Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation

David Malvinni

More than fifteen years since the death of lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead stand as a symbol of the unresolved cultural clashes of the 1960s. The band’s thirty-year odyssey is a testament to the American imagination, with thousands of live concert recordings by fans and the band itself, preserved alongside an impressive array of images, artwork, and paraphernalia. Most recently, the Grateful Dead have released from their vault their entire 1972 European tour, one of the largest boxed sets of live music—seventy-three compact discs—ever released. This publicly available archive of recorded music lays the groundwork for David Malvinni’s exploration of the band’s musical signature as the ultimate jam band in Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation. Malvinni considers a select group of songs from the Dead’s early repertoire, from its unique covers of “Viola Lee Blues,” “Midnight Hour,” and “Love Light” to original masterpieces like “Dark Star.” Marrying basic music analysis to philosophical frames offered by improvisatory musings of Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze, Malvinni presents the core aesthetic underlying the Dead’s musical styling.

In tracing the evolution of the band’s unique jam style, Malvinni outlines the Dead’s gift as gatherers and inventors of old and new soundscapes in their multifaceted improvisations. Like no other band, the Dead brought together a variety of styles from roots and folk to country and modal jazz to postmodern European art music. Devoted Deadheads reveled in the band’s polyglot, risk-filled approach to playing live and the joint band-audience quest to reach a type of sonic cosmic ecstasy, commonly described as the “X factor.”

Although fans and scholars alike recognize the Grateful Dead as icons of psychedelic music, the band’s improvisatory approach still remains an enigma to the uninitiated. In Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation, Malvinni unravels this mystery, walking readers through the band’s musical decision-making process. Written for rock music fans with little to no background in music theory, as well as scholars and students of popular music culture, the book reveals the method behind the seeming chaos of America’s greatest jam band.

Scarecrow Press

Pages: 296 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-8108-8255-3 • Hardback • February 2013 • $59.00 • (£45.00)

978-0-8108-8348-2 • eBook • February 2013 • $56.00 • (£43.00)

Subjects: Music / Genres & Styles / Rock, Music / Individual Composer & Musician

Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation

Hardback

eBook

Summary

More than fifteen years since the death of lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead stand as a symbol of the unresolved cultural clashes of the 1960s. The band’s thirty-year odyssey is a testament to the American imagination, with thousands of live concert recordings by fans and the band itself, preserved alongside an impressive array of images, artwork, and paraphernalia. Most recently, the Grateful Dead have released from their vault their entire 1972 European tour, one of the largest boxed sets of live music—seventy-three compact discs—ever released. This publicly available archive of recorded music lays the groundwork for David Malvinni’s exploration of the band’s musical signature as the ultimate jam band in Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation. Malvinni considers a select group of songs from the Dead’s early repertoire, from its unique covers of “Viola Lee Blues,” “Midnight Hour,” and “Love Light” to original masterpieces like “Dark Star.” Marrying basic music analysis to philosophical frames offered by improvisatory musings of Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze, Malvinni presents the core aesthetic underlying the Dead’s musical styling.

In tracing the evolution of the band’s unique jam style, Malvinni outlines the Dead’s gift as gatherers and inventors of old and new soundscapes in their multifaceted improvisations. Like no other band, the Dead brought together a variety of styles from roots and folk to country and modal jazz to postmodern European art music. Devoted Deadheads reveled in the band’s polyglot, risk-filled approach to playing live and the joint band-audience quest to reach a type of sonic cosmic ecstasy, commonly described as the “X factor.”

Although fans and scholars alike recognize the Grateful Dead as icons of psychedelic music, the band’s improvisatory approach still remains an enigma to the uninitiated. In Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation, Malvinni unravels this mystery, walking readers through the band’s musical decision-making process. Written for rock music fans with little to no background in music theory, as well as scholars and students of popular music culture, the book reveals the method behind the seeming chaos of America’s greatest jam band.

Details

Scarecrow Press

Pages: 296 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-8108-8255-3 • Hardback • February 2013 • $59.00 • (£45.00)

978-0-8108-8348-2 • eBook • February 2013 • $56.00 • (£43.00)

Subjects: Music / Genres & Styles / Rock, Music / Individual Composer & Musician

Author

Musicologist and classical guitarist, David Malvinni is adjunct professor of Music and African-American studies at Santa Barbara Community College and author of The Gypsy Caravan: From Real Roma to Imaginary Gypsies in Western Music and Film (Routledge, 2004).

Reviews

Offering a philosophical framework, Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation provides an aesthetic appreciation of the musical stylings of this legendary band. A seminal work of outstanding and original scholarship, Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is written in a form and format that will make it easily accessible to non-specialist general readers and fans of the Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is a highly recommended addition to academic library Popular Culture and 20th Century American Music reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

— Midwest Book Review

David Malvinni’s Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is . . . a necessary addition to the growing secondary literature on the music of the Grateful Dead.
— Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association

As the first scholarly monograph on the music of the Grateful Dead, David Malvinni’s Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is a significant addition to popular music scholarship. Although numerous edited volumes of essays focused on the band have been published in the two decades since the band’s demise after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, this is the first by a single author to focus entirely on a musicological assessment. And since it has often been the sociological aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon that have received the most attention, especially the audience, the colorful fans known as Deadheads, it is a refreshing change for a scholar to focus entirely on what should be of primary importance for a musical ensemble: its music.
— Critical Studies in Improvisation

Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation

David Malvinni

Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation

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