Transnational Studies in Jazz – serie

Jazz on the Line: Improvisation in Practice presents an ethnographic reflection on improvisation as performance, examining how musicians think and act when negotiating improvisational frameworks. This multidisciplinary discussion—guided by a focus on recordings, composition, authenticity, and venues—explores the musical choices made by performers, emphasizing how these choices can be logically understood within the context of controlled, musical outputs. Throughout the text, the author engages directly with musicians and their varied practices—from canonized dogmas to innovative experimentalism—offering interviews both planned and spontaneous. Musical agency is posited as a tightrope balancing act, signifying the skill and excitement of improvisational performativity and exemplifying the life of a jazzaerialist. With a travel journal approach as a backdrop, Jazz on the Line provides concepts and theories that demystify the creative processes of improvisation.

Based on interviews, conversations, and observations drawn from extensive field research, Jazz in Contemporary China: Shifting Sounds, Rising Scenes explores the current developments and conditions of Chinese jazz. Negotiating socio-political, cultural, and spatial phenomena, the author provides unique insights for understanding China’s modern history through its happenings in jazz, unveiling an insider’s look at the musicians and individuals who populate and propel these scenes. This first-hand perspective illuminates how jazz generates and disseminates practices of creativity and individuality in twenty-first-century China.

Based on interviews, conversations, and observations drawn from extensive field research, Jazz in Contemporary China: Shifting Sounds, Rising Scenes explores the current developments and conditions of Chinese jazz. Negotiating socio-political, cultural, and spatial phenomena, the author provides unique insights for understanding China’s modern history through its happenings in jazz, unveiling an insider’s look at the musicians and individuals who populate and propel these scenes. This first-hand perspective illuminates how jazz generates and disseminates practices of creativity and individuality in twenty-first-century China.

Tallinn ’67 Jazz Festival: Myths and Memories explores the legendary 1967 jazz gathering that centered Tallinn, Estonia as the jazz capital of the USSR and marked both the pinnacle of a Soviet jazz awakening as well as the end of a long series of evolutionary jazz festivals in Estonia. This study offers new insights into what was the largest Soviet jazz festival of its time through an abundance of collected materials – including thousands of pages of archival documents, more than a hundred hours of interviews and countless media reviews and photographs – while grappling with the constellation of myths integral to jazz discourse in an attempt to illuminate ‘how it really was’. Accounts from musicians, jazz fans, organisers and listeners bring renewed life to this transcultural event from more than half a century ago, framed by scholarly discussions contextualizing the festival within the closed conditions of the Cold War. Tallinn ’67 Jazz Festival details the lasting international importance of this confluence of Estonian, Soviet and American jazz and the ripple effects it spread throughout the world.

Swedish Jazz in the United States: Swede and Cool traces and analyzes the dissemination and reception of jazz from Sweden in the United States during the period of 1947-1963. It maps the networks through which Swedish record companies exchanged recordings with their American counterparts, establishing an American interest in Swedish jazz at a time long regarded as a predominantly American era. Exploring these Swedish-American exchanges—rather than the canonized names in jazz—shines a light on new perspectives in the genre, clarifying the ways in which Swedish jazz was adapted to the American market and how it was understood in an American context. The result is an opportunity to consider the challenges national borders present in a global jazz world while reflecting on the genre’s expanding transnational reach during the 1950s.

Transcultural Jazz: Israeli Musicians and Multi-Local Music Making studies jazz performance and composition through the examination of the transcultural practices of Israeli jazz musicians and their impact globally.An impressive number of Israeli jazz performers have received widespread exposure and worldwide acclaim, creating music that melds aspects of American jazz with an array of Israeli, Jewish and Middle Eastern influences and other non-Western musical traditions. While each musician is developing their own approach to musical transculturation, common threads connect them all. Unraveling and analyzing these entangled sounds and related discourses lies at the center of this study. This book provides broad insight into the nature, role and politics of transcultural music making in contemporary jazz practice. Focusing on a particular group of Israeli musicians to enhance knowledge of modern Israeli society, culture, discourses and practices, the research and analyses presented in this book are based on extensive fieldwork in multiple sites in the United States and Israel, and interviews with musicians, educators, journalists, producers and scholars.Transcultural Jazz is an engaging read for students and scholars from diverse fields such as: jazz studies, ethnomusicology, Jewish studies, Israel studies and transnational studies.

