Defending Jazz
As African-American artists, LeRoi Jones, poet, playwright, and jazz critic, and Max Roach, drummer and jazz lecturer, believe that jazz is a representation of African-American culture and attitudes about the world. More importantly, they believe that the creation of jazz music is reserved for only African-Americans. This is evident when Roach says in his essay, “Beyond Categories”: “I am often asked, ‘Can whites play your kind of music?’ My answer is ‘Yes’...But no whites have ever contributed to the creative or innovative aspects of black music” (Roach 268), and when Jones comments in his essay, “Jazz and the White Critic”: “Negro music, like the Negro himself, is strictly an American phenomenon” (Jones 235). These views also
As African-American artists, LeRoi Jones, poet, playwright, and jazz critic, and Max Roach, drummer and jazz lecturer, believe that jazz is a representation of African-American culture and attitudes about the world. More importantly, they believe that the creation of jazz music is reserved for only African-Americans. This is evident when Roach says in his essay, “Beyond Categories”: “I am often asked, ‘Can whites play your kind of music?’ My answer is ‘Yes’...But no whites have ever contributed to the creative or innovative aspects of black music” (Roach 268), and when Jones comments in his essay, “Jazz and the White Critic”: “Negro music, like the Negro himself, is strictly an American phenomenon” (Jones 235). These views also