University News Last updated 13 March 2017
A new book argues jazz was never just an innovative sound – it was also a new way of seeing the world.
‘Jazz as Visual Language: Film, Television and the Dissonant Image’ has been written by Dr Nicolas Pillai, a Research Fellow in Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University.
With recent Oscar hits such as ‘Whiplash’ and ‘La La Land’ in the headlines, Dr Pillai’s book provides a timely analysis and history of jazz on screen. Using case studies in which the artistry of great musicians is expressed through experimental and innovative visual style, this is the first single-author monograph to encompass jazz in both film and television.
The book receives its official launch this week on Thursday 16 March at the Vortex Jazz Club in North East London. One of Europe’s most celebrated venues for improvised music, the Vortex has previously hosted a season of screenings curated by Dr Pillai.
Dr Pillai’s research has an archival focus and has been produced through close collaborations with institutions such as the BBC Written Archive, the National Jazz Archive (UK), Jazzinstitut Darmstadt (Germany) and the Len Lye Centre (New Zealand).
A series of public lectures and screenings allowed Dr Pillai to engage with jazz fans around the world, many of whom shared episodes of jazz television from their private collections.
Discussing the book’s themes, Dr Nicolas Pillai said: 
“I wrote this book because I wanted to find out why Len Lye’s abstract animations fascinated me, why Gjon Mili’s ‘Jammin’ the Blues’ moved me and why the BBC’s ‘Jazz 625’ brought me such joy.
“Jazz is in constant dialogue with its presence in popular culture and society. The music doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”
The research for ‘Jazz as Visual Language’ has now evolved into an additional project, which will consider the technical decisions faced by television crews and improvising musicians during the golden age of jazz television broadcasting in the 1960s.
Dr Pillai has secured a prestigious Early Career Leadership Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to ensure the project – ‘Jazz on BBC-TV 1960-1969’ – will come to fruition. The research is being facilitated by the Jazz Research cluster at Birmingham City University, which is led by Professors Nicholas Gebhardt and Tony Whyton.
Although only three years old, the cluster boasts 29 members, including 12 jazz researchers from across Birmingham School of Media and Birmingham Conservatoire, nine doctoral students and leaders of the regional jazz community, as well as additional academic partners at Middlesex University, University of Warwick, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and University of Aveiro (Portugal).
Furthermore, Birmingham Conservatoire, part of Birmingham City University, is currently preparing to move to a new state-of-the-art £57 million home this year, which will include the city’s only permanent jazz space – Eastside Jazz Club.
Published by I.B. Tauris, ‘Jazz as Visual Language’ receives its official launch at the Vortex Jazz Club in North East London on Thursday 16 March at 7pm. All are welcome.