Turning to the work of bassist and composer Charles Mingus and critic and record producer Nat Hentoff, I examine challenges to the liberal discourse of postwar jazz culture. Both were vocal critics of the cultural and racial politics of jazz. Because ideals of integration and democracy had long been central to its identity as a cultural practice, its participants saw jazz culture as a barometer of the national character and potentially representative of the fulfillment of democratic society. The participants were often less willing to see the effects of the nation on this world — jazz culture echoed evolving cultural and social discourses about racial and gender identity, the demands of the market, national boundaries, deviancy, and the function of artistic practice. Hentoff and Mingus present competing perspectives that offer suggestive avenues for rethinking jazz historiography and race.
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