Body and Soul

Abstract

This article examines the discursive framing of jazz as it entered the musical mainstream. Voices in the contest to define the music turned to a body-centered discourse that highlighted jazz’s alleged impact on the listener. In doing so, observers not only responded to music’s unique capacities among the arts but also engaged in a symbolic struggle to define the boundaries of the individual body and with it, the body politic—a struggle whose stakes were magnified by ongoing social and cultural transformations.