Jessica E. Teague (English) published an article, "," in the journal MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
This article analyzes two previously unknown fictional pieces written by the jazz musician, Sidney Bechet, whose 1960 autobiography Treat It Gentle is considered to be one of the most literary books about jazz. Through my analysis of these ground-breaking archival discoveries, which reside among the Charles Delaunay Collection at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, I explore the narrative impulse of Bechet’s artistic output and consider what it might mean to call Bechet a writer. He was an improviser who told stories in song, but he was also a musician who imagined his music as part of a broader artistic project—one that I argue was intrinsically narrative, dramatic, and multimodal. Perhaps more importantly, these new works reveal the extent to which Bechet was committed to blending African American folklore, autobiography, and fiction in ways that put him in conversation with other Black modernist writers.
