Cooling down jazz

Making authentic Swedish jazz possible

Authors

  • Mischa van Kan University of Gothenburg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v10i1-2.27179

Keywords:

cool jazz, jazz, race, racial imagination, Sweden

Abstract

This article deals with the role of racial imagination in the acceptance of Swedish jazz in Sweden in the first years of the 1950s and discusses how Swedish jazz was connected to an American jazz tradition. It is argued that in its early reception, jazz was intimately linked to African American musicians. The advent of cool jazz and the ideas of race connected to it were key in the acceptance of Swedish jazz. By analysing the racial imagination in articles in the Swedish jazz press the article concludes that the combination of the idea of cool jazz as an authentic, white style of jazz, and an American-Swedish cooperation, authenticated a performance of Swedish jazz musicians.

Author Biography

  • Mischa van Kan, University of Gothenburg

    Mischa van Kan is a PhD student in musicology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His project researches the dissemination and the reception of Swedish jazz in the United States from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. The analysis is aimed at the network in which mediated Swedish jazz entered the American record market and traces how it became noticed. Furthermore it focuses on what meanings were connected to Swedish jazz in the US.

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Published

2016-07-25

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

van Kan, M. (2016). Cooling down jazz: Making authentic Swedish jazz possible. Jazz Research Journal, 10(1-2), 35-53. https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v10i1-2.27179