Living Space

"A major and singular contribution to the literature on jazz from one of the foremost authorities of American music in the world. Because of the longevity, breadth, and unmatched impact of his scholarship on the academy and beyond, Veal's insights are always astonishing and illuminating. The layers of his expertise unfold in this book through an explosion of carefully argued original points and observations that will broaden the interdisciplinary questions we ask of jazz music and its figures."

~Guthrie Ramsey, author of Who Hears Here? On Black Music Pasts and Present

"Equal parts musical analysis, history lesson, and extended parable, Michael E. Veal's Living Space is a sublime rendering of the existential stakes around these epic but largely misrendered narratives of black aesthetic formulation. A profound decoding and subtly paradigm shifting rearticulation, Veal spins extrapolations as potent as the music itself."

~Arthur Jafa, award-winning American cinematographer

"In its careful attention to innovative arrangement, and devoted and generative derangement, Living Space hears space living in the music, hiding in plain black sight and song. As phono-material field and feel, where continuous variation and the intraplay of one and none just keep on raising sand and making waves, Miles and Trane are not entangled particles but a vibrant fabric Veal rides and wears with brilliant sensitivity."

~Fred Moten, author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition

"The beauty of this book is Veal's laser focus on jazz that has often been considered divisive music but is in reality revelatory and profound... A fascinating and complex study of the musical evolution of two legendary artists."

~Library Journal