James Lincoln Collier's Jazz: The American Theme Song

James Lincoln Collier's book, "Jazz: The American Theme Song" contains ten chapter-length essays that examine the history and origins of jazz as well as various issues pertaining to the writing of jazz history. Collier has stated that "there is not a single satisfactory history of jazz - anywhere in the world, as far as I can discover - and that includes my own earlier work, The Making of Jazz," as quoted by Russell Davies in the New York Times Book Review. In this book he seeks to dismantle commonly held beliefs and myths regarding the origins of the music, particularly the notion that jazz was the product of the purely African-American experience. His argument democratizes the music's original influences, stressing the importance of the New Orleans Creole culture.

His early chapters deal with the emergence of jazz from its Southern home and its progressive entanglement with other American institutions, both pre-existing (show business, the academy) and modern (recording, broadcasting). He does a particularly good job on retracing the rise of the big bands, and assigning credit for the invention of the saxophone section to the little-known arranger, Ferde Grofe, as early as 1918. He also makes a much better stab than most commentators at explaining how improvisation, or combination of accents, actually works inside a musician's head. Words, of course, will not ultimately explain this, because it happens in a different language, but Mr. Collier's is a useful rationalization.

The notion that black people from New Orleans invented jazz, for example, does not satisfy him. He is very far from denying but it looks too simple. Assigning credibility to the contention that New Orleans blacks invented jazz might also involve admitting that Buddy Bolden was, as is so often said, the first jazz musician; and that also goes against Mr. Collier. Mr. Collier also gives an impressive examination of Creole culture, which is much the likeliest source of a counter theory, but when he comes to reattach this to the musical argument, he has to backtrack: "I am by no means saying that the black Creoles by themselves created jazz."

What Mr. Collier really wants to say is that "jazz did not arise from some generalized 'black culture' or 'black experience'" - this being part of a broader attack on political correctness that he will launch later in the book, where the thought looks much more at home. Jazz today is an idiom existing independently of its black roots and available to all. But to reach back to New Orleans and relegate the black Buddy Bolden to the pre-jazz era looks willful.

Yet the author has a refuge from the battering of controversy, and he describes it in his final chapter. It is the friendly, tolerant, sometimes surprisingly competent and stylish (and sometimes not) world of the "local" bands, the semi-pros who play in your neighborhood. Whatever else these guys are, Mr. Collier writes, "they make up the best kind of audience jazz musicians can have, because they know what is going on in a performance, they approach their art with humility, and they respect those who can do well." Such a sentiment is a nice way to end a jazz book. After all these years, let's hear it for the audience.