Dreams in Double Time

“With Dreams in Double Time, Jonathan Leal proves he has ‘something to say.’ I use this phrase in the prosaic sense that he contributes new understanding and opens fresh areas of inquiry, and in the sense associated with a jazz musician’s solo. Almost every page treats readers to surprising revelation and provocation, and the figures Leal focalizes his history through are compelling as subjects on their own. This book is a tremendous achievement, a gift to readers seeking cultural history and methodologically innovative work.” - Anthony Reed, author of Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production

“In this fascinating and compelling book, Jonathan Leal works against the grain of jazz criticism by focusing on three relatively unknown figures for whom bebop proposed new ways of being in the world. Leal’s ‘trio,’ as he calls them, offer readers a glimpse into a much larger population of marginalized, often poor people of color who heard bebop as a radical, creative challenge to the totalizing singularity of what ‘white’ stood for during the second half of the twentieth century.” - Ronald Radano, coeditor of Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique

"Deftly drawing together the major trends in recent jazz scholarship, Leal makes an important intervention. . . . By explicitly focusing on minor figures, putting them in relationship to one another, Leal draws attention to the other side of bebop musicking: its emphasis on collaboration and conversation. . . . In the words of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” a story to which Leal returns several times, Dreams in Double Time keeps both bebop and jazz writing 'new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen.'" - Sam V. H. Reese, Los Angeles Review of Books

"If you’re interested in the relationship between jazz, sociology, racism and history, this book (a product of feeling as well as hard work) could prove highly rewarding." - Graham Colombé, Jazz Journal

"A thoroughly evocative and important study that should be read at an unrushed pace to hear and feel the music and consider the radical nature of bebop not in a too-precious, historical vacuum but as a reaction against the violence of racism. Highly recommended." - Debbie Burke

"Leal provides a thoughtful and, at times, personal study that is academic in its rigour and musical knowledge while also genuinely illuminating and inspiring. . . . Leal’s style of writing is refreshing and engaging, not just for his attention to detail and knowledge of the subject matter, but for his thoughtful and appropriately lyrical reflections on music." - Alex Brent, Popmatters