The color of sound : jazz and the American intelligentsia, 1919-1939 / Alwyn Williams.

Abstract

The Color of Sound is a history of the American intelligentsia’s response to jazz in the 20 years between the World Wars, containing analysis of the writings of both white and black thinkers, highlighting the way beliefs about jazz have changed during this period. This history demonstrates that our popular understanding—that jazz is an improvised music, based on the musical practices of African Americans— originated in the late 1920s and early 19305, when a small number of writers challenged the orthodoxy of the first decade of jazz criticism. In the 1920s, American intellectuals (both black and white), while divided over the musical significance of jazz, believed that orchestrated music, using syncopation, novel instrumentation and (sometimes) a blues tonality, was jazz in its highest form. The premier jazz artist, they argued, was an obese, white American named Paul Whiteman. Jazz’s finest composer was George Gershwin, and the most important composition of the 1920s was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.