Christian Broecking

Christian Broecking (born 5 June 1957) is a German sociologist and musicologist, music critic, columnist, writer, editor, producer and author known for his jazz criticism and his book The Marsalis-Factor.

Biography

Christian Broecking was born in Flensburg. He studied sociology and musicology at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. He holds a Ph.D. (Dr. phil.) from Technische Universität Berlin. His 2011 dissertation was titled "The Marsalis-Nexus: Studies in the Societal Relevance of Afro-American Jazz, 1992-2007". Broecking served as the founding program director for Berlin jazz radio from 1994 to 1998, Klassik Radio Frankfurt from 2000 to 2003. He is a juror at the "Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik" and for NPR (National Public Radio).

His books "The Marsalis-factor" (Der Marsalis Faktor, 1995), "Respect!" (Respekt!, 2004), "Black Codes" (Black Codes, 2005) and "We are here to save lives" (Jeder Ton eine Rettungsstation, 2007) were highly acclaimed. His published articles on music and cultural studies have appeared in scholarly journals and edited volumes, he holds columns in several daily newspapers in Germany and served as a staff writer for the online music section of Die Zeit. He is doing radio features on jazz and African American culture for German public radio since 1995, he was teaching musicology and American studies at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Berlin Institute of Technology and Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.

Broecking is the founder and publisher of the Broecking Verlag. Solo Exhibition "Visualizing Respect", Gallery Zellermayer, Berlin 2012. Broecking conceptualized and convened the international conferences "Lost in Diversity. A transatlantic dialogue on the societal relevance of jazz" (2012) and "Vision, Perception, Friction: How Jazz Became Art and Attack(ed) – A Transatlantic Dialogue" (2013) at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Germany. At Darmstädter Jazzforum 2013 Broecking lectured „Not Black enough? Debating jazz in the Post-Black time space".

Christian Broecking writes for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung, taz, Zeit and Jazz thing. He was a Senior Research Associate at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, he teaches music history at the Winterthurer Institut für aktuelle Musik, lecturer at Columbia University, New York, at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies and for the "Darmstadt Contributions to Jazz Research". From 2013 to 2016 Broecking wrote a biography on the pianist and activist Irène Schweizer. In 2018 Broecking's book "Respect! The history of Fire Music" with a preface by George E. Lewis was published.