Core and Boundaries

Abstract

Why not start with Ken Burns? If you watched Ken Burns Jazz on television, you didn’t get to see this particular excerpt on screen. But if you read the transcripts of interviews on the PBS web site, you might encounter the following quotation fromJames Maher, in which he describes what was involved in becoming a jazz aficionado in the 1930s: “One of the very peculiar things about falling in love with jazz is that you accidentally joined a cult, whether you liked it or not. And sooner or later you became acquainted with other zealots who I call ‘jazzniks,’ for want of a better word. And they of course are instantly telling you that all the people you like and admire, they all stink. They don’t play jazz. So you have this cult problem to deal with. And it went on and on and on and still goes on through the history of jazz that ‘I know what jazz is, you don’t know what jazz is’” There’s probably no better way to sum up my feelings in thinking about the history of jazz history. Right from the beginning, from the French superciliousness of Hugues Panassié to the aristocratic bluntness of John Hammond, there was theunmistakable sense: “I know what jazz is. You don’t know what jazz is.” Its corollary, inevitably, was: “And I’m going to tell you.”