Public Jazz Education and the Mediation of Jazz History in US Middlebrow Culture (1917–1951)

Abstract

This chapter investigates the ways in which the history of jazz was performed across different media in US middlebrow culture from the beginnings of jazz history discourse in the 1910s up until the early 1950s. In particular, it studies five versions of the history of jazz published in different media between 1917 and 1951, including the educational jazz history radio program “Jazz Goes to College,” written and authored by Marshall Stearns and broadcast by WNEW in 1950/1951. This chapter argues that the transformation of jazz history in US middlebrow contexts interacted with a changing understanding of American musical history and national identity in the US middle class during the first half of the twentieth century.