Adorno, Jazz and Racism: "Uber Jazz" and the 1934-7 British Jazz Debate

In: Telos, Heft 107, S. 63-80

Abstract

Interprets Theodor W. Adorno's essay, "Uber Jazz" (1936), in terms of broader British debates concerning racism & popular culture & in terms of the state of Adorno's concerns at the time. Adorno argued that jazz was closely associated with the commercial music industry, &, to the extent that this industry confined jazz musicians to playing music that attracted largely wealthy, white audiences, it was a racist form of music. This interpretation is contextualized in terms of Adorno's experience of discrimination as a Jew in Germany & in terms of the racist music scene that greeted him when he became an exile in GB. Adorno's critique of the conventional depiction of jazz as black music identified a central tension in the relation between ethnicity, aesthetics, & social subordination that still resonates today. D. M. Smith