Genesis and Structure of the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora

Name: Genesis and Structure of the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora
Brand: Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis

In Hungary, jazz was at the forefront of heated debates sparked by the racialised tensions between national music traditions and newly emerging forms of popular culture that challenged the prevailing status quo within the cultural hierarchies of different historical eras. Drawing on an extensive, four-year field research project, including ethnographic observations and 29 in-depth interviews, this book is the first to explore the hidden diasporic narrative(s) of Hungarian jazz through the system of historically formed distinctions linked to the social practices of assimilated Jews and Romani musicians. The chapters illustrate how different concepts of authenticity and conflicting definitions of jazz as the \""sound of Western modernity\"" have resulted in a unique hierarchical setting. The book's account of the fundamental opposition between US-centric mainstream jazz (bebop) and Bart\u00F3k-inspired free jazz camps not only reveals the extent to which traditionalism and modernism were.