Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans
Charles B. Hersch
Abstract
This book probes New Orleans's history, uncovering a web of racial interconnections and animosities that was instrumental to the creation of a vital American art form—jazz. Drawing on oral histories, police reports, newspaper accounts, and vintage recordings, the book brings to life the neighborhoods and nightspots where jazz was born. It shows how musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton, Nick La Rocca, and Louis Armstrong negotiated New Orleans's complex racial rules to pursue their craft and how, in order to widen their audiences, they became fluent in a variety of musical traditions from divers ... More
Keywords: New Orleans, jazz, Jelly Roll Morton, Nick La Rocca, Louis Armstrong, musical traditions, racial identities, Jim Crow, musical miscegenation, racial purity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 | Print ISBN-13: 9780226328676 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: March 2013 | DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226328690.001.0001 |