Transcultural Jazz: Israeli Musicians and Multi-Local Music Making studies jazz performance and composition through the examination of the transcultural practices of Israeli jazz musicians and their impact globally.An impressive number of Israeli jazz performers have received widespread exposure and worldwide acclaim, creating music that melds aspects of American jazz with an array of Israeli, Jewish and Middle Eastern influences and other non-Western musical traditions. While each musician is developing their own approach to musical transculturation, common threads connect them all. Unraveling and analyzing these entangled sounds and related discourses lies at the center of this study. This book provides broad insight into the nature, role and politics of transcultural music making in contemporary jazz practice. Focusing on a particular group of Israeli musicians to enhance knowledge of modern Israeli society, culture, discourses and practices, the research and analyses presented in this book are based on extensive fieldwork in multiple sites in the United States and Israel, and interviews with musicians, educators, journalists, producers and scholars.Transcultural Jazz is an engaging read for students and scholars from diverse fields such as: jazz studies, ethnomusicology, Jewish studies, Israel studies and transnational studies.

Encounters with Jazz on Television in Cold War Era Portugal: 1954–1974 explores the relationship between jazz and television by investigating the experiences of performers and producers in one of the last European colonial states (Portugal) during a period of political and social repression and global isolation. This new model of systemic analysis reveals a paradoxical interrelationship between state-controlled television and international media industries, highlighting the space where these two forces collide and locating television jazz production within an important cultural milieu with a lasting impact on Portuguese society.From the days of the first feasibility studies for a proposed public television service in 1954, to the military coup that overthrew the far-right Estado Novo regime in 1974, this book maps the institutionalization of jazz in Portugal as a social and musical practice, one that played a significant role in fostering cultural diversity. It looks at the musicians, repertoires, production processes, broadcasts, policies and strategies that fuelled the launch of Radiotelevisão Portuguesa (RTP) and the rise of television, an indispensable new medium that granted Portuguese people access to the wider world – a world curated by public television producers with individual cultural, political and aesthetic attitudes to influence the dissemination of jazz.In exploring the connections between these national and international jazz scenes, Encounters with Jazz on Television in Cold War Era Portugal: 1954–1974 addresses opportunities for in-depth comparison of the Portuguese experience with that of other countries, situating Cold War era Portuguese television jazz broadcasting as part of a bigger, still unwritten story.

Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội: Improvisations between Worlds examines the germination and growth of jazz under communist rule—perceived as the "music of the enemy" and "ideologically decadent"—in the Vietnamese capital of Hà Nội. After disappearing from the scene in 1954 following the end of the First Indochina War, jazz reemerged in the public sphere decades later at the end of the Cold War. Since then, Hà Nội has established itself as a vital and vibrant jazz center, complete with a full jazz program in the national conservatoire. Featuring interviews with principal players involved in cultivating the scene from past to present, this book presents the sociocultural encounters between musicians and the larger powers enmeshed in the broader political economy, detailing jazz’s journey to garner respect comparable to classical music as an art form possessing high artistic value. Ethnographical sketches explore how Vietnamese musicians learn and play jazz while sustaining and nurturing the scene, providing insight as to how jazz managed to grow in such an environment. Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội sheds light on those underlying caveats that allow Vietnamese jazz musicians to navigate the middle grounds between "worlds"—between music and politics—not as an act of resistance, but as realisation of artistic expression.

Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội: Improvisations between Worlds examines the germination and growth of jazz under communist rule—perceived as the "music of the enemy" and "ideologically decadent"—in the Vietnamese capital of Hà Nội. After disappearing from the scene in 1954 following the end of the First Indochina War, jazz reemerged in the public sphere decades later at the end of the Cold War. Since then, Hà Nội has established itself as a vital and vibrant jazz center, complete with a full jazz program in the national conservatoire. Featuring interviews with principal players involved in cultivating the scene from past to present, this book presents the sociocultural encounters between musicians and the larger powers enmeshed in the broader political economy, detailing jazz’s journey to garner respect comparable to classical music as an art form possessing high artistic value. Ethnographical sketches explore how Vietnamese musicians learn and play jazz while sustaining and nurturing the scene, providing insight as to how jazz managed to grow in such an environment. Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội sheds light on those underlying caveats that allow Vietnamese jazz musicians to navigate the middle grounds between "worlds"—between music and politics—not as an act of resistance, but as realisation of artistic expression.

