The Jazz Community as an Art World

A Sociological Perspective

Authors

  • Peter J. Martin University of Manchester

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/source.v2i1.5

Keywords:

jazz, jazz musicians, history of jazz, modern jazz

Abstract

Just over forty years ago, the American anthropologists Alan Merriam and Raymond Mack published a paper in which they aimed to present ‘…a factual description of what we shall call the jazz community’ (1960: 211). As they recognised, the term ‘community’ is problematic in various ways, but what Merriam and Mack had in mind was that group of people who not only have an interest in jazz, but who display an ‘…extreme identification with and participation in the occupational role and ideology of the professional jazz musician’ (ibid.) They noted the relatively large proportion of the jazz community who were themselves musicians of some kind, ranging from former professionals to occasional amateurs, and, in part because of this, emphasised the extent to which, from a sociological point of view, professional players and their public could be regarded as members of a single group, sharing a particular ideology (ibid: 217). As more recent research has shown (e.g. DeVeaux, 1995), the high proportion of performers within the jazz public has remained a significant characteristic of the jazz scene generally. For the moment however, I want to focus on the central idea developed by Merriam and Mack. In their words: While the jazz community is characterised by a number of distinctive behavior patterns, almost without exception these tend to cluster around one central theme – the isolation of the group from society at large, an isolation which is at once psychological, social, and physical (ibid).

Author Biography

  • Peter J. Martin, University of Manchester

    Peter J. Martin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester, where he has been both Head of Sociology and Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law. He is the author of Sounds and Society: Themes in the Sociology of Music (1995) and co-author of Understanding Modern Sociology(2003) and Understanding Classical Sociology (2nd edn, 2003). His next book, Music and the Sociological Gaze, will be published by Manchester University Press in 2006. He is a longstanding member of the Musicians’ Union and remains active as a trumpet player.

References

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Published

2005-03-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Martin, P. (2005). The Jazz Community as an Art World: A Sociological Perspective. Jazz Research Journal, 2(1), 5-13. https://doi.org/10.1558/source.v2i1.5