April 28, 1997
If the quick pace of Peretti's historical discourse leaves genre didacts and obscurantists grousing about the lack of finer definition in many details, novice fans will find that Jazz in American Culture offers a proper accounting for the music's cultural import. From the earliest ragtime to the post-bop present, jazz has always epitomized that most American of ideals: progress. Peretti (Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America) defines jazz's progressive cultural impact along racial and sociological lines. The earliest jazz performances, the "jungle reviews," portrayed African American musicians as primitives, forbidden to mingle with customers. So an important part of jazz's social context is reflected in the opposition of such greats as Charles Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie to separatist ideas and the early, persistent demands of many jazz musicians for equal rights. Peretti goes beyond the cliche of a roaring "jazz age" followed by years of declining popularity, but shows that while the technical complexity demonstrated by Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk revived a stagnating genre, many fans preferred to dance in the direction of easier, more accessible sounds. Once and for all, jazz parted ways with popular taste. Peretti argues that the various genre experiments that followed bebop reflected an ever-quickening sense of racial progress for African Americans and for the country as a whole. It's an intriguing premise that makes it all the more unfortunate that today's best players don't enjoy a wider audience.