The Instant Composers Pool and Improvisation Beyond Jazz contributes to the expansion and diversification of our understanding of the jazz tradition by describing the history and practice of one of the most important non-American jazz groups: The Instant Composers Pool, founded in Amsterdam in 1967. The Instant Composers Pool describes the meaning of "instant composition" from both a historical and ethnographic perspective. Historically, it details instant composition’s emergence from the encounter between various overlapping transnational avant-gardes, including free jazz, serialism, experimental music, electronic music, and Fluxus. The author shows how the improvising musicians not only engaged with the cultural politics of ethnicity and race involved in the negotiation of the boundaries of jazz as a cultural practice, but transformed the meaning of music in society—particularly the nature of improvisation and performance. Ethnographically, The Instant Composers Pool encourages readers to reconsider the conceptual tools we use to describe music performance, improvisation, and creativity. It takes the practice of "instant composition" as an opportunity to reflect on music performance as a social practice, which is crucial not only for jazz studies, but for general music scholarship.

The Instant Composers Pool and Improvisation Beyond Jazz contributes to the expansion and diversification of our understanding of the jazz tradition by describing the history and practice of one of the most important non-American jazz groups: The Instant Composers Pool, founded in Amsterdam in 1967. The Instant Composers Pool describes the meaning of "instant composition" from both a historical and ethnographic perspective. Historically, it details instant composition’s emergence from the encounter between various overlapping transnational avant-gardes, including free jazz, serialism, experimental music, electronic music, and Fluxus. The author shows how the improvising musicians not only engaged with the cultural politics of ethnicity and race involved in the negotiation of the boundaries of jazz as a cultural practice, but transformed the meaning of music in society—particularly the nature of improvisation and performance. Ethnographically, The Instant Composers Pool encourages readers to reconsider the conceptual tools we use to describe music performance, improvisation, and creativity. It takes the practice of "instant composition" as an opportunity to reflect on music performance as a social practice, which is crucial not only for jazz studies, but for general music scholarship.

Women in Jazz: Musicality, Femininity, Marginalization examines the invisible discrimination against female musicians in the French jazz world and the ways in which women thrive as professionals despite such conditions. The author shines a light on the paradox for women in jazz: to express oneself in a "feminine" way is to be denigrated for it, yet to behave in a "masculine" manner is to be devalued for a lack of femininity. This masculine world ensures it is more difficult for women to be recognized as jazz musicians than it is for men – even when musicians, critics and audiences are ideologically opposed to discrimination. Female singers are confined by the feminine stereotypes of their profession, while female instrumentalists must comport themselves into traditionally masculine roles. The author explores the academic and professional socializations of these musicians, the musical choice they make and how they are perceived by jazz professionals as a result. First published in French by CNRS Editions in 2007 (and later reissued in paperback in 2018, with the author’s postscript that "nothing much has changed"), Women in Jazz: Musicality, Femininity, Marginalization expands the conversation beyond the French border, identifying female jazz musicians as a discriminated minority all around the world.

Women in Jazz: Musicality, Femininity, Marginalization examines the invisible discrimination against female musicians in the French jazz world and the ways in which women thrive as professionals despite such conditions. The author shines a light on the paradox for women in jazz: to express oneself in a "feminine" way is to be denigrated for it, yet to behave in a "masculine" manner is to be devalued for a lack of femininity. This masculine world ensures it is more difficult for women to be recognized as jazz musicians than it is for men – even when musicians, critics and audiences are ideologically opposed to discrimination. Female singers are confined by the feminine stereotypes of their profession, while female instrumentalists must comport themselves into traditionally masculine roles. The author explores the academic and professional socializations of these musicians, the musical choice they make and how they are perceived by jazz professionals as a result. First published in French by CNRS Editions in 2007 (and later reissued in paperback in 2018, with the author’s postscript that "nothing much has changed"), Women in Jazz: Musicality, Femininity, Marginalization expands the conversation beyond the French border, identifying female jazz musicians as a discriminated minority all around the world.

