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Reviewed by:
  • You’ll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band by Bob Gluck
  • Aaron J. Johnson
You’ll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band. By Bob Gluck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2012.

Bob Gluck’s You’ll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band is a welcome addition to the slowly growing bodies of scholarly literature on both post-1967 electric jazz and on iconic bands and recording projects. In addition, [End Page 219] Gluck takes a step towards filling a mighty gap in jazz scholarship—biographical and analytic research on Herbie Hancock. For researchers, Hancock and his several closest collaborators have been difficult interview subjects, so this book, which blends hard-gotten author interviews with previous published material is extremely valuable to anyone interested in Hancock and his music in general, as well as the Mwandishi Band, which was a pioneer in electric/electronic jazz and musically adventurous.

The book touches on several topics of interest to current scholars: the collaborative production of music by musicians, producers, and engineers, the business aspects of jazz band-leading in the 1970s, and the role of effective marketing of music by record labels. Gluck makes good use of his access to Hancock’s bandmates who appear pleased to talk about Mwandishi, a rewarding musical collaboration which they uniformly characterize as spiritual. The book is somewhat less convincing when engaging those spiritual aspects, at least in distinguishing an extra spiritual dimension of this band from spiritual musical connections made all the time on bandstands. Another problem is that Gluck provides little help in distinguishing Mwandishi’s spiritualism from the Pan African–derived spirituality that was so widely cited at the time. The book concludes with refreshingly lengthy remembrances by the band and other musicians whom they inspired. While these testimonials are valuable, that they are from impressionable up-and-coming musicians results in a concluding “amen” rather than contributing any insight as to why the band today remains marginalized and underappreciated in jazz history.

Nonetheless, You’ll Know When You Get There, makes valuable contributions to writing about jazz in this era, beyond its documentation of this vitally important band. For example in “New Musical Directions,” Gluck contributes a brief but useful history of the electric piano in jazz, the timbral and touch differences among the leading keyboards of the day, and the approaches players took in using the instruments. Innovation in instrumentation has been scarce enough in jazz that seldom do writers think it worthy of discussion. In “Mwandishi: The Recording” Gluck makes note of connections between experimental musical practices in concert music and jazz that are sadly often overlooked, as well as the radical pairing of jazz and rock production practices in Hancock’s music. That chapter and the next, “Crossings,” devoted to the music, recording, promotion, and reception of the same-named 1972 LP, are perhaps the high point of the book. Mwandishi and Crossings confused and befuddled Warner Brothers’ executives who “did not know how to sell the new recording,” nor did they know how to market it on radio and Gluck effectively conveys the band’s innovative disruptions of musical and business practices (101). Overall, You’ll Know When You Get There is an essential study of Hancock and the music of a band that represented a road not taken. [End Page 220]

Aaron J. Johnson
Columbia University
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