In Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction, and the Shaping of African American Culture, Robert G. O’Meally demonstrates how the fiction of Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, the collages of Romare Bearden and paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are all defined by call-and-response dialogue across medium. These interdisciplinary artists define their aesthetic projects through the process of “antagonistic cooperation,” which O’Meally describes as “a form of community building, of competition and coordination with a jazz player’s spirit of love” epitomized by the democratic values of the jam session. This panel, convened in the birthplace of jazz, orchestrates an interdisciplinary critical “jam session,” taking O’Meally’s key terms as guiding principles or "changes": the “ecstasy of influence,” a rejoinder to Bloom; and Romare Bearden's “open corner,” inspired by a classical Chinese painting technique that makes room for the audience to enter into the conversation. An intergenerational, diverse group of eminent scholars and artists from literary and music studies will show us how to think “beyond category,” Ellington’s phrase for transcending the conventions of genre and medium. The panel will make visible the hidden interdisciplinary connections that are necessary to the creation of an artistic or critical work—reinscribing the narrative between the lines of artistic practice that Toni Morrison refers to as “invisible ink.”

The first paper, “Live at the Sands: Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, and the Jazz Shape of Las Vegas,” delivered by literary scholar Jessica E. Teague, is part of a larger project on the cultural history of jazz in Las Vegas. The city has sometimes jokingly been described as the place where music goes to die, where musicians past their prime find audiences among the decidedly unhip. This was arguably the case for both Frank Sinatra and Count Basie when they began to play together at the Sands Hotel in the 1960s. And yet, not only were these mid-century performances some of the best of both artists’ careers, their sound came to define the city of Las Vegas at a time when it was just beginning to detangle its complicated history of racial segregation. This paper responds to O'Meally's “open corner” for further study--"loopholes of retreat and open-ended, inclusive communities"--through an exploration of Frank Sinatra and Count Basie’s 1960s collaborations, culminating in their legendary 1966 live album Sinatra at the Sands. Although the concept was coined by Bearden, it owes a debt to Basie’s style of piano accompaniment, leaving "blank areas in the musical canvas" for a soloist's improvisation. Through resonant readings of Sinatra at the Sands, Teague will reveal the extent to which Basie and Sinatra used the “open corner” as a way to make space for their audience.

In the second paper, “Visual Rhythms: Musical Ekphrasis, Antagonistic Cooperation, and Robert O’Meally’s Art Collection,” Courtney Bryan will discuss her interdisciplinary approach to Visual Rhythms (2023), a piece for orchestra composed in eleven short vignettes, each reflecting on specific works of art from the personal collection of Robert O’Meally, including Norman Lewis, Romare Bearden, Herman Leonard, and Petra Richterová. The composition was equally inspired by O’Meally’s Antagonistic Cooperation. Bearden himself was known for translating the rhythms he heard in, for example, Earl Hines, to a visual field; Bryan translates the rhythms of Bearden, other artists, and literary figures into a temporal medium. The presentation will explore how Bryan's own approach to musical ekphrasis applies the concept of antagonistic cooperation.

In the final paper, “The Piano Lesson: August Wilson’s ‘Four B’s,’ Romare Bearden, and Antagonistic Cooperation,” Dwight Andrews will discuss Wilson’s fourth play in the Pittsburgh Cycle. The Pulitzer-winning play was inspired by “The Piano Lesson: Homage to Mary Lou,” a collage by Romare Bearden which was in turn inspired by Matisse and refracted through memories of Bearden’s childhood in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Wilson's work stood on the pillars of what he referred to as the “Four B’s”—the blues, Bearden, Baraka, and Borges. Andrews served as Wilson’s music director for this work and many others, and in this presentation, he will consider Wilson’s interdisciplinary influences as well as the antagonistic cooperation that drove their longstanding artistic relationship. Andrews will discuss how they brought together the spiritual and secular in an intergenerational drama about the importance of preserving tradition and raising visibility for African American expressive culture.

Each presentation will be 12-15 minutes long, followed by a 12-15-minute response from Robert O’Meally that will put the papers in conversation leading up to a 15-minute Q&A moderated by the presider.