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Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans.

Article Excerpt
Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans. By Charles Hersch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. [x, 289 p. ISBN: 9780226328676. $35.00.] Bibliographic references, illustrations, discography, index.

In this book, Charles Hersch surveys the rise of jazz in New Orleans with special attention to race and class. As a political scientist, he brings a perspective and expertise unusual in jazz studies. His aim is to show how, in the age of Plessy v. Ferguson, jazz "did in fact subvert racial segregation, musically enacting and abetting Plessy's assault on white purity" (p. 5). Hersch rejects the view of New Orleans as a musical "melting pot," a microcosm of America that produced jazz, proposing instead a more dynamic image of cultural "circulation": "Jazz did in fact bridge racial boundaries but not through the homogenizing blending of the melting pot but by means of the labyrinthine circulation of music throughout various New Orleans venues with audiences of different races and classes, like a parade with its second line followers" (p. 206). As a result, the traces of racial influence on jazz are not blended into...

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