Jarrett Ch. 1 ~ Gumbo

Jarrett's discussion of satura as mixing of distinct sounds in jazz, like ingredients in gumbo,  compliments his use of "composting" as an analogy for composing. Very interesting. 

I was a bit concerned about the problematic use of the "melting pot" metaphor for American society that is most certainly not "melting together" but retaining institutionally, ideologically ingrained systems of privilege and oppression. Jazz as rooted in the African American experience through slavery, lynching, segregation and institutionalized racism seems to be a problematic topic for discussion in white academia. This doesn't mean that it doesn't warrant study, as it obviously does, but it was unsettling for me to read the word "Negroid" (as an adjective describing more improvisational jazz quoted on page 36) before Jarrett had addressed issues of race, racism and cultural appropriation in jazzography. I was somewhat relieved to read about authors like Jones and Walton on page 45 who "argued that the cultural codes that made normative judgments possible were, by definition, inaccessible to white writers whose criticism never ceased to be informed by racialism...[and who also] questioned the musicological methods endorsed by white jazzographers, revealing that so-called 'objective analysis' always functioned as 'criticism' (raising and resolving issues of meaning and value)" (45).

I also really want to know more about this Hebdige guy (paraphrased on page 37 and 39). Specifically, I would like to know what intersectional feminists have to say about his analyses of "subcultures" that "scandalize" "offend" and "emanate in part from" the "dominant culture."