Subjectivity, Interiority, and Racial Dialogue: An Archival and Oral Analysis of Jazz in New Orleans.

Abstract

This research will examine the different subjectivities of white jazz critics as compared with the reported standpoints of New Orleans jazz musicians themselves. I will seek to uncover the various strategies the white critical literatures have used to render jazz and jazz musicians as natural, essential, and primitive. These constructions will be viewed against the oral records of jazz musicians who, I hypothesize, will discuss their work as highly contextualized and socially-constructed. Implications for discursive racism, cultural and social influences on jazz, and the increasing whitening of jazz will also accompany this primary analysis.