Conversing with Ourselves: Canon, Freedom, Jazz

Theodor Adorno's essay "On Jazz" is usually condemned as an elitist, if not racist, diatribe against jazz's possibility of attaining the status of "art" music. Adorno's concern with the ideological uses of jazz music, however, remains useful, particularly in light of recent efforts to claim a "high" art status for jazz through the creation of a canon. Ken Burns's recent PBS documentary Jazz vividly illustrates the problems with a "canonical" approach to jazz history, especially in its partial and awkward treatment of the anti-commercial free jazz movement. An understanding of jazz's double relationship to art and commerce gives unique insight into the complexity of the issue of canon formation generally.