Boundaries and Early Jazz: Defining a New Music

Abstract

The diffusion of jazz into the musical mainstream during the 1920s served as a site for the struggle to define ongoing changes both in the arts and in the broader society. I analyze the discursive themes that framed the contention over the music by connecting the notion of boundary-work to fields of cultural production. In doing so, I demonstrate that the content of boundary-work is shaped by the field in which a speaker is positioned. ‘High’ and popular artists, civic and political leaders, and general cultural critics defined differently the alleged impact of jazz. These differences in content fueled the dynamism of the contention by giving expression to the different interests at stake, interests that reflect the specific authority to name the truth generated by a given field.

Rap, Race and the (Re)Production of Boundaries

“…While explicit references to jazz as "jungle music" or "negro music" did appear in the press, this discourse was overshadowed by a set of themes that emphasized the music's alleged effecis on the "high" arts and the listener's body. These themes underlined concerns not over the transgression of racial boundaries but, rather, those related but distinct boundaries that marked class and status (Appelrouth 2005(Appelrouth ,2011.…”

“…Whatever the effects jazz was said to have, it was white, urban listeners who would be subject to its hj^notic • rhythms. Jazz symbolized not a subversion of institutionally entrenched racial boundaries but the-more permeable class and status boundaries separating WASP America from the nation's working-class ethnic "inferiors" (Appelrouth 2003). With the Civil Rights movement, however, black Americans mounted a sustained and coordinated attack on institutionalized racism.…”

“…Jazz's incorporation of musical elements derived from both high and popular culture threatened the stability of recently institutionalized boundaries that marked the distinction between these two sources and forms of culture (DiMaggio 1982;Levine 1988). As a result, much of the contention over jazz was shaped by the alleged effects it would have on the aesthetic standards of classical music (Appelrouth 2003(Appelrouth , 2011.…”

“…In studies exploring a range of areas from literature (Beisel 1992;Chong 2011;Corse and Grifnn 1997;Griswold 1987), art (Beisel 1993;DiMaggio 1982DiMaggio , 1992, and music (Appelrouth 2003(Appelrouth , 2005Bryson 1996;DeNora 1991;Roy 2004;Schmutz 2009), to sports (Bourdieu 1991), science (Gaziano 1996;Gieryn 1999), political culture (Alexander and Smith 1993), and racial and class identities (Kefalas 2003;Lamont 1992Lamont , 2000Lamont and Aksartova 2002), scholars have explored how "differences" within and between cultural practices are constructed and how such differences construct, reinforce, or challenge social identities. Yet aligning a particular practice with a particular identity is often a contentious project, as such assignments are the outcome of discursive struggles to classify and define both the meaning of practices and the identity of those persons associated with them.…”

Nazi punks folk off: leisure, nationalism, cultural identity and the consumption of metal and folk music

“…What I am interested in here is the way in which leisure choices in consuming black metal and English folk music are used to construct exclusive, white identities -whiteness associated with individualism and elitism in the case of metal, and whiteness as a product of Englishness in folk. I am interested in the 'beating of the boundaries' (Cohen, 1985;Appelrouth, 2011) -who is allowed to define belonging in the black metal scene and in the English folk scene.…”