Articles/Chapters on Music, Dance, and Ethnomusicology
“Musical Style and Racial Conflict.” Phylon 27, No. 4 (1966), 358-66 (Reprinted in Crossovers)
“Negro Music: Urban Renewal.” In Our Living Traditions, Tristram P. Coffin, ed. New York: Basic Books, 1968 (reprinted in the John Edward Memorial Foundation Reprint Series, UCLA)
“Musical Adaptation Among Afro-Americans,” Journal of American Folklore, 82 (1969), 112-21 (reprinted in Man in Adaptation, Vol. 3, Yehudi Cohen, ed; in Whitten and Szwed, Afro-American Anthropology; in the Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series, and in Crossovers)
“Paul E. Hall: A Newfoundland Song-Maker and his Community of Song.” Henry Glassie, Edward Ives, and John Szwed, Folksongs and Their Makers, 1970
“Interview with Byard Lancaster.” In The Black Giants, Pauline Rivelli and Robert Levin, eds. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1970, 95-107 (reprinted in Giants of Black Music, NY: Da Capo, 1979; originally published in Jazz Magazine)
“The Music of Miles Davis.” Program Notes, Jazz at Lincoln Center, December 11-13, 2003
“Notes Toward Creating a Field Guide to the Study of Music Use.” In Prolegomena to Typologies of Speech Use, Regna Darnell, ed. Penn-Texas Working Papers in Sociolinguistics, Special Number, 1972, 14-21
“The Blues: What Are Its Functions?” In Festival of American Folklife 1972 [program] Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution, 1973, 47
“Some Sources of Afro-American Innovation: An Exercise in Geo-Aesthetics.” In Folklore Studies in Honor of Herbert Halpert, Kenneth S. Goldstein and Neil V. Rosenberg, eds. St. John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1980, 335-42
“Josef Škvorecký and the Tradition of Jazz Literature.” In World Literature Today, 54, No. 4 (Autumn, 1980), 586-90 (Reprinted in Crossovers)
“Charting African Music.” The Boston Phoenix, November 30, 1982, pp. 3, 8. (Review of John Storm Robert’s Black Music of Two Worlds)
“Foreword,” in Clyde E. B. Bernhardt, I Remember: Eighty Years of Black Entertainment, Big Bands, and the Blues. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986
“Black Music.” (with Mark Miller and Paul McIntyre) In Encyclopedia of Music in Canada/Encyclopedia de la Musique au Canada. 1st editon. Toronto: McClelland, 1982
“The Afro-American Transformation of European Set Dances and Dance Suites.” (with Morton Marks) Dance Research Journal 20/1 (Summer, 1988), 29-36 (also in Black Music and Music History, Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. and Rosita M. Sands, eds., Oxford University Press, 2006, and in Crossovers)
“All That Meat, and Symbolic Action, Too: Notes on the Occasion of the Banning of 2 Live Crew’s “As Nasty as They Wanna Be.” In Fields of Folklore: Essays In Honor of Kenneth S. Goldstein, Roger D. Abrahams, ed. Bloomington: Trickster Press of the Folklore Institute, Indiana University, 1995, 279-86 (reprinted as “Notes On the Occasion of the Banning of 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be, in Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough: Essays in Honor of Robert Christgau, Tom Carson, Kit Rachlis, and Jeff Salamon, eds. Austin: Nortex Press, 2002, 205-210, and in Crossovers)
“The Local and the Express: Anthony Braxton’s Title-Drawings.” In Mixtery: A Festschrift for Anthony Braxton, Graham Lock, ed. Exeter (UK): Stride, 1995, 207-12 (Reprinted in Crossovers)
“From ‘Messing’ Around’ to ‘Funky Western Civilization’: The Rise and Fall of Dance Instruction Songs.” (with Sally Banes) New Formations 27, 1995, 59-79. (Reprinted in Crossovers; Sally Banes, Before, Between, and Beyond: Three Decades of Dance Writing, University of Wisconsin Press, 2007; and Thomas F. DeFrantz, ed., Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002)
