EmT10. Is jazz more than music?

Discussion

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Introduction

Initially, most people consider the word "jazz" as a category in the genres of music. Some theorists find that jazz has a wider scope and can refer in addition to a genre of music to be a lifestyle or even a movement.

One such author printing jazz as a wide ranging phenomenon is English historian Eric

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“4was also a wide rangingstudy, offering sections on the history of the music, its contemporary significance, including its relationship with other arts, the jazz business, politics, audiences, and even appendices on the average British jazz fan, as well as the language of jazz. The overwhelming message of the book was that Jazz was now an important global cultural force. Hearguedjazz was not just a type of music, buta cultural form that had made ‘an extraordinary conquest’ and was a ‘remarkable aspect of the society we live in’.This was illustrated by the presence of jazz in most of the major cities of the world and moreover the fact that ‘British working-class boys in Newcastle play it is at least as interesting as and rather more surprising than the fact that it progressed through the frontier saloons of the Mississippi valley.’ (Hobsbawm 19611-6) Hobsbawm argued that this was remarkable not least because jazz had developed and changed so quickly, but that it had grownfrom its folk rootsand become a global force amidst commercialized culture as both a popular and art music. In the process it had never been overwhelmed by the ‘cultural standards of the upper class’. (Hobsbawm 1961, 4-10, 33) In this reading, popular culture was not an undifferentiated mass, and jazz, unlike most other folk forms, could remain authentic, creative and periodically renew popular music. Jazz could also be participatory through watching, playing or talking about it, and it’s appeal rested on offering the originality and excitement that was lacking in other areas of popular culture.”