Jason Borge, Tropical Riffs

Jazz is considered by many to be the quintessential form of American music. Some may even go as far as to call it "America's classical music." 1 However, the black and white binary that pervades race relations in the United States has obscured the role of Latin American interpreters of jazz within its nationalist rhetoric. Ken Burns' Jazz, the tenpart PBS documentary series released in 2001, was a major cultural turning point in the United States. A moving tribute to the triumph of African Americans over adversity, it positioned jazz as a symbol of a true American democratic ethos. But for all of its technical brilliance and beautifully woven narrative, Jazz was really a nostalgic, politically simplistic rendering of an artform that was much more complex and transnational in scope than its producers were willing to admit. In order to distinguish jazz as a legitimately American music, its connections with Latin America had to be severed from jazz's grand narrative, despite clear geographical and cultural proximities. When Latin musicians do receive recognition for their contributions, their music is diminutively labeled as Latin Jazz. This severance had an equal but opposite reaction in Latin America. Because of its association with the United States, jazz has received an ambivalent, and at times rather contentious, reception in Latin American critical analyses. Tropical Riffs: Latin America & the Politics of Jazz by Jason Borge is an exploration of Latin American cultural discourses surrounding jazz during the early to mid-twentieth century

Art · Art history · Concert dance · Humanities · Jazz · Jazz dance · Latin Americans · Literature · Political science · Politics · History · Law · Music History and Culture