Jazz: The Unmasked Rhetoric

Abstract

Despite the contempt with which both black Christians and white critics treated jazz, it provided a successful rhetoric for black Americans. The only true American art form, jazz is derived from the wordless experiences of blacks shackled by that horrible institution of American slavery. Stripped of their culture, language, religion and dignity, blacks found in music a means of complaint, revolution, joyful expression and survival. Jazz provided an outlet for white Americans who ventured into the speakeasies and bars that harbored the music.