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.

This paper aims to grasp how Blackness was understood in colonial Korea by focusing on the African American music genre, jazz. In the early 20th century, Korea faced a complex situation in which colonialism and modernity were intertwined. A variety of foreign cultural influences were introduced into Korea, and the terms representing the sociocultural changes, such as modern girl, modern boy, café, and dance hall, became pervasive. In this context, the term jazz embraced important meanings as it was used for jazz song, which was one of the popular music genres embracing all “Western” musical elements in colonial Korea. While black stereotypes were pervasive in colonial Korea, some Korean musicians pursued the African American style of jazz and incorporated aspects of Blackness into their music by utilizing jazz languages, such as the blue note and scat singing. Some of the most talented musicians were often compared to African American jazz musicians; for example, Son Mok-in was described as Duke Ellington of Joseon. The Afro-Asian connection has been examined by scholars, and terms such as “Afro-Orientalism” are used to describe Asians as allies against the imperialist (see Du Bois; Mullen). However, there are complex dynamics involved in understanding Blackness among Asians, especially in colonial Korea. I argue that jazz is an important medium for grasping why and how Korean people’s understanding of Blackness is not one-dimensional but multidimensional. Consequently, the study aims to contribute to the discourse of the Black-Asian connection.