Tallinn ’67 Jazz Festival: Myths and Memories explores the legendary 1967 jazz gathering that centered Tallinn, Estonia as the jazz capital of the USSR and marked both the pinnacle of a Soviet jazz awakening as well as the end of a long series of evolutionary jazz festivals in Estonia. This study offers new insights into what was the largest Soviet jazz festival of its time through an abundance of collected materials – including thousands of pages of archival documents, more than a hundred hours of interviews and countless media reviews and photographs – while grappling with the constellation of myths integral to jazz discourse in an attempt to illuminate ‘how it really was’. Accounts from musicians, jazz fans, organisers and listeners bring renewed life to this transcultural event from more than half a century ago, framed by scholarly discussions contextualizing the festival within the closed conditions of the Cold War. Tallinn ’67 Jazz Festival details the lasting international importance of this confluence of Estonian, Soviet and American jazz and the ripple effects it spread throughout the world.

Swedish Jazz in the United States: Swede and Cool traces and analyzes the dissemination and reception of jazz from Sweden in the United States during the period of 1947-1963. It maps the networks through which Swedish record companies exchanged recordings with their American counterparts, establishing an American interest in Swedish jazz at a time long regarded as a predominantly American era. Exploring these Swedish-American exchanges—rather than the canonized names in jazz—shines a light on new perspectives in the genre, clarifying the ways in which Swedish jazz was adapted to the American market and how it was understood in an American context. The result is an opportunity to consider the challenges national borders present in a global jazz world while reflecting on the genre’s expanding transnational reach during the 1950s.

Encounters with Jazz on Television in Cold War Era Portugal: 1954–1974 explores the relationship between jazz and television by investigating the experiences of performers and producers in one of the last European colonial states (Portugal) during a period of political and social repression and global isolation. This new model of systemic analysis reveals a paradoxical interrelationship between state-controlled television and international media industries, highlighting the space where these two forces collide and locating television jazz production within an important cultural milieu with a lasting impact on Portuguese society.From the days of the first feasibility studies for a proposed public television service in 1954, to the military coup that overthrew the far-right Estado Novo regime in 1974, this book maps the institutionalization of jazz in Portugal as a social and musical practice, one that played a significant role in fostering cultural diversity. It looks at the musicians, repertoires, production processes, broadcasts, policies and strategies that fuelled the launch of Radiotelevisão Portuguesa (RTP) and the rise of television, an indispensable new medium that granted Portuguese people access to the wider world – a world curated by public television producers with individual cultural, political and aesthetic attitudes to influence the dissemination of jazz.In exploring the connections between these national and international jazz scenes, Encounters with Jazz on Television in Cold War Era Portugal: 1954–1974 addresses opportunities for in-depth comparison of the Portuguese experience with that of other countries, situating Cold War era Portuguese television jazz broadcasting as part of a bigger, still unwritten story.

Jazz on the Line: Improvisation in Practice presents an ethnographic reflection on improvisation as performance, examining how musicians think and act when negotiating improvisational frameworks. This multidisciplinary discussion—guided by a focus on recordings, composition, authenticity, and venues—explores the musical choices made by performers, emphasizing how these choices can be logically understood within the context of controlled, musical outputs. Throughout the text, the author engages directly with musicians and their varied practices—from canonized dogmas to innovative experimentalism—offering interviews both planned and spontaneous. Musical agency is posited as a tightrope balancing act, signifying the skill and excitement of improvisational performativity and exemplifying the life of a jazzaerialist. With a travel journal approach as a backdrop, Jazz on the Line provides concepts and theories that demystify the creative processes of improvisation.

Austral Jazz: The Localization of a Global Music Form in Sydney proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding local jazz communities as they develop outside the United States, demonstrating such processes in action by applying the framework to a significant period of the history of jazz in Sydney, Australia after 1973. This volume introduces the notion of ‘Austral Jazz,’ coined in order to reset the focus on supranational conceptions of jazz expressions in the southwestern Pacific. It makes the case for Austral Jazz chronologically across six chapters that discuss, interpret and critique major events and seminal recordings, tracing the development of the Austral shift from a pre-Austral period prior to 1973. Austral Jazz presents a fresh approach to understanding the development of jazz communities, and while its focus is on the Sydney scene after 1973, the ‘Austral’ theory can be applied to creative communities globally. A creative shift took place in Sydney in the early 1970s, which led to the flourishing of a new kind of jazz-based expression, one that reflected Australia’s increasingly globalized and multicultural outlook. This study is timely, and it builds on the work of local jazz researchers. Historiographical understandings of global developments in jazz can be understood within a framework of four overarching narratives: The ‘birth and belonging’ narrative; the ‘spread and adaptation’ narrative; the ‘pluralization by localization’ narrative; and the ‘self-fashioning of the already local’ narrative.

Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse explores the history and development of jazz, addressing the music, its makers, and its social and cultural contexts, as well as the various discourses – especially those of academic analysis and journalistic criticism – that have influenced its creation, interpretation, and reception. Tackling diverse issues, such as race, class, nationalism, authenticity, irony, parody, gender, art, commercialism, technology, and sound recording, the book’s perspective on artistic and cultural practices suggests new ways of thinking about jazz history. It challenges many established scholarly approaches in jazz research, providing a much-needed intervention in the current academic orthodoxies of Jazz Studies.Perhaps the most striking and distinctive aspect of the book is the extraordinary eclecticism of the wide-ranging but carefully chosen case studies and examples referenced throughout the text, from nineteenth century literature, through 1930s Broadway and film, to twentieth and twenty-first century jazz and popular music.

Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse explores the history and development of jazz, addressing the music, its makers, and its social and cultural contexts, as well as the various discourses – especially those of academic analysis and journalistic criticism – that have influenced its creation, interpretation, and reception. Tackling diverse issues, such as race, class, nationalism, authenticity, irony, parody, gender, art, commercialism, technology, and sound recording, the book’s perspective on artistic and cultural practices suggests new ways of thinking about jazz history. It challenges many established scholarly approaches in jazz research, providing a much-needed intervention in the current academic orthodoxies of Jazz Studies.Perhaps the most striking and distinctive aspect of the book is the extraordinary eclecticism of the wide-ranging but carefully chosen case studies and examples referenced throughout the text, from nineteenth century literature, through 1930s Broadway and film, to twentieth and twenty-first century jazz and popular music.

Perspectives on Jazz Patronage addresses the beneficial practices that encompass patrons for this art form. Utilizing biographies, periodicals, oral histories, scholarly articles, archives, interviews, and recordings, this book characterizes patronage practices explicitly as a part of the critical network and customs that have propelled jazz music forward for over a century.This volume also discusses how jazz patronage is indivisible from current cross-disciplinary inquiry into race and gender. Specifically with regard to sexuality, the hypermasculinity of jazz culture resulted in a silent and invisible economy of beneficial actions by the wives of the performers and, at the same time, tended to marginalize female jazz musicians and their contributions, musical, and otherwise. Moreover, the decisive struggles against racial intolerance by a coterie of white record producers, writers, and impresarios who fostered greater artistic opportunities for African-American jazz artists are one of the major themes of patronage.Introducing the idea of jazz patronage as its own art form, Perspectives on Jazz Patronage is intended for a wide range of readers, including undergraduate and graduate students in jazz studies programmes. It will also be of interest in courses that deal with equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Perspectives on Jazz Patronage addresses the beneficial practices that encompass patrons for this art form. Utilizing biographies, periodicals, oral histories, scholarly articles, archives, interviews, and recordings, this book characterizes patronage practices explicitly as a part of the critical network and customs that have propelled jazz music forward for over a century.This volume also discusses how jazz patronage is indivisible from current cross-disciplinary inquiry into race and gender. Specifically with regard to sexuality, the hypermasculinity of jazz culture resulted in a silent and invisible economy of beneficial actions by the wives of the performers and, at the same time, tended to marginalize female jazz musicians and their contributions, musical, and otherwise. Moreover, the decisive struggles against racial intolerance by a coterie of white record producers, writers, and impresarios who fostered greater artistic opportunities for African-American jazz artists are one of the major themes of patronage.Introducing the idea of jazz patronage as its own art form, Perspectives on Jazz Patronage is intended for a wide range of readers, including undergraduate and graduate students in jazz studies programmes. It will also be of interest in courses that deal with equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Making Jazz in Contemporary Japan: A Passionate Search for Self-Expression explores the ways in which Japanese jazz musicians express themselves through their art—not to “japanize” jazz, but to assert one’s creativity, passion, and capacity for self-expression—establishing it as an art form with its own sense of musicality and cultural, social, and economic concerns. This ethnographic survey contextualizes a shift in the Japanese jazz world over the last 30 years: What once was a culture dependent on the American influence is now a thriving local scene creating a wide variety of original, transnational compositions. Based on digital and physical observations and extensive interviews with nearly three dozen Japanese professional jazz musicians while featuring portraits of well-known artists, this empirical investigation into how, where, and why jazz is performed, opens doors to touch on culturally sensitive and taboo topics such as gender, sexuality, and indigenization. Suited for readers in global jazz studies and cultural study programs alike, this book is a timely sociological consideration of the Japanese jazz diaspora, a necessary update to break free of established tropes and clichés envisioning Japanese artists as mere imitators.

