Book review – Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse (University of Chicago Press ***) by Andrew S. Berish

Stephen Graham

11 months ago

Berish, a musicology PhD from UCLA, is a humanities and cultural studies associate professor at the University of South Florida and is the author of 2012’s Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s.

In this new book the terrain he explores is one where criticism of jazz is intertwined with issues of race, class, gender and generational conflict, reflecting broader anxieties and prejudices in society.

It’s not as dry as it sounds but you have to tussle with ideas like how hate “hypostatizes and reifies.” And there are a few eye rolling moments when you come to sections headed by the likes of this (American spellings used throughout) in the chapter entitled Jazz is Stupid: “Jazz Has Always Had a Sense of Humor.”

Cor lummy, fancy that. How the author distinguishes between hatred and healthy criticism isn’t set out enough. It doesn’t seem that clear in the discussion. The difficult thing is looking at what healthy criticism is, why so and who actually is an authority and why is that definitiveness accepted if it even is as a consensus.

Oh, and is hating even allowed?

Berish resists the temptation to go off topic. He instead ventures more within and examines how hostility towards jazz sometimes comes from within the community itself, with musicians and critics attacking each other over questions of authenticity, innovation and even genre boundaries. What smooth jazz is or can never be isn’t even that interesting. Why it gets dumped on so much is far more important as a case study although that is low hanging fruit in a wider discussion. If he moved more up to date he would have considered the largely misunderstood phenomenon of nu-jazz on which haters (can they be purists, it’s not explained, or simply non-jazz music fans if lumped in together?) often display borderline unhinged reactions.

Is this “hate” as real as Berish suggests nowadays? And does that hate matter given how jazz, very undead and all despite a few premature obituaries published periodically by provocateurs, has found ways to sidestep it via protective layers of humour, private codes and ultimately on the one hand outright rebellion or copycat conformity when nostalgia is seen as a counterintuitive tool to be creative with.

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Grey, 1890

Is not apathy the real hate or competition in other places instead just as significant? Is not the music industry the real hater given how much it undervalues in dollar investment terms the value of the art form and does not believe in it enough to make a return? Is society not now rather “post-jazz”? Issues of relevancy may be pertinent if you, as some fallaciously do, think that jazz is past its sell-by date and hasn’t done anything significant since the lifetime of John Coltrane.

Can jazz people laugh at themselves? Is the hyperbolic use of ”hate” not just really what’s meant by “dislike”? And is there actually a place for satire in jazz at all? That’s in light of how so many advocates of jazz feel attacked when even gentle mockery is deemed deeply wounding. All these questions occurred to me. But as a springboard for further debate and study Hating Jazz is useful as a conversation starter at the very least. It adds to an area of analysis that hasn’t been published about much before. But us and them, the lovers, the haters – if only life were so simple. This isn’t a simple tale at all. How the hated fight back – if they indeed do or did – may be fodder for another probing tome like a huge heroes and villains type history of the music.

Chapters define the hatred, ask what is meant by hating jazz in terms of taste, race and sensibility, satirising and ridiculing it, contempt at its reception and the ethics of hating jazz.

The book is most interesting when it discusses notions of taste as feeling which it seems to me gets to the heart of what he is saying. If your taste isn’t jazz the chances are you will hate it. I liked sections like this when he discusses an obscure album called I Hate Jazz from 2011:

Berish writes: “The album’s name is both an absurdist joke (who titles a record something that has nothing to do with the songs?) and a statement of independence from convention.”

Overall it’s a book that feels it doesn’t quite get to the end of its topic and not just because it’s only 192 pages long. The subject seems a lot bigger than the book has room for. It also is more for the chin stroking among us – you won’t be grabbing albums of a shelf inspired by what’s here. The jazz hate further reading destination instead is adorned more with prodigiously crinkly, cranky copies of the anti-balladry of one Theodor W. Adorno. So now you know where to go – if you really must – for your archaic jazz hate post-haste. Berish has done us a favour in reading the haters so we don’t have to and seems a reliable guide to the begrudgery and beyond it all entails.