An imaginative and passionate synthesis of form and function, Landing on the Wrong NOte goes beyond mainstream jazz criticism, outlining a new poetics of jazz that emerges not from the ivory tower but from the clubs, performances, and lives of today's jazz musicians.

Ajay Heble is Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph in Canada. The author of a book on Alice Munro and the editor of a volume of Canadian criticism, he is also the Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Festival. He wears a beret.

Preface Acknowledgement Introduction 1. The Poetics of Jazz:From Symbolic to Semiotic 2. The Rehistoricizing of Jazz: chicago's Urban Bushmen and the Problem of Representation 3. Performing Identity: Jazz Autobiography and the Politics of Literary Improvisation 4. Space is the Place: Jazz, Voice, and Resistance 5. Nice Work if You Can Get it: Women in Jazz 6. Capitulating to Barbarism: Jazz and/as Popular Culture 7. Up for Grabs: The Ethicopolitical Authority of Jazz Conclusion Works Cited Sound and Video Recordings Consulted