Making Jazz in Contemporary Japan: A Passionate Search for Self-Expression explores the ways in which Japanese jazz musicians express themselves through their art—not to “japanize” jazz, but to assert one’s creativity, passion, and capacity for self-expression—establishing it as an art form with its own sense of musicality and cultural, social, and economic concerns. This ethnographic survey contextualizes a shift in the Japanese jazz world over the last 30 years: What once was a culture dependent on the American influence is now a thriving local scene creating a wide variety of original, transnational compositions. Based on digital and physical observations and extensive interviews with nearly three dozen Japanese professional jazz musicians while featuring portraits of well-known artists, this empirical investigation into how, where, and why jazz is performed, opens doors to touch on culturally sensitive and taboo topics such as gender, sexuality, and indigenization. Suited for readers in global jazz studies and cultural study programs alike, this book is a timely sociological consideration of the Japanese jazz diaspora, a necessary update to break free of established tropes and clichés envisioning Japanese artists as mere imitators.

Advancing the New Jazz Studies by focusing on questions of intermediality and cultural catalysis, this book demonstrates the role jazz played in the re-making of West German culture in the post-war era.The shadow of National Socialism, a history of German polarisation by jazz, and the influences of occupation and division, meant that jazz catalysed influential young creative artists. These included writers such as Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, Young German Cinema filmmakers like Hansjürgen Pohland, and abstract visual artists like KRH Sonderborg. Jazz provided an impulse to take into extra-musical artforms, and an impetus to reflect on what art and culture were. Through considering poetry, the novel, photography, film and television, graphic design and the fine arts, this volume reveals how German creatives were influenced not only by American jazz culture, but also by cultural innovations from elsewhere, and by German traditions they considered less compromised by the Nazi era. The book also explores the limits of this catalysis, examining for example how African-Americans received the German representation of jazz culture.Written in an accessible style, this important contribution to New Jazz Studies and German Studies scholarship will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students or researchers in the fields of jazz history, twentieth-century musicology, and European or German cultural studies.

Jazz Sells: Music, Marketing, and Meaning examines the issues of jazz, consumption, and capitalism through advertising. On television, on the Internet, in radio, and in print, advertising is a critically important medium for the mass dissemination of music and musical meaning. This book is a study of the use of the jazz genre as a musical signifier in promotional efforts, exploring how the relationship between brand, jazz music, and jazz discourses come together to create meaning for the product and the consumer. At the same time, it examines how jazz offers an invaluable lens through which to examine the complex and often contradictory culture of consumption upon which capitalism is predicated.

Jazz Sells: Music, Marketing, and Meaning examines the issues of jazz, consumption, and capitalism through advertising. On television, on the Internet, in radio, and in print, advertising is a critically important medium for the mass dissemination of music and musical meaning. This book is a study of the use of the jazz genre as a musical signifier in promotional efforts, exploring how the relationship between brand, jazz music, and jazz discourses come together to create meaning for the product and the consumer. At the same time, it examines how jazz offers an invaluable lens through which to examine the complex and often contradictory culture of consumption upon which capitalism is predicated.

Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity explores the meaning of Jewish involvement in the world of American jazz. It focuses on the ways prominent jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, and Red Rodney have engaged with jazz in order to explore and construct ethnic identities. The author looks at Jewish identity through jazz in the context of the surrounding American culture, believing that American Jews have used jazz to construct three kinds of identities: to become more American, to emphasize their minority outsider status, and to become more Jewish. From the beginning, Jewish musicians have used jazz for all three of these purposes, but the emphasis has shifted over time. In the 1920s and 1930s, when Jews were seen as foreign, Jews used jazz to make a more inclusive America, for themselves and for blacks, establishing their American identity. Beginning in the 1940s, as Jews became more accepted into the mainstream, they used jazz to "re-minoritize" and avoid over-assimilation through identification with African Americans. Finally, starting in the 1960s as ethnic assertion became more predominant in America, Jews have used jazz to explore and advance their identities as Jews in a multicultural society.