This paper investigates how sound technology shapes jazz performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, with a focus on Meyer Sound Laboratories's Constellation adjustable acoustics system. Described by critic Alex Ross as "the acoustic equivalent of Photoshop," Constellation is an advanced audio technology that uses a network of microphones, speakers, and digital processing to dynamically alter a room's acoustics--simulating acoustic environments ranging from small, intimate clubs to large, reverberant concert halls. At Jazz at Lincoln Center's Appel Room, the system employs 122 speakers and 40 microphones to shape the sonic environment in real-time. Building on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, I analyze how the pursuit of "pure" sound that is simultaneously materially vibrant and mathematically objectified reflects alignments with raced and gendered ideologies of listening. I show how these practices align with Western epistemologies while complicating jazz's Black cultural particularity. The findings illuminate the cultural and political implications of sonic mediation in contemporary jazz spaces, contributing to ethnomusicology and sound studies. By examining the design and implementation of sound reinforcement systems, this paper reveals how technoscientific decisions about acoustics are shaped by broader cultural discourses of race, identity, and authenticity in jazz performance. Through interviews with sound engineers and musicians, I demonstrate how these practices shape perceptions of musical authenticity in ways that intersect with historical patterns of racialized listening and urban spatial organization. This paper offers new insights into the entanglement of sound, technology, and race in live music settings.

During the protracted struggle to establish jazz studies programs at universities across North America in the late 1960s and 1970s, many Black jazz educators emerged as interlopers, disruptors, and fugitive pedagogues. This network of subversive educators—including Nathan Davis, Archie Shepp, Max Roach, David Baker, and Randy Weston—functioned as both an above-ground and underground guerrilla movement, striving to integrate Black aesthetics into Eurocentric institutional spaces. While these educators embraced a diverse range of sometimes contradictory ideological commitments, they remained united by the transformative potential of Black music-making as an alternative epistemology. Following Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, I conceptualize this cadre's cultural and pedagogical labor as part of a university undercommons. This jazz educational undercommons represents a material and ontological realm of resistance and subversion within and beyond traditional educational power structures.

While the educators mentioned above are jazz luminaries who exemplify social agents with varying degrees of fame, status, and recognition, I draw on Nathan Davis’s archives at the University of Pittsburgh to center a lesser-known figure within the jazz educational undercommons that highlights the transformative potential of untold historiographies. I begin the paper by examining the theoretical and socio-historical foundations of the jazz educational undercommons, then trace resonant lineages from the 19th century and connect them to Davis's innovative initiatives. Ultimately, the jazz educational undercommons serve as a historiographical framework that reclaims the radical potential of jazz education and provides an alternative theoretical perspective that challenges Eurocentric narratives.

The Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra was founded in 1961 by Horace Tapscott (1934–1999), a pioneering African American musician and community organizer working in Los Angeles. During a period when the Central Avenue music scene that Tapscott grew up in was becoming increasingly dispersed, he conceptualized the Arkestra as a community ensemble that began with the mission of preserving Black arts by playing music of unknown composers in free public concerts.
Tapscott’s work offers a window into the power of music to build community, claim space, and cultivate political agency for artists. The Arkestra’s creative practice of collective improvisation lends insight into the philosophical foundations of L.A.-based community arts movements during a period of volatile racial politics marked by the Watts Rebellion of 1965 and a renaissance of Black cultural activism. This paper considers the Arkestra’s music as a hybrid form that responds to the social contexts of the 1960s and 1970s in South Los Angeles, expressing conceptual correlations between the aesthetics of free jazz and the politics of Black radicalism and self-determination.
Drawing from the Horace Tapscott papers at UCLA and interviews with Arkestra musicians, the paper highlights contributions of individuals such as Linda Hill (d. 1987), a founding member of “the Ark” who spearheaded initiatives to develop its social and educational reach, and Samuel Browne (1908–1991), a music teacher at Jefferson High School who set the template of learning and mentorship inherent in the ensemble which lives on and continues to nurture emerging artists in Los Angeles today.

When Zakir Hussain unexpectedly passed away on December 15th, 2024, he was in the midst of multiple international tours with jazz artists Dave Holland and Chris Potter in Europe, American music artists Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer in Australia and India (after winning three Grammys), and rising Hindustani stars Rakesh Chaurasia and Rahul Sharma in the US. During his career, as Zakir interacted with these and many other musicians, in all of these explorations, he integrated his music and made it a critical part of every style he was involved with, all the while staying within the confines of tabla tradition in terms of sound, technique and repertoire. Zakir’s work represented a “second stage” of the cultural transformation of tabla performance, succeeding the role played by his father and teacher, Allah Rakha, as the principal accompanist to Ravi Shankar. Zakir was exposed to a kaleidoscope of cross-cultural influences, from the Beatles to jazz and western classical. His gift was to understand and leverage these influences by seeking out these musicians and freely offering his immense skills as a collaborator. Understanding the truly exceptional musician who exemplifies and yet stands beyond their nominal cultural background has posed challenges to the theoretical groundwork of ethnomusicology since its foundation, and responses have evolved along with the field itself. I will explore how Zakir Hussain’s personal and professional trajectory exemplifies a confluence of overlapping cultural and personal identities, historical and political circumstances, and interaction with the worldwide commercial economy of music production.