The Political Use Value of Jazz Fiction and Jazz Performance

Abstract: I will discuss jazz as a local artistic practice that is enriched by the political and social consciousness of the musicians. African American writers have endeavored to represent the jazz community as a site of improvisatory self-fashioning and political insurgency. Using Nathaniel Mackey epic From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate along with examples from jazz fiction written in the 20th Century, and interviews with Philadelphia bassist Reggie Workman, I will argue that jazz fiction portrays jazz performances as local phenomena whose ephemerality does not diminish its political use value.