Rhythm Changes

<p><em>Rhythm Changes: Jazz Culture Discourse</em> 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.</p><p>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.</p>