“Satchmo’s Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Archives,” Time Out New York, September, 1997
“Props: Sun Ra,” Vibe, September, 1997
“The Primer: Sun Ra.” The Wire (UK), September, 1997, 46-49 (also in The Wire Primers: A Guide To Modern Music, Rob Young, editor. London: Verso, 2009)
“Nächstes Jahr auf dem Saturn. Sun Ra schwarzer Utopismus.” [“Next Year on Saturn: The Black Utopianism of Sun Ra.” In Loving the Alien: Science Fiction, Diaspora, Multikultur, Diedrich Diederichsen, ed. Berlin: ID Verlag, 1998, 48-67
“The Real Old School.” The Vibe History of Hip Hop, Alan Light, ed. New York: Three Rivers, 1999, 3-11 (Reprinted in Crossovers)
“New York Festival of Electronic Composers and Improvisers,” The Wire, March, 2000, 75-76
“The Bell Atlantic Knitting Factory 2000 Festival,” The Wire, August, 2000 Review of Ken Burns’ “Jazz,” Vibe, January, 2000
“A Bibliography of Jazz Poetry Criticism” (with Brent Edwards), Callaloo, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Winter, 2002), 338-346
“John Szwed über Sun Ra:’ Sur Ra war der Zelig des Jazz’.” in Semantics II: Mögliche Musiken im Zeitalter der Desillusion, Thomas Miesgang, ed. Vienna: Triton Verlag, 2001, pp. 204-223.
“Driving Mr. James.” [Skip James] in Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey. Robert Santelli, Peter Guralnick, Holly George-Warren, and Christopher John Farley, eds. NY: Amistad/HarperCollins, 2003, 178-79
“Miles Davis,” African American National Biography. Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004
“The Music of Miles Davis, Performed by Eddie Henderson,” program notes for Jazz at Lincoln Center, December, 2003
“The Man,” in Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, Robert G. O’Meally, Brent Edwards, and Farrah Griffins, eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, 166-186.
“Zones of Creativity” [The Music of Joe Giardullo], Signal to Noise, 48 (Winter, 2008), 14-16
Review: “The Dawn of El Saturn.” (Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia) Exhibit, ”Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn, & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground 1954-68”) The Pennsylvania Gazette, July-August, 2009, pp. 62-63
“Lui c’était quelqu’un,” in We Want Miles, Vincent Bessieéres, ed. Paris: Cité de la Musique, 2009, pp. 110-111; and in the Canadian French and English editions, Montreal: Montreal Museum of Art and Rizzoli, 2010
“Epiphanies: Ornette Coleman Week in Hartford, 1985,” Wire 322, December 2010, p. 90
“Race et Espace: métaphysique et métaphore dans la pensée de Sun Ra.” L’art du jazz. Paris, 2011
“AACM: John Szwed on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians,” on Ars Nova Workshop Web Site, 2011
“The Antiquity of the Avant Garde: A Meditation on a Comment by Duke Ellington,” in “People Get Ready”: The Future of Jazz Is Now!, Ajay Heble and Rob Wallace, eds. Duke University Press, 2013
“Billie Holiday,” 2016 http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/
“Notes on John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” Fringe Arts Festival blog, Philadelphia, 2017
“The Philadelphia Story,” Lovers (For Philadelphia), Mark Christman and John Szwed, eds. Philadelphia: Ars Nova Workshop, 2018, pp. 25-31
“Mid-Century Modern: Music in Philadelphia,” in Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-garde. Sheryl Conkelton, ed. Philadelphia: University of the Arts, 2020, pp. 181-98
“Pink Elephants on Parade” in “Five Minutes to Make You Love Sun Ra,” Marcus J. Moore, New York Times, Jan. 4, 2023
Miles, Chet, Ralph & Charlie: An Oral History of the Andover Shop. Constantine A. Valhouli, ed. Boston: 2024. (Szwed, contributor)
“Mal Waldron and Max Roach, ‘Monk’s Dream’” in “Five Minutes to Make You Love Mal Waldron,” Giovanni Russonello, New York Times, September. 3, 2025