"This is our music": Free jazz, cultural hierarchy, and the sixties
This dissertation explores the question of who makes decisions about the value of a cultural form and on what basis, taking as its example the impact of 1960s free improvisation on the changing status of jazz. Using interviews with surviving participants, the mainstream and trade press, archival evidence, and recorded music sources, I propose that the acrimonious debate over free jazz interacted with changes in its production, presentation, and reception to transform the genre's place in American culture
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2000