Jazz: Myth and Religion

Early critics condemned jazz as profane--even diabolic--labelling it "the Devil's music" which threatened the very fabric of not only American life but also Western civilization as a whole. Simultaneously, however, other people discovered meanings in jazz more significant than those in any other music or art form. For them, jazz provided ecstatic experiences not found in any concert hall or church. These experiences--along with the charismatic personalities of such jazz heroes as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane--generated strong communal feelings and sect-like groupings which created rituals and myths to uphold the jazz mystique.
In this study of the relationship between music and religion, Neil Leonard uses the work of Max Weber and his followers in order to explore how listeners have come to regard jazz as sacred or magical and have created myths and rituals to sustain this belief. Leonard argues that in a time when conventional religions have fallen into a state of flux, jazz has provided a focus for spiritual impulses tempered by the anxieties and alienations of the twentieth century. Leonard's Jazz tells us not only about music and society but also about religious behavior in a secular time.