Jazz: White People Music?
“Everything I’ve lived, I am. I am not afraid of European influences. The point is to use them—as Ellington did—as part of my life as an American Negro” - Cecil Taylor I'd known for a while how certain streams of avant-garde jazz in the '60s were attacked by critics as being too "abstract" or too "European" in sensibility, but I hadn't realized that John Coltrane (Wikimedia Commons) another attack made upon this music was that it wasn't "black enough." Barack Obama's election to the Presidency brought the conversation about essentiality and blackness onto the national stage, but it's fascinating to read about how this conversation was being had in the '60s about, of all people, African-American artists like John Coltrane who, in some ways, are seen as icons of blackness today. From Ingrid Monson's Freedom Sounds (2007) : ...the Muhammad Speaks [Nation of Islam publication] reviewer saw Coltrane’s popularity as ...