telling about Society.”


Photo of Egremont Inn performance by Olivia Faulkner

More Information

Book cover

May 7, 2009.