Affirmation and resistance

More about the book

Many jazz musicians from different generations have written autobiographies. This study argues that these texts are not only interesting musicological documents, but are equally relevant from a literary as well as a cultural-political perspective. As musicians’ textual reconstructions of their lives are indicative of a politics of jazz, they provide insights into the meaning of jazz in American culture. As the author’s reading of the self-narratives of Louis Armstrong, Art Pepper, and Oscar Peterson reveals, the jazz lives represented therein range from affirmation of the values of American national culture to resistance against them.