The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

In the early 1960s, pianist Horace Tapscott gave up a successful career in Lionel Hampton's band and returned to his home in Los Angeles to found the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community arts group that focused on providing community-oriented jazz and jazz training. Over the course of almost forty years, the Arkestra, together with the related Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension collective, was at the forefront of the vital community-based arts movement in Black Los Angeles. Some three hundred artists--musicians, vocalists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, and graphic artists--passed through these organizations, many ultimately remaining within the community and others moving on to achieve international fame. In The Dark Tree, Steven L. Isoardi draws on one hundred in-depth interviews with the Arkestra's participants to tell the history of the important and largely overlooked community arts movement of Black Los Angeles. This revised and updated edition brings the story of the Arkestra up to date, as its ethos and aesthetic remain vital forces in jazz and popular music to this day.

Author: Steven L. Isoardi
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 09/08/2023
Pages: 456
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.33lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.92d
ISBN13: 9781478025283
ISBN10: 147802528X
BISAC Categories:
- Music | Genres & Styles | Jazz
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies

About the Author
Steven L. Isoardi is an independent scholar and editor of Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott, also published by Duke University Press, Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles, and Jazz Generations: A Life in American Music and Society. He is the author of The Music Finds a Way: A PAPA/UGMAA Oral History of Growing up in Postwar South Central Los Angeles.